Senators To Examine Exclusive Handset Deals

narramissic writes "Based on a request that a group of rural operators sent asking the FCC to examine the practice of handset exclusivity, four members of the Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet sent a letter to the FCC expressing their concern. Small operators, like U.S. Cellular argue (PDF) that 'exclusive handset contracts divide wireless customers into haves and have nots.' But nationwide operators, including Verizon, maintain (PDF) that 'in the absence of exclusivity agreements, wireless carriers would have less incentive to develop and promote innovative handsets.' The Commerce Committee expects to hold a hearing on the issue tomorrow."

Comments

Re:"Would have incentive to..."

[Anonymous Coward]

In my view, you are the childish idiot here.

I am getting rather tired of the repeated cries for "Sharing! LOVE! Freedom! SHARE! COPYLEFT! GREED!", which is a mixture of ignorance and RMS' pseudo-communist hatred against proprietary software. Maybe you would rather be the one to shut the hell up instead?

Face it - those who cry and stamp their feet like crybabies against copyright have NEVER been able to propose any alternative model for how to do things - at least, with any kind of modelling for how industry, the creative and the technological sector would pan out. Are we talking complete global IP-burning? Are we talking free sharing of all media? In that case any and all designers would be out of jobs - why would someone pay twice as much for a product funded experimentally at high cost and using a horde of designers, just to get the product THIS WEEK, rather than simply wait a month and get it from China? If there is no free IP, what would hinder simply the development of private security forces and an explosion in industrial espionage, as companies seek to replicate IP protection through secrecy routines? You would see the rapid death of 90% of companies relying on experimental development, and anything "new" would be produced by someone whose hardware lockdown routines makes the PS3 look like a glass jar.

The idiocy of YOUR crowd is evident from the fact that if things don't happen the way you propose, and creative industries all die because of browser plugins that allow the instant transparent peer-to-peer downloading of any media name clicked on, you would simply say, "Tough luck! Sorry about that! My bad!". There's no going back, so do you really want people to put their livelihoods at stake for YOUR rants and fantasies?

If you're able to ridicule others by paraphrasing them, and saying how tired you are - then you should really learn to hear STFU to your face as well. Good riddance to yourself, get lost, idiot.

Re:Ugh!

[yoshi_mon]

I have had fairly smart phones (bluetooth, data etc) from T-Mobile, Edge Wireless, and AT&T. Each one has had all features enabled. Furthermore, except for my RAZR V3i from Edge, each phone was free. Right now I have an HTC Fuze which was free. The GPS works great with Garmin (which I added) and even the AGPS functionality works great.

The thing is, going to hit up the car analogy here, is that we should not have to deal with all the BS that the carriers do. It is as if I went online and found that the car I really wanted to buy was a Toyota Prius. But then when I went to DealershipX I found out that the AC was going to be disabled when I bought it. DealershipY of course sells the Prius' with AC but if I then want to get my service from them I'm going to have to drive 100m every time.

A crude example but you can see my point I'm sure. The fact is that from nearly start to finish getting anything but a basic cell phone and using it to talk only is an awful process. Full of all sorts of convoluted issues designed to confuse the buyer such that they just give up on trying to actually understand it all and just sign on the dotted line.

My thing is this when dealing in our capitalistic society: When looking at the profit that someone is going to make off me I don't mind helping put their kids though college. I do however draw the line at buying them a boat at the same time. Sell me what I want at a fair price and it's all good. Currently however walking into a cell phone store makes me feel like I'm walking up to a carnie booth with that 'Mark' glowing ink on my forehead.