I'm a long time Verizon hater for its sleazy and anti competitive practices. Verizon is NOT a technology or innovation company. Its MO has consistently been to merge and acquire market share to stifle competition and slow innovation, milk out maximum short-term profit, and ultimately hurt the public interest and keep our internet years behind the rest of developed nations.

Verizon should be litigated for anti-trust, the FCC hitting them hard, and maybe even have their license revoked if they continue anti-competitive practices.

Japan, South Korea, and Western Europe have wired and wireless internet 10x to 100x faster than our fastest connections. Broadband on cell phones has been common there for years. Thier fastest cellular connections are now faster than most of our wired connections. Broadband access is now ubiquitous in other developed nations, even with people on the go.

Think about that. They went from us inventing the internet and thier having zero, about a decade ago, to now being an order of magnitude ahead of us. That's what happens when nations know how to build infrastructure efficiently: a complete leapfrog of slower nations.

It's directly because their regulators continually force adoption of the latest and greatest technology standards, and do NOT allow anti-competitive practices, whatsoever. As a result, those technology providers are the most efficient in the world and everything they do is towards competition, because they have no choice, they can't even consider stifling the market to maintain share.

By comparison, take Verizon, a merger/duopolist company if ever there was one. It long refused to adopt the global cellular standard, GSM, which meant that US handsets and towers were incompatible with the majority made in the world and the latest technology. Of course that also served to block out competitors from shared licensing agreements of Verizon towers and made the few handset makers willing to adopt the Verizon standard largely dependent on Verizon's business. A classic anti-competitive practice.

The result for the consumer? Japan, South Korea, and Western Europe are way ahead of the USA in terms of wireless data speeds and have as a result developed far superior technology and services, rate plans, and handsets.

The US is still several years behind.

The technology has become so ubiquitous in their society that they've invented new applications to benefit everyone from the young to old, in ways we can hardly even imagine. For example, in Korea, high res video conferencing is widespread among housewives to trade recipes and such for more healthy social interaction than just passively watching TV. Even the poorest family K-12 student has ubiquitous internet access.

If we had a decent regulatory oversight in America, we would have done exactly what Japanese, South Koreans, and Western Europeans did: mandate companies upgrade in reasonable time to the best and most compatible standards, and compete on service, not on duopolist strategies. Otherwise they would lose their license to operate on the public airwaves and public infrastructure.

Public wireless/cordless internet gateway

Abstract [Patent Number 6,359,880]

A localized wireless gateway system provides wireless telephone communication, and for at least interexchange communication, provides voice telephone access to a public packet data network, such as the Internet. The wireless gateway system includes base station transceivers and a packet service gateway coupling the transceivers to the public packet data network. The packet service gateway compresses and decompresses voice frequency communication signals, and it sends and receives the compressed signals in packet form via the network. The packet service gateway also provides for signaling through the network to establish two-way voice communication sessions. In the preferred implementation, the localized wireless gateway system includes at least one radio port control unit coupled to the base station transceivers for controlling calls through the transceivers. The localized wireless gateway system also includes a telephone switch, such as a digital PBX, selectively providing telephone communication channels between the radio port control unit(s) and the packet service gateway. An access manager controls registration and validation of roaming wireless telephones to utilize the wireless gateway system. The access manager also transmits location information for registered wireless telephones to a home location register database via the network. The communications of the access manager to the home location register database permit telephone authentication as well as maintenance of accurate location information in the home location register identifying the current gateway through which a caller can reach the roaming user's wireless telephone.

We claim:

1. A method comprising:

registering a wireless telephone terminal in a localized wireless gateway system;

transmitting registration data identifying the gateway system from the localized wireless gateway system to a home location register database through a public packet data communication network;

receiving a request from a calling computer coupled to the public packet data communication network for a call to the wireless telephone terminal;

in response to the request, accessing the home location register database and obtaining a packet data address for the localized wireless gateway system;

using the address to set up a voice communication through the public packet data communication network and the localized wireless gateway system between the calling computer and the wireless telephone terminal.

