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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
Now it's the time switch to Cingular, and get and iPhone, to continue using my 3rd party applications. oh wait...
1. Piss off your customers
2. Lose them to competitors
3. ?
4. Profit!
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
I mean, the only alternative is that they are lying, greedy scumbags, and I wouldn't want to think that about anybody.
Sure, I'll speculate my foot up T-Mobile's monopolistic ass. How's my speculation now?
...and as of right now, Google Maps still works.
I have Skype on my T-Mobile dash.
It works OK on an EDGE data connection but the call has pretty high latency (feels like a satelite connection). Works like a charm on Wifi though - it's just really confusing having a phone application running on your phone.
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.
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.
This looks a lot like blogspam. The only form of "proof" is just a link to some guy's blog. No official T-Mobile link to the policy. Not even a supposed quote from a customer service rep on the phone. And I just tried and had no problems using OperaMobile and five other third-party apps on my phone (M600i) with T-Mobile service.
The Slashdot posting should be rescinded. It's not accurate, not backed up by any proof, and appears to be just a ploy to get page views.
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
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?
Nope, it appears to be real. Here are some comments from the blog:
I have gotten this confirmed by T-Mobile corporate. I have a tester SIM that has access to everything, and the applications are locked out in the new handsets I have been testing this week. You may have an older handset, before this insidious policy spread. I used to tout T-Mobile for their liberal policies on third party program installation, and I'm very disappointed in the change.
This is a feature phone problem. No carrier, not even Verizon, dares forbid application installation on smartphones such as Blackberries, Windows Mobile phones, or Treos.
The phone that drove me nuts was a Nokia 6133, and I think the point that it's subsidized is bizarre; letting people use Opera Mini would increase, not decrease, T-Mobile's revenues by encouraging people to sign up for data plans. T-Mobile is shooting themselves in the foot by crippling the development of the third party software industry, lowering demand for mobile data.
As several posters have said, they make money on the data plans, not on the phones - so why prohibit applications that would get people to demand data plans?
Subsidies also seem to be a smokescreen here. If you go to a T-Mobile store and buy a Nokia 6133 at full retail, mid-contract, Opera Mini is barred. If you go to a Nokia store and buy the same 6133, inserting the same T-Mobile SIM, you have no problem.
And I need to repeat - this isn't about smartphones. I'm not talking about the SDA, the Blackberry, or whatever. I'm talking about feature phones, which could be dandy computing platforms if the carriers weren't so hostile.
THIS IS TRUE REPORTING! I recently bought a Samsung Trace (T519) and installed google maps. It didn't work, and after about 12 nonstop hours of research I found out that their applications are all digitally signed (VeriSign) and will block out the permissions menu for the network access, thus resulting in the application not being able to connect itself to the internet. The ONLY SOULUTION to this problem is to buy the Firmware Flash cable, download the Flashing software from the phone manufactures website, (and the real tricky part) then find the ORIGINAL firmware to flash to the phone. Of course your going to have to manually set up your T-Zones (webaccess address and port) and a few others, but it will unlock ALL the features of the phone so you will be able to use the phone fully. It's a tricky process, and you need to make sure your not using a T-Mobile "Branded" firmware update. There are many independent phone gurus out there that edit firmware and release it themselves with all features unlocked. If you use a T-Mobile Branded firmware, you'll waste money and time to be exactly where you are right now.
IE... Cingular's D807 and T-Mobile's T809. They are the same phone, same display, memory card slot, ect... However, T-Mobile's phone has limited features compared to Cingular's. The D807 has voice activation and a few other bells and whistles. This isn't the phone's hardware, it's the firmware.
In short, get yourself the syncing software & cables and a fresh Firmware update and you will be able to run any app. Right now Cingular doesn't limit 3rd party software, so if you have to, use one of their Firmwares and then tweak your port settings and you'll be free and clear of the holdups of horrible T-Mobile.
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.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Two year contract says RETAIN.
First of all, yes, some T-Mobile branded phones had their firmware modified by T-Mobile to prevent third party applications from accessing T-Mobile's data network. This has been going on for awhile, and really isn't news.
What T-Mobile has done recently, is a slow regional rollout of port blocking. You see, T-Mobile offers a $5.99 WAP access add-on, and a far more expensive "full internet access" add-on. What is happening is that people who bought unlocked/unbranded phones without T-Mobile's silly restrictions are finding that T-Mobile's $5.99 WAP plan just won't work any more for 3rd party apps which need unrestricted access to the Internet. The restrictions stopped just being in T-Mobile's phones. Now, as Verizon is so fond of saying, "It's the network."
There's quite a few threads about this started over at HowardForums, and it is very real. If you think you're sitting pretty because it hasn't happened to you yet, you've been warned. The only way you're safe is if you're already on one of T-Mobile's "full internet" plans (Blackberry, Sidekick, Phone-as-Modem, etc.).
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.