This is, admittedly, focused on the US regulatory world, but it includes some discussion of the tension between wireless network operators and software applications like Skype. This debate may be entirely different in other countries. (In fact, seeing as how I'm supposedly teaching a class on Regulation of Wireless Networks in India in a few weeks, I'd welcome any thoughts on how this issue plays out in India, if there is an issue at all. Oh, and full disclosure -- Skype is my client.)
http://www.rcrnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071023/FREE/71018014/1066/newsletter69 "Skype dusted off the FCC's 1968 Carterfone decision—allowing unaffiliated devices to attach to the public landline telephone system so long as they do no harm to the network—and asked why not in the U.S. wireless space, too. Timothy Wu, a Columbia University law professor, asked the same question and made the case for allowing wireless Carterfone at a roundtable at the Federal Trade Commission early this year. Wu was at once applauded and attacked for his academic paper on the subject. [snip] Five months after the fact—aided by a blockbuster bandwagon effect that attracted support from Google Inc., Frontline Wireless L.L.C., consumer advocates, public-interest groups, thousands of citizens and Democrats hoping to add the White House to a power base that already includes the House and Senate—open access has become the rallying cry for loosening the iron-clad grip of wireless networks that cellular carriers have had the past 25 years. [snip] Cellphone carriers want control over their networks, having to make business decisions on how to best allocate spectrum among voice, Internet access, video, music, texting and other services that occupy their ever-valuable bandwidth portfolios. [snip] The open-access campaign begun by Skype could represent the start of a broader assault not only on networks that carriers have spent billions of dollars to build and operate, but also on the wireless business model itself. Skype and the others see it differently. Indeed, they argue carriers are self-inflicted victims of mobile myopia, a narrow mindset that refuses to appreciate the monetary benefits of increasing traffic on cellular systems. Policymakers, fond of expounding the benefits of innovation, competition in the telecom industry, suddenly find themselves put on the spot as to whether they really mean what they say."
