PCinpact discovered that a legal text passed within the framework of the European Télécom package will create an enormous problem for the mobile telephone operators. It will prohibit them from blocking software for telephone IP that can be installed on mobile phones.
Currently, French operators are categorically against this. For a few years (approximately since the arrival of the iPhone), they found that they had to offer an unlimited data part of their subscriptions but to continue to build their economic model on the sale of minutes of communication. They would thus be obliged to completely rethink this strategy.
In addition to this commercial problem, another technical problem would arise. Attention, we do not seek to defend our dear cartels, but just try to imagine such a future.
The bandwidth of the 3G network is primarily defined by the number of antennas and of 3G cells available. Every equipment is defined to support X 3G connections and cannot have one more than this. To make it possible for more people to connect, it is thus necessary to increase in a very significant way the number of these 3G stations. This has a structural cost but it is even more complicated with future taxation of these antennas and especially with the opposition by part of the population to having a GSM relay under its nose. It will be thus very complicated to plan to be able to increase the available bandwidth. One already starts in France to encounter difficulties in certain zones where at peak hours during the day one gets a message indicating that it is not possible to reach the data network.
One can count on the telephone network companies to strongly lobby to block this legal text as soon as possible. But coming soon will be the Femtocell technology currently being tested by AT&T. In short, it would consist in adding in the boxes of to Internet operators, a mini domestic GSM relay having a low power and a range of a few tens of meters. It could be used to construct cells to which the mobiles could be connected, with the enormous advantage of being able to relay the 3G data to the Internet. In the heavily populated zones, one could easily obtain a continuity of the service following the example of what one has nowadays.
To return to the subject of this news, it remains to be seen what the operators will invent to continue to extract so much of our money.