* * *

6. A method as in claim 1, wherein the public packet data communication network is a packet switched network.

7. A method as in claim 6, wherein the packet switched network comprises a system of interlinked data networks using TCP/IP protocol.

8. A method as in claim 7, wherein the system of interlinked data networks comprises the Internet.

* * *

I don't read this as claiming the internet, but instead as claiming the use of the phone over the internet. The patent is more than five years old. I think we would have heard something by now if they were really claiming the internet, and it's crazy anyway, because the basic idea and basic practice of the internet was around for decades before the patent was issued. It was invented by the government.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet

http://tinyurl.com/25q2po

They have high speed wireless nationwide, including burbs, rural, and underground, not just in Tokyo and Seoul. And broadband 10x to 100x faster than ours. For years. Including larger metro areas and burbs. Did you know?

That's really an excuse and spin from US telecoms you're quoting. It's not just untrue, it's a great example of corporate "big lies" to spin public perceptions.

The population density excuse/argument is totally bogus. It's antithetical to how "cellular" networks function in reality.

In cellular networks the number of towers scales dependent on subscribers, NOT population density. That is because the potential range of cellular towers is large, tens of miles, while the frequency bandwidth is pretty small.

If you can fit 100 subscribers in your bandwidth on one tower, you have to build a tower for every 100 subscribers and then tune its gain down so as to not interfere with the next "cell" of 100 users on the next tower. But the range of that tower can be miles or blocks, so as long as pop density falls within a broad range, it's basically irrelevant. Any US city and larger metro area qualifies easily, and so do most burbs and even some rural areas.

In really high population density areas, like downtown of any major city, you actually have to do a lot of work to avoid interference and manage handing off mobile users between towers, because you have too many subscribers in too small an area trying to use the same radio frequency.

Actually, the economics favor the USA in many regards. We have as many potential subscribers in optimal density areas than Japan or Korea have in their entire country, including their burbs and rural areas.

If not for anti-competitive practices and lack of standardization, we would be the leaders.

And doesn't VZ offer megabit wireless in larger US cities?

Pffft. Finally. Every other developed country had 3G broadband cellular years ago. W-CDMA (3GSM) rolled out in limited areas in 2001, by 2004 Japan had national coverage including underground at broadband speeds.

VZ's standards like EV-DO are garbage only valuable for incompatibility with competitors. International 3GSM standards beat them in performance and were widespread years ago.

VZ's only began offering broadband when foreign companies started building out their own GSM network in America. VZ realized they couldn't beat them and couldn't shut them out. But they sure as hell tried for years, and are a major reason why we're years behind.

I refuse to buy any Verizon product, from internet to long distance to wireless.

They're an anti-competitive company, they abuse patent litigation and strong arm techniques, they're against net neutrality and are trying to set up toll booths, they have atrocious labor practices... and I could go on.

They're just an all around evil company run by rotten people.

It's enough to make you miss simple AM radio and newspapers....

"They have high speed wireless nationwide, including burbs, rural, and underground, not just in Tokyo and Seoul."

We were talking about how great SKorea is (and it is). I nowhere said SKorea's best service was restricted to the Seoul metro area.

"In cellular networks the number of towers scales dependent on subscribers, NOT population density."

But if just about everyone has a phone (which is the case in SKorea) then your distinction does not exist.

Again, "Just phone over the net." is a totally meaningless distinction.

I need to read it again?

No, you need to read it again, and try comprehending the technology involved this time.

You don't seem to comprehend the "distinction" they're making between "phone" and anything else on the internet is: totally meaningless. A non-existent distinction.

"Phone" data over the internet is no different than any other data. It's just TCP/IP packets, the same as any other type of data.

A "phone" device is fundamentally no different that any other modem that is attached to a processing chip and output device. The chip converts TCP/IP data into a usable data, whether it be your CPU, your modem, or router, or whatever. Your output device is a monitor and speakers, game device, your web enabled refrigerator, or whatever. The data can be text, web pages, video, audio, voice, or whatever.

They are in fact attempting to lay intellectual claim and thereby authority over: basic operation of the internet.

