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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?"
Seems T-Mobile might is trying to act the evil (/good depends on point of view) sys-admin here.
I guess some people will like that, and it will probably increase security for the phone, third party network applications would include all kinds of malware if I understand it correctly.
Anyhow the problem with "sys-admins" is that if they start bothering the boss because he can not play whatever little game used to play and things like this they don't last for long in the job.
Only problem is that costumers are not employees here, in that sense they are all bosses so of course T-mobile is also going to loose some costumers on this.
I don't think it will be that big a percent of costumers they loose, I personally don't use my phone for anything than talking and those pesky SMS-messages. I don't think the use of WAP is all that widespread yet, so the earlier the better to try and implement a strategy like this, before people begin getting to happy with different third party apps. Perhaps this is going to count in the positive direction for T-mobile in the long run when malware gets more and more widespread on phones, it will make T-mobile different from other network providers which might be a good thing (at least outside Germany where they have the advantage of being the biggest player).
Isn't that like having your ISP tell you what you can run on your computer?
Agreed. I was looking at an industry mag recently, and they printed a poll of cell phone users concerning churn. Basically the questions asked were: Who is your provider, are you considering leaving them in the next few months, and who are you thinking about moving to? Do you know who had the lowest "considering leaving" numbers and the highest "considering moving to" numbers? Verizon. Apparently the average Joes really like their crippled phones and their single-source philosophy.
I was really thinking of going with T-Mobile because the are supposed to have the best customer support. Oh well they are off my list now.
Sprint has been pretty good for me I guess I will probably stay with them.
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...and as of right now, Google Maps still works.
To the parent, there's a reason for Verizon's numbers looking so good...
I hate the crippled nature of verizon phones as much as the next guy, but simply can't look past the fact that my phone is fundamentally there to place and receive calls reliably. No other network I have tried (and I HAVE personally tried all of the other ones) even comes close to Verizon's coverage in the Northeast. And it's not just average joe blow... Easily 95%+ of PhD's and PhD students I know have verizon service...
Perhaps the problem with cell phone networks in general is that they were designed in a closed environment with a need for profit.
Compare cell phone networks to the Internet which was designed mostly by scientists and engineers in an academic, peer reviewed environment with the simple goal of building an efficient network.
If the Internet had been designed phone companies, you'd by your computer from you're ISP and it probably wouldn't work with any other ISP, your ISP bill would list every site you visited that month, overseas sites would be charged at a higher rate, and DNS would probably be sold as a 'white pages' lookup service where they could charge you a penny for every click.
Phone systems are just plain dumb and the people who run them are concerned more with nickel and diming you for every trivial service they can think of than they are in building good network infrastructure.
The FCC is largely to blame for this because they choose to auction off the airways to the highest bidder almost without regard as to how that bidder is going use the medium.
I'm no fan of big government but if we're going to have regulation, then let's do the thing right. Let's require cell phone companies to provide mobile IP addresses and let anybody access their network with the hardware and software of his own choosing. Let the consumer buy *airtime*, nothing more, and let the consumer decide whether he'll use voice, download music, stream video, text message, etc., just like we do with landline companies.
Uhm, that's weird.
Seeing as this morning my office gave me a brand new Blackberry 8700G (Edge network, fast processor) and the first thing I did was install Google Maps.
It installed with Zero problems, and it runs great.
So... what's this about banning third party apps?
This idiotic policy doesn't even work in T-Mobile's interests. Third party software encourages people to use data services, which encourages them to sign up for data plans, which makes T-Mobile money. A more liberal policy on mobile apps also might help the nation's #4 carrier win customers away from control freaks like Verizon, with their strictly limited set of applications.
The third party software they're afraid of is VOIP software that encourages people to use data services as a replacement for their overpriced phone plans.
(Why are there 160 comments above mine with no mention of this?)
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