The Government has offered Australia's three mobile operators, and vividwireless, renewal of their existing spectrum allocated on 15 year licences in the late 90s and early 2000s at set prices, while the Government expects to rake in $3 billion.
Given the reported simplicity of the scheme, it's likely that accessory manufacturers will be able to reverse engineer the chip. And if one company can, they could choose to sell the device to its peers in competition with Apple.
It's possible that Apple has applied for patent protection (as it did with the remote connector on some early iPod models), but a brief preliminary search of the USPTO database failed to turn up anything relevant. That's far from conclusive, so don't bet your company on it.
Manufacturers that take part in the 'Made for iPod' program apparently have access to the 'official' chip.
But the heart of the matter is that there is no authentication involved. It's simply a chip that implements the control functions. If they're not on the shuffle itself, they have to be on the earphones - there's nowhere else for them.
Even if it turns out that Apple has secured patent protection for the scheme, calling the device an 'authentication' chip is technically incorrect and emotionally loaded.
David Bass
| ComOps, a leading Australian provider of business software products and services, has won a competitive tender to deploy its Salvus safety, r…
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