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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."
'in the absence of exclusivity agreements, wireless carriers would have less incentive to develop and promote innovative handsets.'
I wasn't aware that the carriers were in the business of manufacturing...
Um... yeah.. carriers would never disable features on cellphones, now would they?
It seems to me that in the absence of exclusivity agreements the carriers would have greater incentive to introduce new features because they wouldn't be allowed to dictate terms to handset manufacturers in order to maintain their current level of mediocre offerings.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
The Senators in question are probably trolling for campaign contributions.
Name one innovative handset developed by carriers such as Sprint, AT&T, et all.
Nokia, RIM, Apple and (previously) Motorola have developed all the 'innovative handsets'.
What'd sprint give us?
Rebranded, OEM, disposable turds
On a technical level American carriers care only that the phones pass GCF. If they want to bring innovation into this, they are going to have to argue that somehow the business model itself is innovative, but I don't think that is what they are saying.
What is important in exclusivity is that users don't have a choice of carriers if they want to buy a specific phone. If you want the iPhone, you're stuck with AT&T, for example. But that doesn't bring any innovation to the phones themselves.
Unlocking the phones isn't any better, though, technologically speaking. With a choice of carriers, you end up with a lot of choice, but the phones on the market are still the same old dreck. The reason for this is because the innovation must happen at the phone maker level. To support this, operating system vendors need to also be innovative. And to make sure that innovative operating systems can run, advanced chips are necessary.
But none of that involves the carriers. Carriers are merely the pipes: A necessary component, but a wholly replaceable part. From a technical innovation standpoint, these guys are the road system. Cars are what we consider innovative, roads are only considered when they suck. And frankly, American cellular carriers suck.
"Without longer than a century copyright, I would have no incentive to develop anything useful." "Without being able to patent walking using both feet, I wouldn't have incentive to make anything useful." "Without being able to grant myself a monopoly on something, I would have no incentive to create anything useful." "Without the Shoot Anyone Using Anything But My Stuff Act, I would have no incentive to develop anything useful."
I am getting quite tired of seeing that, and we should really quit listening. If you don't want to, then by all means, don't, and feel free to fade away. In the meantime, those who still have plenty of incentive to do so (by finding creative ways to make money off of it, out of simply enjoying it, out of their own need for a tool to do something or a wish to create something for their own enjoyment, what have you), will do so.
I'm getting less and less tolerant of this temper tantrum. And that's really all it is-"I don't WANNA share!!!!! I thought of it FIRST!!!!" If the dinosaurs mean it, then by all means, their time has come and we should let them go. Good riddance to them, something better suited to modern times will take their place. On the other hand, they do tend to like paying themselves those large bonuses, so I would wager they'll start getting really creative in the absence of these artificial restrictions enabling them to be lazy and rest on their laurels.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Since when does Verizon or any other carrier have anything to do with the development of a phone? They just take whatever you can get from HTC/Motorola/Samsung, throw a logo on it, change the name to something stupid, and pick 5 random features to cripple for no apparent reason. As for promotion, while I guess that charging customers 200% more for the phone than it's actually worth unless they sign a 2 year contract (if you let them but it unlocked at all) is technically "promotion", I don't think that is really in the spirit of the true definition.
What a bunch of tools.
Exactly.
The carriers are always caught flat footed and demanding handset manufacturers disable features in their phones because the carriers don't know how to follow the standards.
I'm not aware of a single carrier that EVER came up with a handset design, innovative, or otherwise, unless you consider demanding lobotomies before letting them on the network.
Yes, I'm talking about you Verizon, and you too ATT.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
.. someone stood up to this nonsensical practice. For nearly 20 years we've had GSM openness in Europe and this sort of exclusive nonsense is making its way across the water in the form of the iPhone. For a while I have been thinking this is an attempt by the mobile phone operators to usher in a new wave of proprietary phones.
Heavy integration with online services, firmware branding and exclusive deals are nothing but bad news for us. I havn't bought a SIM-locked phone since 2001 and I hope to never have to buy one again. The openness of GSM is a great thing but people take it for granted here.
A lot of people buy locked phones because they are cheaper, but they shouldn't be cheaper. This was acceptable 10 years ago when not everybody had a phone but now there are too many phones. Producing more phones only generates more e-waste. There should be more countries like Belgium around where this shit with subsidising phones doesn't fly. At least then my collection of unlocked Nokias will be worth more than 20 cents
Exclusive handset deals are nothing more than a way of making people put up with a more expensive / lower quality network they wouldn't normally put up with.
You're not. If your home or work is in a listed low coverage area, they'll let you out of your contract with no ETF, no arguments - all I got was a "We hope you'll consider us again when we've got better coverage in your area" (and I happily would... the -only- problem I have ever had with Tmo was coverage.