They're only attempting to exert their false patent over "phone" like usage, for now, but the fundamental claims they're making over TCP/IP could apply to anything else. Substitute "phone" with "text" or "video" or "html" or anything else and their bogus patent would apply equally well.

So yes, they are attempting to fundamentally patent basic workings of the internet, and use litigation to stifle competition to thier services, which they can NOT be allowed to do.

Wigmar1,

You seem to be trolling without knowing even the basics of how these things work. Now you're saying things that sound defensive but don't make sense.

To recap you began by making the argument that SKorea and Japan had a scale advantage. That is a totally false talking point from Big Telcoms. Backwards in fact.

As I explained that's not how cellular networks function.

Cellular networks are: cellular. Each cell has limited bandwidth and hence limited customer capacity, but the potential broadcast range is large to find those customers. i.e. they are NOT population density based.

In lower population density areas, you build the SAME number of towers to consumers, over a larger area, but for the SAME COST. You simply turn up the gain of each to have longer range. In higher density areas, you build the SAME NUMBER of towers to consumers, simply turning down their range, for the SAME COST.

In fact, really high population densities make for additional problems because towers have to be so close, in urban canyons, and with such small range, it's hard to manage interference and handing-off mobile customers between towers, which requires additional bandwidth overhead and additional costs.

So, in fact, the USA has the advantage over Skorea and Japan.

We have more potential customers, more demand.

US companies have just miserably failed to develop the network, directly because they weren't thinking long term, and were too interested in short term defense of market share on obsolete technology, and too afraid to upgrade the network and compete fairly on service.

That is the classic misguided thinking of anti-competitive companies, and exactly why regulatory bodies are supposed to prevent short term thinking and greed from harming the economy. Unfortunately for us, the FCC has done a miserable job at regulating telecoms while other countries have done an excellent job of pushing hard to develop infrastructure, which ultimately benefits consumers and companies.

Ironically, foreign telecoms who were forced to develop better technologies and compete fairly are now more efficient and innovative as a result, have larger market share, and are the global technology leaders as a result.

They now see the benefits of consortium, standardization, and healthy regulation prohibiting anti-competative behavior which ultimatly hurts everyone.

As Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems points out: they are beating us directly because they see the value of regulation and standardization, fair competition, and innovative competition done in serial, NOT in parallel.

Their regulators knocked heads together, said build the network v1.0 and they'll come. They've kept that philosophy. Now they're on their network v4, have almost total market penetration, and services, quality and quantity way surpassing ours.

Meanwhile, we quibbled over standards, built incompatible networks on inferior standards to maintain anti-competitive regional market dominance. We're barely beginning our 3g network (only made possible as a derivative of their technology!) and are years behind competitors. Our most technologically advanced handsets are imported now, and still hobbled to function on our outdated network.

Their companies are buying our market share and the global leaders, not the other way a round.

What a complete f-up we made of this.

We SHOULD have been the technology leaders. And would have been if not for anti-competitive and just plain stupid, short term greed, practices of companies like VZ. Their reluctance to adopt good technology standards and their intent to maintain market share on obsolete technology by blocking out competitors, has set our infrastructure back several years. That has done immense harm to many subsidiary industries, from content and service providers to manufacturers, and done immeasurable harm to the national economy.

VZ is a big part of the reason we're years behind the rest of the developed world.

Where, then, is all the reaction to the prospect of VZ patenting the internet?

They are not making claims over packet switching, they are giving it as one of several examples of the technology across which the subject of their patent (relating to internet telephony) might be deployed. Patents are written this way to broaden their application and to defend against potential infringers.

Also, have you heard of the term, "prior art"?

No more coffee for you.

Exactly. I was going to say the same thing. Without referring to claim 1, Claims 6, 7, and 8 cannot be interpreted.

(patent litigator; Vonage user)

Is this really a serious argument? Is it really the case that you can patent packet handling for some application? Sheesh. The notion that someone can take some way of moving packets and patent it is in complete violation of the design of the internet.

