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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?"
Stupid people live outside the US too, you insensitive clod!
I mean, the only alternative is that they are lying, greedy scumbags, and I wouldn't want to think that about anybody.
Yeah, pretty much. I don't really care that I can't run the latest gee-whiz app on my phone, and have all the potential security issues and all that crap. I have one app installed: Tetris. I stick with Verizon because I've had very good luck with their coverage over the years. That is, after all, the main point of a cell phone: it can make and receive calls wherever you go.
I'm a T-Mobile customer, but many of my friends and family use Verizon because they have the most complete network and the best customer service.
While I am a geek and like my phone to do tricks, most people just want to talk and text message. That doesn't make them idiots.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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
A Palm or PocketPC. Both offer a free development platform and no cost distribution.
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?