Apple patent would require carriers to bid for iPhone service

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Nokia's deal with Microsoft could help Nokia resolve its patent fight with Apple. Picking Android instead would have made the situation worse.

Nokia first sued Apple over patent infringement back in 2009, alleging that Apple used Nokia patents on wireless technologies like GSM in the iPhone. Apple countersued and the companies have been fighting it out in court ever since.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-deal-could-help-nokia-in-patent-fight-with-apple-2011-2#comment-4d58c7824bd7c82c0d2d0000#ixzz1DuYB68KH

I haven't read Apple's patent filing but the technology exist and has been in use for 15 or 20 years.

I hope they add a time element as well. Having free markets on the mobile phones is going to be awesome (as long as it is regulated, i.e. no price fixing).

I ask for a time element to handle load. As pressure builds carriers should adjust the cost realtime for newly established connections. Taxi drivers in NY may think twice about gabbing non-stop during rush hour. Users will use less as the price creeps up and load will be balanced and we will get better service and the telco will maximize profits.

It will be a pain to choose each time a connection is made however. Average pricing will need to be introduced so that commitments can be made on a user definable interval. E.g. you can commit for a locked in rate for X amount of hours.

Micro-payments, micro-contracts, it's the future.

So it would be more like other countries where you can just go get the same phone and pick it based on the service provider. Subsidies wouldn't go away, it would be part of the package, buy your phone at full price, pick service "A" and they offer to send you a $400 visa gift card, or something. Like buying tires for a car, at least mine because no I can't just put $80 tires on my car it requires tires that make your wallet hurt to buy, but here's a $70 rebate. Lame.

How much money could you save every month if you paid 25¢ for each iPhone call? What would a GB sell for in open electronic bidding? At peak traffic times, would you buy a call for 50¢?

I like questions like these.

This is exactly what needs to happen. Make the carriers compete for business and watch the race to the bottom begin.

This is essentially a dead giveaway that iPhones in the future will have dual mode chips. Go buy your Qualcomm stock now - the chip's already there in the Verizon phone.

Google already owns this patent. It was filed for on March 19th, 2007, which shows how far ahead Google is thinking here, and was received on September 25, 2008.

Google's Patent reads;

"A method of initiating a telecommunication session for a communication device include submitting to one or more telecommunication carriers a proposal for a telecommunication session, receiving from at least one of the one or more of telecommunication carriers a bid to carry the telecommunications session, and automatically selecting one of the telecommunications carriers from the carriers submitting a bid, and initiating the telecommunication session through the selected telecommunication carrier."

If you would like to read the entire thing it can be found here: http://goo.gl/6Xc5

Should have done this in '07.

This is certainly a big step in the right direction. Let's hope the carriers don't decide to punish the consumers by dropping subsidies due to this. A contract is a contract, and this system would not invalidate such a thing. My guess is that this would mostly be useful for non-contract priced iPhones, and may lead to pricing plans more favorable to those who prefer not to have a subsidy. As it stands right now, there is no advantage whatsoever to buying a phone at full price if you don't have to. You still have to pay the same monthly fees whether you're on contract or not.