CTIA: Carriers attempt to define "openness"
CTIA President Steve Largent led off the first keynote session in the main program of CTIA I.T. & Entertainment by asking the CEOs of three of the biggest US carriers just what exactly this "open" is we've all be hearing about. Largent went on to suggest there have been a lot of misinterpretations as to what openness really is and that the carriers should set the record straight.
Sprint CEO Dan Hesse was the first one up and with the Clearwire-Xohm merger in the works, perhaps the most qualified of the CEOs to answer the question: "'Open' is not regulating the internet," he explained.
"The internet is one of those great things that are still unregulated and people are looking for ways to regulate it... but really openness can be defined in three contexts:" Open for the end user, Open for the developer and Open for the device. "Consumers want the whole internet not a walled garden one... Quite frankly, what the industry did from a brand point of view was ensure that the user experience was a good one [by using walled gardens]--it was necessary for 2G networks, but it's necessary for 3G and 4G networks." Hesse went on to proclaim that Sprint wants the customer to be able to "knock themselves out, the entire internet is theirs because they won't get an error message saying that they 'can't' or 'shouldn't' access a particular site."
Hesse explained the openness is very straightforward for the developer community: It means they can develop an application for the internet that the carriers can enable to easily port over to the mobile platform.
On the device side, Hesse admitted that the industry has a ways to go toward achieving openness. While he conceded that GSM-based carriers have it slightly easier on this front, Sprint is working to create a rugged device authorization program, like the one it uses to enable the Kindle, for other third party devices. "We, and I'm sure my colleagues on-stage would agree, would like to do a lot less subsidizing of devices," Hesse said.
T-Mobile USA CEO Robert Dotson had a little more trouble articulating his conception of "openness" in the wireless industry, but in the end T-Mobile's plan to embrace the open trend starts and ends with Google's Android and the Open Handset Alliance. "What's really critical to us comes back to the consumer at end of day," Dotson explained. "How do we unleash all that innovation that we didn't see in 2G? For us, we do it by making sure we take all the richness going on here in the Bay Area, going on in India, ...and making sure we tap into that genius going on in the developer community. It also goes back to us leveraging a relationship we have with Google and the Open Handset Alliance. We are going to find ways to get more open source on the operating system and innovation on devices."
It's clear that openness has been a theme that Verizon Wireless has been tracking since Skype and Google first started pushing to FCC to regulate the industry into becoming more "open." After waging a lobbyist battle against Google on that front, Verizon eventually embraced the trend by appointing Tony Lewis the VP of Open Development. VZW CEO Lowell McAdam defined openness with a joke: "The exciting thing about open is that my opinion and the carriers' opinion is almost irrelevant. It comes down to what the customers are going to purchase. With 2G we had to make big decisions and place big bets on what applications and services we should offer, stand behind and train people to support." McAdam continued: The tidal wave of innovation coming in through the Internet means we couldn't train all the people we need and cover all the overhead necessary to shepherd these services. "Opening up the doors and just protecting the network: That's the only thing we have to do."
Largent ended the session shortly after with a "that settles that" quip, but the carriers' answers to the definition of what openness implies for the industry and what it means in general is still convoluted. Verizon Wireless' example of an open device it has approved so far was a basic voice phone for the insurance agency. McAdam even took it out of his pocket to show the audience. While the product may perhaps be an important contribution to that vertical, the gesture seemed to almost poke fun at Google, Skype and others. You wanted open? OK, we'll grant carriage to an insurance industry-targeted voice-centric handset then.