That's not at all what they're complaining about. They're complaining about the fact that they couldn't make iPhones and other sought after phones available to their customers. Basically they're stepping in for the consumer in this instance, which is common for smaller competitors to do, to try and get a piece of the action. Which is necessary for a competitive market. Not that an individual phone which is paid for largely or entirely by subsidy be allowed to break the contract with no consequence. Just allow for any company that wishes to offer the subsidy the opportunity to do so.
In other words, exclusivity deals breed ripoffs. Yeah, that's one form of competition, but it doesn't really seem like "innovation" to me when the release of one product that everyone wants causes every manufacturer to try to make an exact copy with a different exclusivity deal. If everyone carried the iPhone, these companies would be trying to differentiate themselves by coming up with the next big thing, not making copies of the last big thing.
I'm not from this industry, but I don't believe wireless providers develop handsets. Handset manufacturers (e.g. LG, Samsung, Motorola, etc.) do.
10 Bits= $.25
100 Bits= $.50
110 Bits= $.75
1000 Bits= 1 byte
IIRC they give you 30 days from your contract start date to change your mind.
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.
It should be deals (including the way spectrum auctions are carried out and regulated) that result in carriers *cough*Verizon*cough* getting a monopoly (or near monopoly) in certain areas just because they are the only carrier with coverage. (like the deals various carriers have made to get exclusives in subway systems, high-rises and other places where extra equipment is needed to give sufficient coverage)
Yeah, AT&T has done the same thing. I got an SE Z750 from AT not only did the AT&T branded OS look like shit for the 5 minutes I used it (some crappy orange AT&T color scheme), but AT&T's firmware disables the included GPS. In this case I think it's because they want to sell higher-end phones to people who want GPS (I payed $10 for this phone after a $60 rebate). Anyway, a quit trip to DaVinci team and less than $15, and I had restored an unbranded firmware that enabled GPS functionality.
It's really sad that not only do carriers take decent phones and make them worse, but then you end up having to pay to get back features that the phone originally had. Kind of like when you could pay Dell not to install all their crapware on new computers (is that still around?).
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
There is competition amongst the operators to develop the best handsets.. Without the iphone, would we have seen the Storm, Omnia or others?
Each device has it's good and bad points. The fact is that Cellular companies are only in charge of part of their network at best, and the and the handset shouldn't really be the determining factor of choosing an Provider At&T readily admits their network wasn't optimal for the number of users with the Iphone and they are now trying to remedy that so each user has a better experience. Only time will give a better indication
Exclusive handsets aren't necessarily a bad thing. It is just one factor that should be measured..
There really isn't enough spectrum to have true competition. The cost of the RF spectrum and cell site acquisition are the major factors for an operator.
The suddenoutbreakofcommonsense is very interesting, but I'm not sure which way:
1. The handset sweetheart deals are creating haves and have nots and should stop.
2. Without the handset manufacturers having to bend over backwards to please the carriers, there might have been fewer, lower-cost, higher-quality handsets available.
When the handset makers can tell the carriers to take it or leave it, and when those handsets have features dictated by the consumers instead of the carriers (abysmal here in the US), and market competition irrespective of long-term contracts hits the handset pricing, then not only would that tag truly apply, but so would whatabreathoffreshairfinally.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
US Cellular appears to be a CDMA network from my spot-checks, so they couldn't use a stock IPhone on their network if they wanted.
That's part of the battle right now - even US GSM phones from T-Mobile vs ATT aren't 3G-compatible, nor compatible with CDMA networks (Verizon, Sprint, US Cellular).
Doug
Then what do Motorola, LG, Samsung, RIM, Apple, Palm, Sony/Ericcson, Nokia, and all the other companies who aren't carriers but whose logos still appear on the handsets/batteries/chargers, contribute to the cell phone market?
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.'
Why are wireless carriers involved in the development and promotion of innovative handsets? Isn't the free market supposed to motivate handset developers to develop and promote innovative handsets?
Or do the wireless carriers not believe in the free market? I, for one, think the free market is a pretty good thing. You know, when it genuinely lets the purse-holder freely decide.
Aren't these the same corporations who cry "free market" every time the government tries to regulate them?
Perhaps, and I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist here, but just maybe; the wireless carriers actually are not objective supporters of the free market? Maybe what they want is not the free market, but laissez-faire capitalism. But then must we not ask, without a free market, how can laissez faire capitalism seek efficiency?
