Wireless Google May Also Come with Strings Attached
European cell phone giant Vodafone Group is using a new, more powerful content filter, which may be cause for alarm for Google. What Vodafone's rolling out now in theory lets it collect from Google the same kind of user fee recently proposed by U.S. wired broadband network owners. These companies argue that Google's such a heavily used feature, it's choking off their bandwidth. So Google should pay them something, perhaps based on how much of the pipe its customers take up. The new wrinkle here is Vodafone is a cell phone operator, a type of business rarely heard from on this issue of Net neutrality. (For more on Net neutrality, point a Web browser here.) So just how Vodafone will behave going forward is somewhat uncharted and very interesting territory. Vodafone says it'll never use the filters to charge Google or others fees, and to think so is reading too much into the situation. The firm is simply using the filters to block kids from seeing porn and other illicit material. "We are meeting our social mandate," said a spokesperson. |
Comments (1)
More of the same. Weak and technologically inept regulators allow this behavior from greedy incumbents and operators. Recent history reveals that legacy operators, reagrdless of the industry, will do just about anything; including breaking the laws to preserve market share. New York saw riots by the breeders and carriage guild upon the arrival of the automobile. Paving the roads sealed their fate. They agreed to operate a network and we are all paying for it. Content control is not an implicit right, just like it is not the right of government to regulate which cars, using what kind of paint travel on the highway. Safety is not an issue, greed is. Malcolm Leal, PhD, MBA CEO/President ClearPoint Technologies.
Posted by Malcolm Leal | April 13, 2006 1:05 PM