Two completely different perspectives on independence and telephony:
First, this today on Ars Technica:
Two UK mobile operators are reportedly fuming at Nokia for including a mobile version of Skype on its N97 handset. Both Orange and O2 are so terrified that the popular VoIP service will siphon away profitable cell minutes by allowing users to make free calls that they are supposedly threatening not to carry the device unless Skype is removed.
The outrage is going on behind closed doors for the time being, though it’s hardly surprising, given the power that carriers have traditionally had over handset manufacturers. They don’t like customers having options that the handset maker wants to offer when they believe it might threaten their bottom line—even if they ultimately benefit consumers.
This attitude is merely reinforced by the anonymous comments made to Mobile Today about the issue. “This is another example of them trying to build an ecosystem that is all about Nokia and reduces the operator to a dumb pipe,” one mobile operator told the site. “Some people like 3 may be in a position where it could make sense to accept that. But if you spend upwards of £40m per year building your brand, you don’t want to be just a dumb pipe do you?”
It was only a matter of time, I suppose, before this came to a head. When Bob Schukai of Turner showed off his Skype handset some 18 months ago on the Mobile panel at Futures of Entertainment 2, the envy in the audience was palpable. With the continued proliferation of wifi-enabled handsets and increased wifi coverage in larger markets, this end was inevitable.
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From Seed Magazine, the story of Nepalese teacher (and, it seems, early adopter) Mahabir Pun:
With no telephone line, no way of funding a satellite phone link, and with the country in the grip of insurgency, Mahabir realized that to bring 21st-century communications facilities to his village, he would have to leapfrog the conventional technology route. In 2001 he wrote to a BBC radio show asking for help in using the recently developed home-WiFi technology to connect his village to the internet. Intrigued listeners emailed with advice and offers of assistance.
Backpacking volunteers from around the world smuggled in wireless equipment from the US and Britain after the Nepalese government banned its import and use during the insurgency, and suspicious Maoist rebels tried to destroy it. By 2003, with all the parts in place, Mahabir had linked Nangi to its nearest neighbour, Ramche, installed a solar-powered relay station (TV antennae fixed to a tall tree on a mountain peak) and from there sent the signal more than 20 kilometers away to Pokhara, which had a cable-optic connection to Kathmandu, the capital.
More than 40 other remote mountain villages (60,000 people) have now been networked and connected to the internet by Mahabir and his stream of enthusiastic volunteers, and many more are in the pipeline. The villagers are now able to communicate with people in other villages and even with their family members abroad by email and using VOIP (voice over internet protocol) phones, he says. Using the local VOIP system, they can talk for free within the village network.
Astounding.
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The latter story, I think, illustrates a great counterpoint to the former, namely that people are going to connect, and are going to do so on their own terms. That Nepalese and Western activists risk personal harm to bring village-to-village communication to some of the most remote terrain on the planet underscores that it IS, in fact, all about the pipe (and only the pipe).
Efforts at forestalling the inevitable have a long-term life-expectancy of zero.
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