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
wireless carriers would have less incentive to develop and promote innovative handsets
I'll buy "promote" but when was the last time a wireless carrier ever "developed" a handset? And no, I don't count taking a good handset someone else made and crippling all of its features with a shitty firmware overwrite that turns the phone to crap.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
It made a great deal of sense to select one or two devices, get them to agree to an exclusive contract, which would include us paying to promote their devices, and get the product to market. I don't see this situation being any different. It helped both us as a network provider, and them as a device provider. I don't see this as a conspiracy to restrict trade, just common business sense.
And, on an unrelated note, could anyone tell me why the HTML "li" code now works erratically? Is there another code that just gives me a simple new paragraph?
What was once true, is no longer so
Why on earth would any reasonable person expect a letter to the FCC to accomplish anything? I've tried to contact the FCC before and they just respond with the same canned response every time, telling me they cannot do anything. Might as well send a letter to Santa.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
You can set your formatting style to plain text and just hit enter.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
"I used to work for a cellular carrier in Canada." ;)
.
.
Congratulations on escaping from your evil overlords. If it wasn't for the "used to" part, I'd have suggested you'd be better typing that as Anonymous Coward
if you aren't creating a list.
It seems, when given the option, that most big business will try to strangle the hand that feeds them. Cheap and reliable communication has been a keystone of American business, both domestic and foreign and here we are trying to catch up because business is too damn greedy/short-sighted for their own good. Their argument has nothing to do with innovation. It has everything to do with making money by not rolling out a more expansive, more reliable network. Who suffers? America does and it's not like they can just pick up their network and plop it down somewhere else.
Instead of debating it in Senate (which exists solely for debates), why put it to Commerce Committee and why now?
The answer can b e got here. It says a former tech exec has joi ned the committee.
Which means he is trying to pre-empt any legislation by the Congress by putting it for consideration in the committee.
Which effectively kills any legislation and also protects the interests of telecoms.
Sneaky, disgusting and probably illegal.
But then the senate has a record of disgust. So nothing new here.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Maybe the cellular carrier in Canada could have used some of its profits from charging some of the highest prices in the western world [article is a bit dated, but still accurate] for wireless services to hire adequate engineering resources to help their networks function with new technology and allow interoperability. Instead of investing in resources to improve network speed and capacity, they abuse monopoly power to amass profits and engage in rent-seeking behaviour. I'm not blaming you personally, of course. But saying that a wireless company with significant government-granted monopoly power, grants, and tax cuts is locking in devices because making things work is too hard is a little disingenuous.
You are correct, USCC is running on CDMA rather than GSM. It doesn't mean that a version of the iPhone with a different radio couldn't be developed.
I happen to live in an area serviced by the big 4 carriers as well as USCC and thought long and hard about choosing a smart phone from USCC or an iPhone from AT&T. I ended up with an HTC Touch Pro simply because I was unwilling to suffer with AT&T's poor coverage in NE Wisconsin. AT&T has no reason to deliver 3G due to fact that it isn't cost effective to deploy it in the area I live in, simply due to lack of population. To be fair, USCC still only supports CDMA 1x in my part of Wisconsin, but they at least have some plan to deploy EVDO, which is significantly faster than CDMA 1x.
I have to agree with the RCA for the most part. I think that carriers should not have exclusivity with regard to mobile devices; at least not of multi-year proportions. Carriers should not differentiate themselves by what handsets they offer, but rather the quality and performance of the service they provide. If we were to rate carriers by the this standard, perhaps they would improve coverage areas as well as customer service related issues. I'm certain that a fair amount of readers would have some good stories to tell about poor coverage and poor customer service from their wireless carriers.
And, on an unrelated note, could anyone tell me why the HTML "li" code now works erratically? Is there another code that just gives me a simple new paragraph?
On a similarly unrelated note, can anyone tell me why throwing candles lit by matches at my Stouffer's frozen meal isn't warming it up? Is there a proper industry standard for doing something simple that I have completely missed out on?
But you underestimate the challenges we faced after introduction (this was about 20 years ago). The collective genius of marketing predicted the number of subscribers as "X"; when it turned out to be "3X", every other division of the company was scrambling. There weren't enough people in customer service to handle all the complaints, so we got a reputation for lousy service. There weren't enough cell sites so the engineers were working 60 hours to provision and tune them. The billing system was from Cincinnati Bell, and they didn't give us source code. I was the technical liason from Marketing to these other departments. When the upper crust of Marketing decided we needed to add a new billing plan, they would send me down with the admonition "They'll try to give you some excuse about not having source code; it's just their way of stalling". So even though we were getting lots of customers, our costs with all the overtime, rush fees, etc., were very high. We had to rebate a lot of calls because they dropped part way through. And the sales people were allowed to give out "non revenue" lines to clients (read "friends"); when they finally audited that, they were astonished to find that we had given out over 20,000 non-rev lines in Ontario alone - that was about 1 in 8, IIRC. In that environment, trying to adapt to new equipment was, shall we say, problematic. I recall one occasion when I was trying to find the status of the integration of voice mail/paging system, the engineer in charge saw me in the switch room and literally ran away.
