NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Another p[layer in the recent AT&T game]
It's really important to keep in mind what's actually happening. The carriers have created artificial scarcity and have been imposing arbitrary limits on data, with no real requirement that these be justified in any way. Having succeeded so far in Phase 1 without realistic push back, they're moving on to Phase 2 -- monetizing the "back end" beyond the artificial data caps, by attempting to squeeze money out of Web services themselves. It's a fool's game all the way. And if we play along, *we* are the fools. --Lauren-- NNSquad Moderator - - - ----- Forwarded message from Dave Farber <dave@farber.net> ----- Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 10:04:48 -0500 From: Dave Farber <dave@farber.net> Subject: [IP] Another p[layer in the recent AT&T game Reply-To: dave@farber.net To: ip <ip@listbox.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Anita Taff-Rice <ataffrice@boxtop.tv> Date: Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 8:03 PM Subject: brief summary of FreeBand technology To: "David J. Farber" <dave@farber.net> David, Here is a short summary of Box Top's FreeBand technology. Please let me know if you need any additional information. Thanks for your help! Anita ################# Box Top Solutions has developed a reverse billing technology -- "FreeBand" -- that provides a means for mobile carriers to price and sell bandwidth (peak and off-peak) to third-parties who wish to pre-bundle this bandwidth directly into customized "green" apps for use on end-user mobile devices (e.g., "green" apps = free bytes included; red/normal apps = no free bytes) . The model is based upon the well-established consumer preference of "free delivery" of goods and services (e.g., free delivery of books, pizza, mail, flowers, 1-800 voice), save that the free delivery applies to the electronic bytes being consumed by the various apps on the end-user's mobile device. A consumer installs the FreeBand applications on his or her device and then uses these "green apps" to access online education, tele-health, job training, government benefits, entertainment, goods, etc. without being charged for bandwidth by the underlying carrier because the provider of the services/goods is paying instead. For the unconnected, FreeBand applications provide a way to overcome the hurdle of costly committed monthly charges. For users who currently have a data plan, FreeBand applications allow them to exceed data caps without paying overage charges and/or allow them to subscribe to cheaper data plans since the FreeBand applications will reduce the amount of bandwidth they need to buy each month. We believe it is inevitable that the market will move to this "sender pays" model. AT&T and Orange have both announced plans to provide subsidized bandwidth paid for by a third party or the carrier. With Box Top's FreeBand app creation and deployment technology a carrier can easily offer this byte delivery service to any party (merchants, content providers, government agencies, etc.) wishing to subsidize the byte delivery of its audience via a flexible, low-cost, and scalable reverse billing system capable of keeping track of what bytes are paid for, when, for how much, and by whom. In essence, FreeBand makes it easy for the subsidizing parties to create swarms of self-monitoring FreeBand apps that do the bandwidth monitoring and billing on the mobile device itself. We do not believe that carriers can accomplish the same level of dynamic and flexible metering and monitoring by using in-network functionality such as deep packet inspection, which is cumbersome from a technology perspective and raises significant privacy issues because the carrier will have access to the actual information being transmitted when it screens the packet for billing purposes. With FreeBand, the content of data passing through the application is known only to the user and the content provider. As such, FreeBand not only promotes new, defensible, and diverse revenue streams for mobile carriers (opening up a dynamic "two-sided" bandwidth sales model by selling bandwidth directly to content providers for use by their end-users), but also results in lower content distribution costs for true content creators (their margins improve as they engage directly with the end-user) and highly customizable tiers of free and subsidized bandwidth for the mobile end-user. -- Anita Taff-Rice Box Top Solutions, Inc. 1975 Hamilton Avenue, Suite 5 San Jose, CA 95125 415.699.7885 ----- End forwarded message ----- _______________________________________________ nnsquad mailing list http://lists.nnsquad.org/mailman/listinfo/nnsquad