Draft telecom bill could limit Walled Gardens

[Brian]

From the I'll believe it when I see it department:

The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee leadership recently released a draft telecommunications bill containing language that would prohibit carriers, including wireless operators, from limiting their subscribers to "walled gardens" where they can only access content provided by the carrier. Under the proposed legislation, wireless carriers would be required to allow subscribers access to any legal internet content they sought.

While this would be great news for US consumers if signed into law, don't expect the carriers to let this go forward without a good fight. Keep an eye on the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) for more information about this draft legislation.

[via MoCoNews]

[TadW]

As much as I would love this to happen, I fail to understand under what premise the government can force carriers to open walled gardens. When I pick a carrier, I should know exactly what kind of services to expect. If I don't like the limited view of the Net, I can and should go to someone else. I can understand carriers if they're going to call their lawyers now - it should be an easy win for them.

[Brian]

Originally Posted by TadW

If I don't like the limited view of the Net, I can and should go to someone else.

Unfortunately, more and more of the top wireless carriers in the US are creating walls around content and crippling the the built-in and advertised capabilities of devices approved for their networks.

There's a great article about walled gardens at VentureBlog:

As I fly back home from DemoMobile, I am struck by the fact that "innovation" in the mobile market is apparently stuck in the same quagmire we faced at the outset of the Web. All mobile computing paths appear to be leading to the walled garden. And no matter how pretty that walled garden may appear at first blush, mark my words, it is going to feel pretty claustrophobic in no time at all.

Since when did wireless carriers become content providers? They're struggling to find a business model that offsets the commoditization of airtime, but it's at the expense of the user's freedom to choose how, when and where they get their content.