Still, it was a tremendous education in how not to run a business. I left after 18 months much wiser.
What was once true, is no longer so
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.'
You've got to hand it to Verizon for trying to confuse the congressmen with idiot logic. Are wireless carriers really developing innovative handsets? (or handsets at all)
I am trying to think of more than 3 revolutionary handset lines besides the iPhones, the Blackberries and Nokias. I guess we can throw in Motorola for their early efforts and Sony Ericsson for cute design too. But where are the carriers?
I think Verizon is really pissing their pants because they are thinking "in the absence of exclusivity agreements, wireless carriers will have a harder time locking down good phones with carrier-specific crappy software."
In theory, non-exclusive phones would also reduce the number of overall phones brought to market and increase the quality since the developers would be competing against a larger market.
Really, with non-exclusive handsets, both consumers and cell phone companies win. Large carriers will be the only ones losing... they will have to choose between market share, profit, and handset control. Of course, who are we kidding, nothing is going to change because they probably own half of the senate.
Very droll. The issue is I used to use "li" all the time, and it worked perfectly fine. Now, sometimes it gives you one line, sometimes none, and sometimes two. See my sig for my reaction.
What was once true, is no longer so
So Apple can't choose which market to develop for? For example if they decided not to make a CDMA phone, would you rather the government force them to?
I think locking a phone out of contract should be illegal. But locking a phone to a carrier while in contract is fine with me. They are subsidizing my phone, so they should have rights to keep me using it on their service only until I "pay it off".
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have an G1 with AT&T. But I think it's the phone manufactures right to make exclusive agreements with carriers as long as I can take the phone to any network compatible provider after my contract has been for-filled.
I do think the line "wireless carriers would have less incentive to develop and promote innovative handsets" is a bunch of bullshit though. I can't see AT&T putting a huge budget into developing phones. I would suspect LG, apple, etc are using their own R&D money then recouping it with exclusive contracts.
There are other ways to compete besides phones. You could stop charing for text messaging, stop the per minute billing, start providing features that all US carriers are currently hating on (tethering?). Hell you could of jumped on the open source bandwagon and backed something like open moko.
It seems to me they don't want to compete, they want to bitch and make the competition less competitive.
And, on an unrelated note, could anyone tell me why the HTML "li" code now works erratically? Is there another code that just gives me a simple new paragraph?
"BR""BR" (replace "'s with angle brackets)
As for your statement about when data was added to the wireless networks. I can understand that happening in the beginning. In the beginning there were no data standards. There were just a bunch of different companies with different handsets which sent data all in different ways. But, now there are these things called standards. Like GSM, GPRS, HSDPA, CDMA, 2G, 3G, EDGE, 3.5G, 1xRTT, and EV-DO. And many phones support multiple standards or can be configured to support a specific standard. All that should matter now is what standard your cellular network supports and that is it. ANY phone that happens to support that standard should be allowed to be used. It doesn't matter if you are AT&T, Verizon, or Joe's Fancy Wireless... If they all happen to use 3G, then any phone that supports 3G should be allowed to be purchased and used on that carrier, because they are just that, a carrier. They are selling access to a network service. They are not and should not be the gatekeepers of what device is allowed on that network as long as it follows the communications standard (just like the internet providers, and cable TV networks, they can not say that only Comcast Cable users can purchase the 70" Sony XRB8 OLED LCD TV, and if you want to use that TV to watch DirectTV satellite, well FU).
The cellular companies are a carrier and service provider who provides a wireless access for phone and data. They should be held to the same requirements as other providers of services in which the hardware that connects to the service is freely usable by anyone on any provider that has a network which supports the same standards that the hardware supports.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
I wouldn't think it would be the carrier's responsibility to try to support all types of phones. They could just implement a particular version of a standard, let their customers know what phones support that version, and then work toward adopting the next version of that standard depending on customer feedback and what they're competitors are doing.
If it weren't for the exclusive agreement, the iPhone could work on any GSM network in the US and the carriers would compete based on what network related features. So AT&T could tout visual voicemail as a competitive edge and T-mobile could use some other feature (tethering?, cheaper plans, video on demand to subscribers, whatever). When T-Mobile added visual voicemail, they could include it as yet another feature offered. Let the carriers focus on network related stuff, the phone manufactures worry about their hardware, and the various standards committees work out common details.
BTW, what's wrong with the regular old paragraph tag?
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
...Trying to adapt our network to support all the devices was quite impossible...
