Thursday, March 20, 2008

Making Sense of Verizon's New Open Door Policy


In the wake of Google entering the the government's 700 Mhz auction (and subsequently pulling out) Verizon, Sprint, et.al. declared "Open access policies" that somehow would allow devices from any company work on competing networks. Gizmodo has an article attempting to make sense of this and explain it in plain english:Verizon's Open-Door Policy: What It Actually Means.

As useful as this article is to explain the situation, I believe they are somewhat incorrect. With Google in the auction, these companies felt they HAD to offer open access, or their hand would be forced (as Google intended). Once they made this declaration, Google felt free to drop out. I have heard that the so called Open Access is meaningless. Verizon may allow users on their new 700 Mhz, provided your phone has a radio that can use this new bandwidth EXCLUSIVELY. In other words, the existing 800 and 1900 Mhz CDMA bandwidth remain exlusive to Verizon devices. How much coverage will be available on this new network (if it is ever built out) is anyone's guess.

Who will make a 700 Mhz phone? Time will tell.

No comments: