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Bully to Skype, who recently used Tim Wu's stirring (though academic, in both senses of the word) call for Mobile Net Neutrality as support for a petition to the FCC. At issue is that carriers are deliberately blocking their software, and Skype believes that current laws on the books say that's not so. I don't have a lot of confidence this will go anywhere (neither does the linked Ars Technica article), but it's nice to see people lining up.
Whether the carriers are blocking me from updating my WM phone to the latest ROM because they're overcautious, trying to get me to pay for walled-garden-style services I should be able to access for free elsewhere, or hiking SMS prices even as the cost to them is dropping, US carriers are really getting on my nerves lately.
Skype yesterday petitioned the FCC to lay the smack down on wireless phone carriers who "limit subscribers' right to run software communications applications of their choosing" (read: Skype software). Skype wants the agency to more stringently apply the famous 1968 Carterfone decision that allowed consumers to hook any device up to the phone network, so long as it did not harm the network. In Skype's eyes, that means allowing any software or applications to run on any devices that access the network.