It is rather late in the game, but I think government should have done for the cell phone industry what they did for me broadcast industry and that is simply a standardized the technology for a single compatible system. The government should simply say to the wireless telephone industry that they must have a compatible system that all handsets and networks can use. After all, I do not have to have a special television receiver for the different stations do I? If people cannot agree upon standards, they must be imposed on them. In the long run everybody is better off that way. Also, why do phones have to be subsidized while radio and television never worked that way?
All theory is gray
... It doesn't mean that a version of the iPhone with a different radio couldn't be developed....
Why should handset manufacturers be required to develop different handsets for different networks? Radio and television manufacturers were never required to do this. Government simply picked a standard and imposed it on everybody. It is a bit late to do that now but maybe it should be done anyway.
All theory is gray
I did work a few years ago for an unnamed handset maker and I can tell you that standards aren't always followed to the letter.
There was at least one incident where we had to fix something in our bit of the handset software because it wouldnt work correctly with the in-car cellphone connect of a certain model of luxury car. So just because its supposedly a "standard" doesn't mean there wont be incompatibilities in some places or certain edge cases.
"It seems to me they don't want to compete, they want to bitch and make the competition less competitive."
Thank you for reminding me of the single biggest flaw in capitalistic competition theory... given the choice, no capitalist would ever compete, and given actual circumstances that happens more often than we might like to think.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
Knowing the government, they would either pick a crap standard (or one with a crap implementation) *cough*CDMA*cough* or they would try to invent something new and get it wrong. Even if they did the right thing and picked GSM and UMTS as the standards, what frequencies should they pick? 1900? 1700? 850? 700? (all 4 are currently in use for UMTS in the USA or will be in the future). Or would they just mandate multi-band UMTS phones (which makes the phones a lot bigger and more expensive)
I used to work for a cellular carrier in Canada. When wireless data was introduced, there were quite significant technical differences between the devices. Trying to adapt our network to support all the devices was quite impossible - it would have cost way too much, sucked up engineering resources we needed elsewhere, and because of the testing needed to ensure there were no incompatibilities, delayed product introduction, giving our competitors an advantage.
It made a great deal of sense to select one or two devices, get them to agree to an exclusive contract, which would include us paying to promote their devices, and get the product to market. I don't see this situation being any different. It helped both us as a network provider, and them as a device provider. I don't see this as a conspiracy to restrict trade, just common business sense.
I have no idea how long ago you've worked there, but I haven't seen people having hardware compatibility problems with, say, GPRS, in the last several years. So, no, it's not a good excuse these days. Especially when very few devices are actually carrier-exclusive - all the rest somehow manage to work just fine on all networks...
They shouldn't be locking your phone whilst on contract. Since you are on contract, you are still paying them back through your monthly fees regardless of which carrier you are using your phone on.
Only time they need to lock a phone is when its subsidized but not on a contract (e.g. discounted prepaid phones).
Do you honestly feel ~2 years of grief and frustration is worth less than $200? Then by all means, don't cancel, stand up for your principles.
More data, damnit!
I love it when people trot out the "break the phone subsidy contract" bit, to try an look smart, and then apply it incorrectly.
First, so long as I don't cancel my contract, I don't see why my original provider has any interest in whether or not I can also use that phone on a second carrier, or sell it to a third party, which is all locking prevents. Even if at some point in the future I decided to drop the original carrier, I'd still have to pay a cancelation fee, so they'd be out none of their precious subsidy no matter what I did with the phone in the mean time.
Second, no one lets you start service without a 12-24 month contract that includes a cancelation fee EVEN IF YOU BRING YOUR OWN EQUIPMENT. There's no phone subsidy involved when I bring my own phone, but I've yet to find post-paid voice + data service from a national provider who did not require a year+ contract with a cancelation penalty. What exactly is the purpose of the cancelation fee in those circumstances -- am I supposed to believe they suffer hundreds of dollars in administrative costs just to activate a single line of service?
T-mobile could just send your voicemail as a frigging email attachment or multi-media text message -- those work just like "visual voicemail", and on a whole slew of phones to boot. Heck, they could probably even ding you for the text message deliveru and make an extra $0.10/message in the process.
I wonder if the problem wasn't in your network? Here in Indonesia I use a Nokia on one network, I have friends with other makes and models of phones (but all GSM) on other networks, plus 3G dongles, and they all just work for data. Fine. Out of the box -- the SIM even configures all the data parameters. The problem isn't in the network -- it was in your network.
The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures (Junius)
last i checked, it wasn't the wireless carriers that "develop and promote" said handsets.. it's the same handset vendors that do quite well in other markets where they're not contractually obligated to only sell to company X.