The idea of patents was to encourage creativity and inventiveness in the public interest. It's clearly in the public interest to have vonage and skype around, and clearly not in the public interest to have large corporations in charge of packet control.

Patents were designed in the constitution to serve the public interest. The idea that they should be used in direct opposition to the public interest is disturbing.

You comment makes no sense. Kozmik just said that densely populated areas require more cells than sparsely populated areas, which is why S Korea's greater urban density -- on which your argument that the comparison is unfair hangs -- is irrelevant.

IANAL, but I know about TCP/IP networking. There is nothing novel about putting data into a packet and putting it onto the network. There's no issue of disparate networks. Now, there is the issue of connecting the data packets to the POTS network, but, again, that doesn't strike me as something one would want to allow to be patented. The Internet is a government creation. The POTS network was created under strict government control. I don't see where the commercial claim lies.

Yes, the constitution says what you say it says--"for a limited time." The idea is to encourage creativity for the good of the society as a whole. It was never the intention that an author would be protected by copyright for 75 years after his death. How do the Arts progress if the guy doing the progressing is dead?

For you to claim that Vonage is ripping off the innovators over at Verizon is laughable. The internet is a DOD project. It belongs to everyone.

You are obviously refusing to get the point I and others have been making. Namely, the Verizon patent is NOT a patent on "The Internet". It is a patent on certain kinds of telephonic communication over networks -- one example of which is the Internet. Again, Edison's patent on an electric light referred to electricity, but that does NOT mean he patented electricity, right? Can the anti-patent crowd ever acknowledge these obvious points?

As for RIM, it's useful to note that RIM itself has not hesitated to sue other companies for infringement of its own patents. As is usual, and as is convenient, it has a problem with patents only in the cases in which it is itself sued; somehow its own patents are infinitely worthy whereas those of others which it infringes upon are the products of trolls.

And your own claim that "you like patents" is itself largely feckless. Somehow, you apparently imagine that it's patents on, I suppose, software and/or technology that you have a big problem with. But, again, what would you offer up as a protection against the predations by large companies on small companies and individuals? I gather, absolutely zip. What kind of position is that?

I certainly won't claim that all patents are equally worthy, or that all patent holders are equally worthy. But how do you get rid of them all in an industry like software without throwing away all incentive for innovation by small and even large players? I've NEVER heard anything like an honest, satisfactory answer to that question from the anti-software-patent crew.

Kindly stop attributing opinions to me that I haven't myself expressed.

Then how about kindly attributing some opinions to yourself on the point in question? The problem is that you can't seem to come up with ANY coherent expression of which patents you have a problem with, and which you don't. I supposed it was software patents -- you object, but then simply don't give ANY kind of alternative account of what you find objectionable.

Look, just about everybody realizes that some patents are good, useful patents, and others are bad and unproductive -- but how do you make out the difference in a consistent way? You give absolutely no guidance here.

Well, take Phil Katz. His innovation wasn't so much his compression methodology, as his marketing method. He gave away individual licenses and sold licenses to companies or individuals who were using the technology commercially.

This is ONE very, very small example of an individual who was successful on a very, very small basis. How big is his firm compared to Microsoft? This case of peanuts is the best you can do for the kind of compensation innovators might expect in an industry without patent protection? Boy, think of how much investment THAT is going to encourage!

RIM has actually developed a product. The people who sued them have not. The idea that you can patent a collection of ideas and not implement them, waiting for someone else to take the market risk of actually developing a product flies in the face of the Constitutional language quoted above.

The problem is, the people who came up with the patents in the RIM case, and sued RIM, actually DID very early on try to commercialize the technology, but likely they were simply too early. Likely also, they didn't get the investment they needed and the buy in from potential customers precisely because people didn't take their patents seriously enough (unlike in other areas and in other eras).

And what about, say, academics who come up with great new practical ideas, who often have no intention or capability of bringing those to market? Should universities be unable to patent those inventions, and bring in the money to support such innovation (which is often where the great breakthroughs come from), because they don't bring them to market?

The problem is, you've got to give a coherent account of who "deserves" a patent and who doesn't. And every time people try to do that, they run straight into very obvious counterexamples.

