Mobile broadband - what can you use it for?
Someone recently drew may attention to this article in the New York Times. It’s a consumer-level survey of mobile broadband devices available in the States; things like the Telecom T3G and Vodafone 3G cards we put in our laptops here.
The article is useful if you are looking for a service like this in the US, but the part which caught my eye reads:
One possible use of mobile high-speed Internet access is sharing a single connection among several users at once, either wirelessly using Wi-Fi or on an Ethernet-based network. Verizon and Cingular said such sharing violates the terms of their services; Sprint said it did not. (The carriers have other restrictions as well, outlined in their contracts: Verizon’s contract, for example, says its service cannot be used for uploading, downloading or streaming of movies, music or games; it also prohibits peer-to-peer file sharing and Internet phone calling, known also as VoIP.)
This is the two-tier Internet. It is telcos trying to break the net so as not to damage their business models. The government here has made it clear that would be unacceptable. When opening the ICANN conference the Minister said:
In particular, the government believes in the rights of people who purchase Internet access to have true access, not something which is filtered to prevent innovative Internet based services from competing with the telephone system, and not something where Internet customers are sold to the highest bidder. We understand that Internet users are nodes on the network like any other, with full rights of participation, and we respect the architectural principles which have made the Internet the thing of wonder it is today.
This encouraged me to look for terms of service for my Vodafone 3G card. I can’t find anything specific to the card on the Vodafone website, and none of the general terms say anything about what you can use the connection for. Neither should they - that’s how the Internet works, after all.
Skype works perfectly for me over my Vodafone 3G card. It works very badly over my household DSL connection, though. Anyone else have that problem?
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