The whole cell phone market and carriers is overall pretty twisted and generally nasty. I kept myself willfully ignorant of most of it until recently. (I was happy in my ignorance too...sigh.) But my old Palm IIIc was not going to live forever so I thought it was time to finally update my knowledge on ultra-mobile computing.
What I found out right away was that what I really wanted was a Nokia n810 but that it was not going to be a phone. Nor was it going to be online unless I was tethered or on Wifi. Not a huge deal given that those were the only real major downsides. And to make a long story short I did finally end up with a n810 which I love. My biggest complaint is that it is a little big & heavy but overall I'm very pleased.
But at a point the new n810's were out of stock everywhere. I looked around for a used one but it was slow going so I thought I should look at a smartphone option vs my old setup, dumbphone & PDA. Both setups have their pros and cons and at some point I might go smartphone & tablet (I guess calling the Nokia devices PDAs felt passe.) but I digress.
Finally getting to my point here when I looked at the options with smartphones I got pretty annoyed pretty quick. The fact that they mask the price of the devices with rebates and contract requirements is not good. The fact that not only are not all of the devices available on all the carriers but that each carrier can have their own set of rules on how the devices will function is annoying. Nevermind that even if you do have a device that can be used by multiple carriers most if not all of them won't turn it on unless it has their tag on it.
None the less I eventually found a smartphone that I thought I could live with and set about trying to negotiate upgrading my old phone to that with my carrier. I felt like I had walked into the sleezyest of used car dealerships with 'Mark' written on my forehead in glowing ink. The idea that I did not want to upgrade to a plan that was 2 to 3 times what I was currently paying for the privilege of using this phone resulted in political levels of feigned outrage.
In fact when I would be asked about what I was looking for and outline my needs the idea that I don't spend half my day texting seemed downright shocking to these reps. The fact that what I really wanted was a block on all texting on my account had them looking for wooden stakes. For kicks I went to an AT&T rep at one point and worked in the term 'jailbreaking' as often as I could into our conversation. To his credit he did what he could to sell me but developed an unhealthy tick in his left eye.
To me the whole cell carrier/phone business needs a lot of work because from top to bottom it's a mess right now. Hopefully that a light is being shown on some of their nonsense will clean some of it up.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
After all, it seems like they're truly on the losing end of the whole "exlusive handset" thing. In fact, when I hear people decrying iphone on AT&T, Verizon is one of the names I hear most frequently as the network they'd much rather have it on. I mean sure, Verizon had some decent phones -- but everyone these days wants a smart phone and verizon has almost nothing to offer in that department aside from a few "meh" Blackberries (which aren't all that exclusive). Sprint has the Instinct and Pre, T-Mobile has the G1, and AT&T, of course, has the Iphone. Verizon has . . . Nada for smart phones?
I don't know if this is just Verizon truly standing on principle (which seems unlikely), or simply the old guard of Verizon executives not realizing that the tide of exclusivity has actually turned against them in the last year or so and that they really no longer benefit from the idea of handset exclusivity since their rivals currently benefit far more it. Perhaps they're assuming that manufacturers of GSM devices wouldn't necessarily make CDMA versions if there was no exclusivity contracts. I can sorta see how their position might make financial sense if they only gained access to the Palm Pre and not the iphone due to lack of CDMA iphone.
I've got to imagine that if every Phone was available on every network tomorrow, Verizon would be in far stronger market position by being able to offer the Iphone than they would be by losing exclusivity on whatever junk they currently have. Their plans are cheaper, and their 3g coverage is superior to AT&T's (at least from my experience). I just can't imagine AT&T could compete with other providers for iphone contracts on a level playing field. Worse still, the cost of exclusivity just gets dumped on the customer. Iphone plans are about 20 bucks more per month than a similar plan for any other phone would run you . . .
If the carrier doesn't market the phone then the manufacture will
There is no point manufacturing something and marketing it (both *hugely* expensive operations) if the carriers are not going to provide it to customers, and customers can't switch to competing carriers who will.
US handsets are in general a year or two behind the handsets available in the rest of the world largely because of this. The US mobile comms market is a nice little walled garden for favoured (by the carriers) manufacturers. Take a look at the handsets which Verizon actually provides vs what the *same* manufacturer provides to the rest of the world.
Nokia (largest phone manufacturer in the world) for example:
Verizon:
Nokia 7205 (silver keypad)
Nokia 7205 (pink keypad) just LOOK at that innovation...
Nokia 6205
Nokia 2605 Mirage
All (wow, a whole, 3 of them) of these are ancient.
And take a look at the handsets available from Nokia:
http://shop.nokia.co.uk/nokia-uk/searchresults.aspx?page=1&culture=en-GB&search_id=47&chka=0&chkp=1&pagesize=9999&sortorder=desc
124 produced and available (in the UK) vs 3 from a carrier.