In general, when it comes to patents, there's always baby and there's always bathwater. And if you've found a way to throw out one without the other, you certainly haven't managed to communicate it yet.

OK, something here seems to be very important to you but I can't quite see what it is yet.

Let's look at your response point by point...

1) "There is nothing novel about putting data into a packet and putting it onto the network." Maybe not anymore, but do you agree that there once was something novel about this idea?

2) By disparate networks, I mean the internet and the POTS network. You seem to agree with that.

3) "...that doesn't strike me as something one would want to allow to be patented." Who is "one" and on what are they basing this judgement? The patent office prosecutes patents (that's the term for deciding if the patent should be granted) based on the patent law (35 U.S.C) and case law, and various rules and procedures (covering timely response, fees, etc.) For something to be granted a utility patent, it must be statutory, novel, useful, and non-obvious. "Statutory" means that the area of the patent is covered by the statute. There are some things like compliations of material or data that cannot be patented (though some of these can be copyrighted). You may be thinking that "the internet" shouldnt be considered statutory but the patents involved clearly define "processes" and processes are clearly statutory. Novel just means new. Most patents are attacked by saying that the material isn't new. That seemed to be your first argument and it was probably also Vonage's first. The useful requirement is clear here. Non-obviousness is the next place to attack a patent. I'm certain that Vonage produced a string of experts to say that what Verizon was claiming was obvious, at the time of the patent, to anyone with "skill in the art". The jury disagreed. So, if it's statutory, novel, useful and non-obvious, on what basis do you not want to allow a patent?

4) "The internet is a government creation." Back that up with something. Yes, the ARPANET was the predecessor to "internet" and it was funded largely by DARPA to connect universities and military contractors together. It was also very different from what we know today as the internet. So, is your argument that because the government funded the connection of some computers nearly 40 years ago that nothing new about connecting computers has been invented since then?

5) "The POTS network was created under strict government control." By that you mean by a regulated monopoly. The government didn't develop the POTS network. Bell Labs did most of the development. Is your argument that none of the thousands and thousands of Bell Labs patents should have been granted? If so, then again, on what basis? The patent law says nothing about government involvement. In fact, the US government itself was granted over 40,000 patents in the time frame we're discussing. Do you think that because they belong to the US government that you can use them without paying a license fee? Government involvement in something does nothing to make it publicly available.

6) And, concerning the length of the current copyright, it's the law because our representatives made it the law. You obviously think that's too long. That's your opinion and you may be able to make a good argument. However, it has nothing to do with Vonage and Verizon.

It seems I'm arguing trees and you are arguing forest, but I still don't see what's got your dander up so much.

"Note that there is nothing there about 'the public interest', just about the interests of Authors and Inventors."

You're wrong. Note the phrase "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts..."

The intent is to promote discovery, to extend human knowledge, not to promote the interests of authors and inventors. That the latter might be granted certain benefits in order to provide incentives is only a means to an ends, not an end in itself.

"Look, the novelty involved in the Verizon patents has to do with just HOW those packets are being moved around, and to what effect, inside of certain kinds of networks, of which the Internet is just one."

Please specify what _is_ novel about methods described in the VZ patents.

"If they err on the side of granting patents, its simply because that side allows for a (judicial) review that doesn't create even more work for them and it protects the intent of the constituion and US law."

But you've already shown in a previous post that you (willfully or not) don't understand the intent of the Constitution with your silly comment about the public interest not being mentioned.

Protecting potential patent holders isn't a deterence to innovation.

Sure it is. If those patent holders are not actually making products, but are hanging around waiting to sue for infringement when somebody actually does make a successful product, then there is a clear deterrent to innovation.

It's an argument that has merit but it might take a constitutional amendment to make it work that way. The constitution gives an inventor exclusive right over his invention. Maybe it should have said something more. But you have to be very careful here. Inventions are intellectual property. Property rights are a foundation of a free market system. If you have a piece of real estate that you aren't actively using, should your right to it be abrogated so that anyone can use it? I believe that most people would say no. Why should it be different for intellectual property?