A Great NYT Article and a Welcome Google Move

Posted on July 22, 2007 by Bruce Keener

Randall Stross of The New York Times has written an article entitled When Mobile Phones Aren’t Truly Mobile.

He talks about how the carriers in the US disable certain features on their cellphones and make it difficult (costly) to switch carriers (often you cannot use a phone from one carrier on another network).

That’s why I am glad to see Congress get interested in this subject. Whether they are competent to deal with it in a way that is good for us consumers is debatable. But, I am glad to see the interest.

And, I am glad to see Google calling for “an open standards” network.

What are your thoughts on this? Do the carriers have legitimate reasons for doing what they do or are they just screwing us? Update: I really want to be open-minded on this … for example, I think of the billions the carriers have spent to build an infrastructure for us. Maybe they need the current business models. I do not know. I just know I don’t like the result.

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  • capo

    Ugh. No fan of congressional interference am I. Somehow, when government gets involved “to help out the American consumer”, it’s almost always the consumer who ends up with the short stick. One of my favorite examples is the abortion that is the regulated insurance industry here in the Peoples’ Republic of MA. I agree that the carriers need a spanking when it comes to crippling phone features, but I’d rather see that come from the market. If one of the carriers broke ranks and took a more pro-consumer approach, that would be enough to do it. If enough consumers got vocal enough I think it could happen. These carriers are in it for the money – make it worth their time via the carrot and the stick and they’ll come around.

  • http://www.keenerliving.com/ Bruce Keener

    Good point. Like you, I tend to view the government as capable of screwing up a bowling ball. Would be best if the market would adjust accordingly, but I doubt that any of the carriers have the balls to break from the business model that they have all adopted. Google has the balls, but then it has everything to gain and really nothing to lose but money, and they have plenty of it to gamble with.

  • karembeu

    My main beef with the cell phones is also tied to the fact they are tied to one carrier, but in this case they all seem to do this. We bought my daughter what was billed to us as an MP3 capable phone (a Sony-Ericsson Walkman Phone). “Can it use mp3 ringtones” we asked … “Of course”. Great, Christmas present was sorted. When she got the phone, and started playing with it, turns out that the carriers disable the ability for you to use your own MP3′s, you have to buy them from their MP3 download service!!! What a rip off.

    Luckily, if anyone has a Sony-Ericsson, and I suspect this will work with anyone in this predicament, you can get a piece of Software from Sony-Ericsson called the DRM-Packager. The phone companies make the phones only accept Digitally Rights Managed (DRM) mp3′s – the kind they sell. The DRM packager converts your mp3 to a DRM compatible one – mp3 ring tones work a charm now. MUCH better than the other option, which was to invalidate the warranty and get the phone ‘flashed’ back to factory status.

  • http://www.keenerliving.com/ Bruce Keener

    karembeu,

    It’s good to know there are ways around SOME of these carrier rip-off’s.

    One of the main reasons I have held on getting an iPhone (aside from the cost) is it would force me to a carrier and a device for 2 years. I really dislike the way the carriers have such a lock on us. I understand that they have put billions of dollars into infrastructure, but I still feel ripped off with all of the alternatives available.