One academic says stop the debate already. He argues a wireless Carterfone rule is long overdue.
“This [FCC] reticence to act has generated regulatory uncertainty and has frustrated numerous business ventures wanting to offer new and innovative services that consumers would be able to access from unlocked handsets,” writes Rob Frieden, professor of telecommunications and law at Penn State University, in a paper published by the New American Foundation earlier this year.
Frieden, former deputy director of international relations for Motorola Satellite Communications Inc., said the FCC should continue its tradition of protecting consumers from mandatory bundling arrangements and preventing purchases of unwanted content and compulsory equipment leases.
As such, he has constructed an open access bill of rights of sorts, provisions he believes the FCC should state in a wireless Carterfone policy.
–Commercial mobile radio services subscribers have the right to attach any handset that complies with standards designed to protect CMRS networks from technical harm. CMRS operators should bear the burden of proving that a particular handset would cause technical harm and therefore should not receive FCC certification.
–CMRS subscribers have the right to use their handsets to access any service, software, application and content available by subscriber imputed commands or instructions. The FCC should expressly state that CMRS operators should have a common carrier duty, pursuant to Title II of the Communications Act, to receive, switch, route and transmit such subscriber keyed commands or instructions.
–Suppliers of software, applications, services and content accessible via CMRS network have the right to offer them to CMRS subscribers subject to a reasonable determination by CMRS carriers that such access will not cause technical harm to the carriers’ networks. The FCC should reserve the right mediate and resolve disputes over technical compatibility of any software, applications, services and content accessible via a CMRS carrier network.
