Will Mobile Web 2.0 happen in the US first ?

We contributed some of our work to Tony Fish & Ajit Jaokars "Mobile Web 2.0" book, and have been following the scene closely ever since. Readers of this blog will know that in our view the Mobile Web 2.0 cannot happen until:

- There is some form common operating "system" (in its broadest sense) to make it economics to write interoperable apps, and that makers allow access to devices
- The operators allow access outside their walled gardens;
- At a price that is low enough to foster rather than stifle takeup

Up till now, all the evidence has been that these will happen over the dead bodies of Planet Mobile, and probably only because of the arrival of rival networks and handset makers.

A new announcement in the US may shake all this up however: Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin will propose sweeping new rules for wireless airwaves the government is auctioning early next year. Under Martin's proposal mobile services in the new spectrum being auctioned would have to allow consumer choice. To quote the article

The proposed rules would apply only to the spectrum being auctioned, not the rest of the wireless business, which still makes most of its revenue from voice calls. But Martin's proposal, if adopted by the FCC, could reverberate through a U.S. wireless industry that has tightly controlled access to devices and services. The Apple iPhone is a prime example: Like most devices sold in the USA, the iPhone is, in industry parlance, "locked." It allows only features and applications that Apple (AAPL) and AT&T (T) provide and works only with an AT&T contract

The FCC chairman said he has grown increasingly concerned that the current practices "hamper innovations" dreamed up by outside developers. One example: Mobile devices that also can use Wi-Fi, such as a home network or airport "hot spot," for Internet access. "Internationally, Wi-Fi handsets have been available for some time," Martin noted. "But they are just beginning to roll out here."

No doubt the operators will point out that a licence is worth less to them under this regime, but I suggest he goes ahead as this would - ultimately - be a bluff, since any owner (like, maybe Google, or Microsoft, or Apple - just the sort of new guys on the block you want) of these new licences would take business hand over fist away from the current operators.

As an aside this bit shook me...the article was talking about Europe:

In Europe, for example, consumers for years have had access to an array of "unlocked" devices they can pack with applications from a variety of developers.

Because the devices aren't tethered to any one carrier, wireless consumers in other countries can take devices with them when they switch carriers. In the USA, with cellphones typically "locked," customers who switch have to throw their old phones away.

Blimey......and we thought our lot were restrictive.

It will be very interesting to see what happens, because if this goes ahead it will open the way for a Mobile Web 2.0 environment far more than elsewhere (except Japan and Korea, but that will evolve in a very different way)

And again if this happens we would expect the self satisfied superiority Europeans feel about their mobile services to disappear near-overnight - already the level of innovation in US mobile is far more than in Europe (admittedly funded by VCs with a higher risk appetite), but if that is added to a real open platform, it will leave Europeans lagging the Mobile Web 2.0 world quite badly.

There's no spectrum we could licence here like that I wonder