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T-Mobile Bans Others' Apps On Their Phones
cshamis writes "T-Mobile has recently changed their policies and now tell their customers with appropriate data plans and with Java-Micro-App-capable T-Mobile phones: no third-party network applications. You can, of course, still use their incredibly clunky and crippled built-in WAP browsers, but GoogleMaps and OperaMini are left high and dry. Would anyone care to speculate if this move is likely to retain or repel customers?"
They'll just see the flashy commercials and cheap phones and cheap prices and they'll snap up what they're force-fed without realizing they can do better. Face it. People (in general) are stupid in the USA.
i am a soviet space shuttle
Testing some T-Mobile phones recently, I once again ran into T-Mobile's annoying policy of banning third-party applications from accessing the Internet on their phones. Like so many infringements on our liberties, this started stealthily with a few devices but now covers their entire product line.
Geez... has the author considered calling them up trying to get out of his contract or if he doesn't have one, to simply cancel and move to another carrier?
What's that? T-Mobile's data plan costs less? Sounds to me like one is gettign what one paid for.
Infringements on our liberties. Puh-leez.... Yeah, I rate this right up their with warrantless wiretapping by the government.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
The people who know better can fix their phones (most of you probably unlocked your phone already, or bought it unlocked from a third party). The people who don't, don't care anyway.
What makes you think that won't be the case eventually?
I mean, the only alternative is that they are lying, greedy scumbags, and I wouldn't want to think that about anybody.
Close.... more like: 1)Piss off those customers that make full use of their data plan, so actually end up costing the company which severely oversold their services. 2)Lose them to competitors 3)Have lower costs 4)Profit!
Try these:
http://www.importgsm.com/home.php and http://www.ebay.com/ (search for 'unlocked gsm' or whatever phone you're looking for.)
Buy the cheapest phone available from cingular or T-mobile, then transfer the SIM card to your new unlocked phone. Done.
When will these morons learn. Open platforms would bring them more money in the long run. The PC industry is a prime example. Imagine if the PC were still as proprietary as Apple's Macs used to be. We'd all be living in the Stone Age still.
That said, T-Mobile has never been at the top of anyone list. They have a long history of being stupid and even a name change didn't fool most people with an IQ above a door nail.
SPs (or phone companies) have ligitimate reasons to be concerned about what you run.
No; they have illegitimate reasons. We should have an inalienable right to communicate as we wish, by whatever means we wish. Corporate control of our communication is a guaranteed disaster for everyone but the owners of the corporation.
In particular, the main design goal of the Internet was to end the traditional stranglehold of equipment suppliers and comm companies over communication. Look up the early docs of the ARPAnet; its primary design goal was to make it possible for any piece of equipment from any vendor to communicate with any other piece of equipment from any other vendor. The vendors had always blocked such universal communication, and the US's Dept of Defense was fed up with it. The companies that supply the equipment still put any roadblocks they can in the way of communicating with their competitors' equipment. The phone companies are especially good at this, at least here in the US.
It's true that this is very easy to understand why the companies would be concerned with what we run on our machines. But this concern is not in any reasonable sense legitimate. It's the worst possible way you could run a comm system. We should continue to fight it any way we can.
The only legitimate restrictions should be that malformed packets may be dropped, and "bandwidth hogs" may be throttled to a reasonable speed limit (i.e., whatever speed they've paid for). But note that such restrictions have little if anything to do with what software you or I may be running. Or with the content of our data packets, for that matter.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Technologically less educated people in those case just believe the salesperson and assume it is "not compatible" with certains apps (which it is, but on purpose), but buy it anyway because it looks shiny or has a 3 megapixel camera.
"Words of wisdom: drop that zero and get with the hero" -- Vanilla Ice
funny how low this one scored for insulting macs ;-)
A Palm or PocketPC. Both offer a free development platform and no cost distribution.
Actually, once your contract finishes and you move to a month-to-month plan, the phone is legally yours. If you request it, the carrier is legally obligated to give you an unlock code.
-b.
Seriously, as a current T-Mobile customer, where else am I going to go? I've still got over a year on my 2 year enslavement contract. Even when it's over, where do I go? Cingular? They play nice with the NSA, their customer service is terrible, and their QoS in my area is crap. Verizon? They've been crippling their phones for years. Sprint? Decent data plans, but they're CDMA which means device lock-in by definition. US Cellular? Also CDMA lock-in.
I just want a good GSM carrier in the US that will give me a family plan, a decent data plan, a non-insane lock-in, and half-way decent phones. Or hell, give me decent plans at a good enough price and I'll buy my own damned phones as God intended. Just sell me a SIM card and don't bankrupt me to use it, then stay out of my way. Is that so much to ask?
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
There's quite a few angry T-Mobile users out there over this. Just because T-Mobile hasn't released an "official" word on the matter doesn't mean it hasn't happened. And yes, I do use T-Mobile and this restriction only just recently became active in the central Florida area. And also yes, I know T-Mobile isn't *just* in the US, but we're talking about T-Mobile's service in the US. So, if it's working for you over in Europe, that isn't very relevent, sorry.
Of course, you can easily prove that the story is true yourself. Ask a friend who lives in the areas where this has already taken effect, has T-Mobile and only pays for the $5.99 plan if he/she can still access anything with Opera Mini. I'll bet you $5.99, he/she can't.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Two year contract says RETAIN.
Why are so many athiests so angry and intolerant, especially at the mere mention of religion?
Because you guys fight so hard to encode your shared delusions into the laws that I have to obey? Just a wild guess.
All PocketPCs that I'm aware of have a D-pad. I'm fairly certain all modern PalmOS devices do as well. Smartphones have the same capability to install software as any other PC. They may or may not have additional OTA capability. Otherwise, I don't get what you're getting at. No one is "forced" to do anything. The barrier to entry is high if you want to publish a DS or PSP game, sure, but that's life and gaming systems are luxury items.
This story is only about the US T-mobile network (there is no way the European parts of T-mobile would try this). Slashdot has an international readership, so why not make it clear in the write-up that it is about the US part of T-mobile?