Today:

The capacity of communication networks far surpasses the capacity offered to customers. IPSs and other Telcos artificially limit the available bandwidth as a tool of pricing.

The Communication Revolution

The communication revolution will untie this link between bandwidth and pricing. This will enable users to access the full capacity of the networks.

The goal:

“Unlimited bandwidth to everyone everywhere all the time for free”
(“Rajatonta kaistaleveyttä kaikille jokapaikassa kokoajan ilmaiseksi”)

This is no more difficult than providing “Enough sunlight to everyone everywhere always for free”.
(Well, nights are still a small problem, but as Edison said, “electricity is so cheap that no-one can afford to burn candles.)

The solution; find new ways of financing the network infrastructure:

1. Co-operative ownership
   Switching technology has become so cheap, that anyone can set up an “Internet Exchange” or even a citywide switching backbone.
2. Value added services (= mobile telephony)
   Operators will offer services of a more advanced level. A part of the income from these services is channeled to the owners of the access networks and access points/base stations used to provide the service.

Separate the service layers; co-operate to provide the service-levels that are natural monopolies, encourage competition for services where possible.

The future of mobile telephony

The bad news:

Mobile calls will never become cheaper.

1. The originating caller, not the terminator, pays for calls. There is little incentive to change to a cheaper service.
2. There is prestige associated with an expensive service and the associated phone number or URL. Who would choose sip:my.name@bowery.slum over sip:my.name@park-avenue.lux
3. Many phone bills are in fact paid by the employer, not the users themselves.

The good news:

The extra revenue can finance any new infrastructure; all that is needed is the right business-model.

One possible business model for 4G services

The very simple business plan:

ISP offers free Internet access to anyone setting up a WLAN access point/base-station and opening it to the public.

ISP should not try to ban public access WLAN; instead they should encourage it. It gives them, totally free of any investments, a 4G radio access network, that they can use to offer high paying mobile telephony services.

Hierarchy of services in 4G networks

Higher-level services can have multiple providers

• Proof of identity or authority, ID-documents, money
  • (Government, central bank)
• Identity provider
  • Electronic or cryptographic proof of identity
  • SIM (operator), "electronic ID-card" (government)
• Home VoIP telephony operator
• Visited VoIP telephony operator
• National and international IP traffic
  • (Internet service provider ISP)
• Content = email, news, web-proxy, web-hosting
  • (Local activists, “Internet society”)
• IP address allocation, DHCP
• Routing, Ipv4, Ipv6

Natural monopoly, only one provider (per location) for these levels

• WLAN access
  • Only one or two base-stations should serve each location, different base-stations can have different owners.
  • Everyone should be able to set up a base-station and profit from it.
• Level-2 switching (co-operative)
• Fiber cable (Community, private co-operative)
• Poles and conducts
• Right-of-way (Community)