With due to credit to "Ripley's Believe it or Not!®," so much odd and bizarre is happening in Washington in the "name" of "wireless innovation" and competition that the topic calls for its own collection of: "Believe it or Not!®" oddities.
Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstom, the co-founder of illegal-music-downloading site Kazaa, who had to avoid entering the U.S. because of copyright-infringement liability... is now seeking a U.S. court injunction to shut down eBay's Skype for alleged copyright violations!
Amazon, a leading proponent of net neutrality legislation to ban Internet providers from blocking any content, abruptly removed without permission, thousands of copies of George Orwell's books from Kindle reading devices... just like "Big Brother" would have done in "Nineteen Eighty Four"!
Google, which claimed Apple was not a competitor in an FTC antitrust investigation of Google's CEO serving on Apple's board... complained to the FCC days after Google's CEO resigned Apple's board, that Apple was acting anti-competitively in not approving Google Voice for Apple's app store!
eBay's Skype phone service, which is being sued for violating property rights... petitioned the FCC for Carterfone regulations to allow Skype to use competitors' valuable privately-licensed spectrum for free!
In letters to the FCC from Apple, AT&T and Google about whether Apple was "open" in rejecting the Google Voice app... only Google requested that parts of its letter remain secret from the public!
The No Chokepoints Coalition is asking the FCC to price regulate increasingly obsolete copper special access connections... when competitors are routinely deploying better wireless and fiber backhaul alternatives!
Google, which sells its own branded smartphone, operating system and app store that competes directly with Apple... claims Apple is anti-competitive for not unilaterally surrendering its iconic iphone software design to Google!
The DOJ Antitrust Division is reportedly investigating whether the texting market is anti-competitive... when users send ~billion texts a day for about a penny a piece down from three pennies a piece a few years ago!
Google says that Google Voice, which is a voice IP application, is not technically a "Voice over IP" (VOIP) service that legally must contribute its fair share to fund Universal Service... because that might imply Google could have an obligation to help fund universal broadband service as the biggest user and beneficiary of IP bandwidth!
Rural carriers are claiming handset exclusivity deals are anti-competitive because the highest-end luxury smartphones are not sold directly in rural areas... when in fact very few luxury goods and services are marketed and sold directly in rural areas because it is uneconomic!
Google, with over 95% share of mobile searches per StatCounter, claims Apple's #2 iphone, with ~23% smartphone market share is anticompetitive for not carrying Google Voice!
The U.S. wireless industry, with 4 national competitors, 7 competitive operating systems, 633 handset choices, thousands of mobile application choices, and with users who enjoy the most usage and the second lowest average prices in the world... is being investigated by the FCC and DOJ for not being competitive!
Strange but true.
"Believe it or Not!®"
