Comment by jMyles
2 days ago
At the risk of sounding knee-jerk libertarian (though there are worse ways to sound), it seems to me that top-down, big bloc regulation is a non-trivial piece of what has gotten into this mess.
The entrenchment via regulatory capture at the baseband level, with enormous state interplay with TSMC and Qualcomm (both economic and regulatory, both publicly known and classified), makes it impossible for a seriously independent actor to enter the market, exception _maybe_ an ubercapitalist like Musk or something.
I'm much more interested to see what happens when we achieve sufficient peace that industrial complexes are no longer the primary pillar of support for chip engineering and fabrication. I suspect that this will unlock the open development, up to the kernel and beyond, that we all hope for.
What would baseband usage look like in a deregulated world?
I’m skeptical, but the question is honest. Without the (quite corrupt) allotment of frequencies and broadcast radio tech by the FCC and government, I’m having trouble envisioning a future that doesn’t end up back at the bcm/qcm/etc. near-monopoly … just via market collusion rather than state orchestration. Is there a better future there that I’m missing?
You can't blame the EU for Google pulling developer support for devices or holding back security patches.
There are pros and cons to "big bloc regulation". You can go and start a phone company since so many things are standarised but the main constraint will be who you source a modem from and the lack of choice will be because of patents (see Apple vs Qualcomm).
Aren't there are a few modem vendors? MediaTek, Intel, and a bunch of Chinese players?
No? Especially since you mentioned Intel, who sold their modem business to Apple.
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