The rest of the world, the carriers want the latest phones and network services because if they don't provide it, someone else will. The US, far less incentive, you take what you're given. I like the spin that monopoly promotes innovation though.
I doubt it would hurt the manufacture at all.
Not the manufacturer. You are the one getting the bad deal.
Deleted
I'm not sure what the problem was. Cell networks are built on standards. If you obey the standard, there should be no reason any other standards-respecting equipment won't talk.
Maybe your company just tried to cut corners/costs and built the network half-assed?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1271263&cid=28359029
If your hardware doesn't make it easy, you're doing it wrong.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I get a similar problem with the "br" code, some times I get a space between the new paragraph and sometimes I don't. It's not a big deal except for the 20% or so of the time that the last sentence is close to the end of the line and it is really hard to tell it is a new paragraph or just word wrap. Damn you formatting gods. I vote for WYSIWYG on /. its about freaking time we leave the 90's.
I'm guessing that the GP is on a 2 year contract. A lot can happen in two years. What if you change your job, house, city or whatever? You can't know that in the first month. Not even 6 months. I'm not even certain what will happen in the next 7 days.
Trolls are like broken clocks. They show the truth two times a day. The rest of the day they talk nonsense.
This kind of reminds me of the "Equalization of Opportunity Bill." If you can't swim then maybe you don't belong in the pool.
An inventor is a man who asks 'Why?' of the universe and lets nothing stand between the answer and his mind.
If a customer buys a new phone and finds it doesn't work with his expensive car, he is going to take the phone back and get a new phone (from another manufacturer) that does work with his car.
So I can use a U.S. Cellular phone under contract in any other compatiable network?
In an ideal world, yes, and in other countries it's possible to get handsets independently of any contract, (or by getting one on a pre-paid plan and then paying a relatively small unlocking fee when the credit runs out). You're then free to get a contract with any carrier and use any SIM card. This is how it works in Australia, and is why, if and when I do a new iPhone 3G S, I will be buying it there, instead of going through AT&T when I move to the US later this year.
By reading this signature, you hereby agree with the content of the above comment.
I did work a few years ago for an unnamed handset maker
That must've saved a lot on letterhead and business cards.
I would say yes. if it's a CDMA phone, call up their call center and give them the code under the battery and they can add it.
I worked for the Cell back when they made the move from TDMA to CDMA, and that's how it worked then, back then the Cell also didn't lock their phones and were pretty open, no idea how they are now, but their phones still are lagging WAY behind the bigger names...
As the Touch Pro 2 comes out, they come out with the Touch Pro 1. and that's how they work... best coverage in northern illinois/south wisconsin, but their phones are just bad...
it was a good company to work for until they bought PrimeCo though...
I thought it kind of odd too for Verizon to support this. The weirdest part is the summary, saying that wireless carriers would be less likely to innovate. The only carrier branded phone I had was an AT&T Tilt, and that was actually just a HTC TyTN II. So I don't know what they're going on about.
In reality, they just don't want to lose control over what goes on their phones, and that's why they support this. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd bet that Verizon doesn't have more "exclusive" or quality phones is because they want to have too much control over what goes on them. My iPhone is pretty easy to jailbreak, the Tilt never even cared (and for that matter, was completely and utterly unlocked - not just SIM card, but radio software and all - in minutes), and AFAIK, I was always free to run my own BREW apps on AT&T's selection of just-phone phones. Verizon? Not so much. My girl uses VZW can't even get a Spanish dictionary for free, and I've got one on my iPhone, my PC, pretty much anywhere I need one.
...Europe is trying to tell Belgium that it should abolish the ban on linked sales, and thus allow this kind of exclusivity deals. Since when did you lot get your hands on our common sense ?
What a depressingly stupid machine.
That's fine with us! Don't develop the handsets. Focus on building your network's reliability and lowering your cost to consumer. Let someone who knows what they're doing build the handsets.
What's that? Handsets make a lot of money for you? Well then I guess you'll have to do a better job than the 3rd party developers. So much for less incentive! Just when you thought you had all that nasty competition wrapped up, free market forces come along and ruin your day.
When was this? In the pre-TDMA analog only cell phone the size of bricks days? Wireless communications between cellphones / handsets and wireless communications infrastructure have been standardized for a long time. If the carrier you were working for was standards compliant they would have nothing to worry about, and even then, is maintaining a device compatibility list so hard?
No, not really. You're forgetting how locked down Macs have always been. The first Macs had no expansion capability at all; just one floppy drive, a minimal amount of RAM, and a tiny black and white screen. This, at a time when people were already getting used to much larger color screens to do their word processing and spreadsheets in. Standard PCs of the day had two floppy drives. Hard drives had just gone from being an extremely expensive option to just barely affordable for a standard desktop.
