All,
fyi,.
Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal (the geek for the non-tech man)
has penned a piece in last Monday's edition (Oct 22) that homes in on
the issue of "open mobile device". Here is the url to the www page at
the WSJ www site for the article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119264941158362317.html
If you are not a subscriber to the WSJ Online but want a copy of the
article, send me an email and I will forward it to you.
Among his comments pertaining to the mobile service providers, the
following are, shall we say, mildly provocative:
> So, it's intolerable that the same country that produced all this
> has trapped its citizens in a backward, stifling system when it
> comes to the next great technology platform, the cellphone
........................
> A shortsighted and often just plain stupid federal government has
> allowed itself to be bullied and fooled by a handful of big
> wireless phone operators for decades now. And the result has been
> a mobile phone system that is the direct opposite of the PC model.
> It severely limits consumer choice, stifles innovation, crushes
> entrepreneurship, and has made the U.S. the laughingstock of the
> mobile-technology world, just as the cellphone is morphing into a
> powerful hand-held computer. It severely limits consumer choice,
> stifles innovation, crushes entrepreneurship, and has made the
> U.S. the laughingstock of the mobile-technology world, just as the
> cellphone is morphing into a powerful hand-held computer.
> *The Soviet Ministry Model*
>
> That's why I refer to the big cellphone carriers as the "Soviet
> ministries." Like the old bureaucracies of communism, they sit
> athwart the market, breaking the link between the producers of
> goods and services and the people who use them.
>
> To some extent, they try to replace the market system, and, like
> the real Soviet ministries, they are a lousy substitute. They
> decide what phones can be used on their networks and what software
> and services can be offered on those phones. They require the
> hardware and software makers to tailor their products to meet the
> carriers' specifications, not just so they work properly on the
> network, but so they promote the carriers' brands and their
> various add-on services.
>
..................................................
> Even so, Apple had to make a deal with the devil to gain the
> freedom to offer an unimpaired product directly to users. It gave
> AT&T exclusive rights to be the iPhone's U.S. network for an
> undisclosed period of years. It has locked and relocked the phone
> to make sure consumers can't override that restriction. This
> arrangement reportedly brings Apple regular fees from AT&T, but
> penalizes people who live in areas with poor AT&T coverage.
........................................
> But this whole cellphone subsidy game is an archaic remnant of the
> days when mobile phones were costly novelties. Today, subsidies
> are a trap for consumers. If subsidies were removed, along with
> the restrictions that flow from them, the market would quickly
> produce cheap phones, just as it has produced cheap, unsubsidized
> versions of every other digital product, from $399 computers to
> $79 iPods.
--
Best Regards,
John Holmblad
Acadia Secure Networks, LLC
* *
<mailto:jholmblad at verizon.net>
