The biggest, fastest growing communications technology ever and the U.S. is falling behind

From Reed Hundt [*] at TPM Cafe: The world is seeing a cell phone explosion that has no previous counterparts.

In Iran five million new cellphone subscribers signed up in the first quarter of this year. That's more than the number of new subscribers in the United States.

China Mobile has about 500 million subscribers. That's of course more than the American population. CM will add the same number to its total within less than a decade. [Snip]

In less than 10 years, between 2 and 3 billion people globally will be cellphone users. This is by far the largest, fastest, and most important extension of communications capability ever seen.

Because the U.S. sells monopoly rights to sections of the radio wave spectrum and then does not regulate prices, terms of service, or quality of service, the U.S. is falling behind other nations in cell phone capability and use.

The means for forming groups, gathering information, developing beliefs, sharing values, and taking action --what we apprehend now as social networks -- will become as widespread and effective as mobile communications itself. The handheld device will become the essential technology for performing the mechanical job of interacting within and between societies.

No single part of government in the United States pays much attention to these trends; the various parts that pay some attention lack responsibility and accountability; the implications of the new mobile web vastly outstrip government's capability to think about those implications. I am making a critique about the structure of government and not the people in government. Businesses in this field, on the other hand, are well aware of what's going on.

A natural monopoly (any form of system that sells access, phone companies being the prime example) will always work to prevent customers from switching to another company by either restrictive contracts or technically crippling their product so that it will not work with another companies system. Then they will overprice the product and limit innovation since innovation costs extra and does not increase the monopoly profits.

As one commenter points out we get "Locked phones, insanely expensive charges for the most meager of services, the inability to get "real" internet access for a reasonable price." "France, France mind you, is offering 100/50MB down and up for $40 a month!"

Another says that his friends from South Korea look at the junk being sold as cell phones here in the United States and just shake their heads. They come from a modern nation that offers good cell phones and service.

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[*] Reed Hundt served as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, 1993-97. Since that date, he has written and lectured about information sector politics, as well as served on various technology company boards.