Skype’s legal action and a ray of hope for open cellular networks

According to Ars Technica today Skype asks FCC to open up cellular networks, Skype is trying to force the FTC in the US to uphold many decades-old principle that allows consumers to ” hook any device up to the phone network, so long as it did not harm the network”. A favorable decision for Skype could one day have enormous value for consumers letting them compete on the application layer for what services they want to use to make calls, transfer data or run applications etc. Currently however, carriers have this nasty habit of blocking Skype and anything else that might eat into their tasty margins on data traffic and $3 ring tones, and crusty closed-loop music services etc.

This would also be good news for Canadians as (eventually) the CRTC would have to follow suit. (hey it only took our faithful regulators half a decade to catch up to the US on number portability).

Canada badly needs more competition in the mobile space. (even if shareholders of Rogers, Bell and Telus may be inclined to disagree)