A walled garden, is an analogy used in the telecommunications and media industries when referring to carrier or service provider control over applications and content/media on platforms (such as mobile devices) and restricting convenient access to non-approved applications or content. For example, in telecommunications, the services and applications accessible on any device on a given wireless network were historically tightly controlled by the mobile operators. The mobile operators determined which applications from which developers were available on the devices home portal/home page. This has long been the central issue constraining the telecommunications sector with developers facing huge hurdles in getting their applications onto devices and into the hands of end-users.

More generally, a walled garden refers to a closed or exclusive set of information services provided for users. This is in contrast to providing consumers open access to the applications and content.

Another use of the term refers to quarantining malware-infected computers which exhibit symptoms of botnet activity in a way that the user can still access tools to disinfect the machine, usually with a Web browser.^[1] Yet another example is where an unauthenticated user is given access to a limited environment for the purpose of setting up an account - after they have done so they are allowed out of the walled garden. Some walled gardens are created and maintained by the use of firmware upgrades that wall-out alternatives (eg. Apple iPhone hacks).

Alternatively, a walled garden can be information that has few authors, rich interlinkage, but a paucity of links to and from the rest of the information network.^[2]

[edit] Examples

Some examples of walled gardens:

• NTT DoCoMo's i-mode is a wireless Internet service popular in Japan and elsewhere.
• America Online. AOL started its business with revenue-sharing agreements with certain information providers in their subscriber-only space.
• Full Service Network. A pilot project from Time Warner in the early 1990s, this was an early interactive television system that provided residents of Orlando, Florida, access to online shopping, grocery order and US Mail Service.
• Infovía, a Spain-wide Intranet established by Telefónica in the 1990s. It connected content providers and modem users. Telefonica provided the connection between modems and server over its telephone and data networks.
• Minitel, a pioneering Internet-like service established in France in the 1980s.
• Most WAP services were originally set up as walled gardens.
• Apple didn't allow 3rd-party software development for the 1st generation iPhone released in 2007. Instead, Apple encouraged the development of web applications which are not hosted locally. In 2008, the Apple opened up the iPhone, permitting the installation of 3rd-party applications contingent on Apple's approval.
• Comcast technicians use the term Walled Garden when cable modems are not registered on the Comcast network.
• Optimum Online technicians use the term Walled Garden when cable modems are not registered in the OOL Cablevision network.
• Virgin Media Technicians use the term walled garden to refer to the MAC Addresses of unactivated Cable Modems and set top boxes
• SezamPro BBS in Serbia, which provided selected content (downloading files, messaging board...) only to paid subscribers later began offering full Internet access
• Facebook internal e-mail and chat service.

[edit] References