In addition, you're forgetting the very active expansion market. People were plugging all kinds of peripherals and cards into PCs. Doing so with a Mac was difficult if not impossible. That made Macs a non-starter for a lot of markets.
The problem with your statement is. . . how do you buy an iPhone without getting into a 2 year contract with AT&T? Ok, I suppose AT&T probably offers a (much more expensive) non-contract price to buy the phone, so you can probably do that (I'm not sure in this case - maybe they only offer the phone if you sign the contract?).
But more importantly, the phone is software-locked to the AT&T network.
Generally speaking, though, I too am of a libertarian mindset here - I agree that that government should be limited in how much it interfers in business relationships and contracts. If Apple freely chooses to sell iPhones only to AT&T, then it should have the freedom to do that. . .
My problem comes in the fact that Apple can lock the phone to AT&T's network, and then the DMCA can potentially be used to prevent me from hacking the phone to unlock it (or at least, prevent someone who has figure out how to hack it from distributing patches/software to unlock it). Yes, I know that the copyright office issued a DMCA exemption for unlocking cell phones, but that isn't a permanent change of law - that's just a (currently) temporary exemption.
So, on the one hand, the government has no business trying to force companies to not do exclusive hardware deals. . . but on the other hand, IMO, the government has no business 'protecting' businesses by making it illegal for people to modify the software in their cellphones to work with other networks, or even for third parties to assist (heck, other cell-networks and their vendors should be able to assist me in hacking my phone to work on their network).
The legitimate function of government is protecting our rights, not making wireless corporations' (or any other copyright holders') wishes come true.
In my opinion, a far bigger problem than handset exlcusivity deals, is the practice of charging customers the same price for cell phone service whether or not they are or are not getting a contract for a phone. Most of the carriers will let you buy phones outright, and even pay month-to-month for service. The problem is, I'm paying the same monthly-fee as if I were on the contract. So, it ends up being financially stupid to buy a phone outright, because you're just paying an extra $200-$300 (in most cases), but not paying less for service than the people whose phones are subsidized by the contracts.
If I'm not getting my phone subsidized, I should be seeing about a $10/mo discount on my service. But, no.
Get rid of that nonsense, and also give people the legal right to modify their phones to unlock them from the original network, and you've solved the 'exclusivity' problem in the simplest possible fashion.
Which is why all cars should come with a clutch pedal - after all, the driver controls shouldn't care what the hell runs underneath them, including whether the transmission is manual or automatic.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
See, you started off so well, and then your argument went to crap.
Yes, they should be able to decide what standard to make their handset for (CDMA, GMS, whatever), but why should that prevent me from using the phone with any carrier who supports it? It's not the handset makers that make the deals, it's the carriers. They know people want certain phones, and those people are willing to change carriers to get them.
It's like ISPs selling cheap computers on signing a contract, and instead of competing on how fast/stable their connections are, they're competing based on one sells computers with Intel chips, and the other AMD. Either one, theoretically, should be able to work on the network, and if you wanted to, you could go get one for more from somewhere else, and it would work on either one. But they're still competing based purely on how you're accessing their network, not on why you should choose them.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
So your complaint that you misused something and now are angry that your misuse isn't breaking in the same manner as before?
Consider... at the last WWDC, Apple took a lot of ribbing about AT&T being slow to add MMS and tethering. iPhone users complain about slowness, dropped calls, etc. Apple is stuck in its agreement until 2010 unless it can convince AT&T to let go, which AT&T won't do because the iPhone brings in too many customers and locks them in once they're there (ignoring jailbreaking and such).
Not too coincidentally, Sprint just announced an exclusive deal for the Palm Pre, and already offers the Blackberry. This makes it a purveyor of the two biggest competitors to the iPhone. There is a waiting list at many Sprint stores to get the Pre, which shows that Sprint is on to something. But the Pre needs work to be a serious competitor to the iPhone, though the Pre is a nice phone already. If Palm was forced to drop the exclusive with Sprint, it would have to focus effort on modifying the phone to work on other carriers, slowing the addition of new features and applications (which means it would be less effective at competing with the iPhone). So killing exclusive handset deals might actually hurt the Pre. But it HELPS the iPhone, since it allows Apple to move the phone to more carriers (something that Apple's been doing internationally, so adding more U.S. carriers ought to be relatively trivial).
Then there's Sprint. It's one of very few networks that can't use the current iPhone, which is GSM-based while Sprint's network is CDMA-based. Taking away Sprint's exclusivity for the Pre would hurt one of its best chances for survival and success in the coming months. Killing off Sprint and the other CDMA carriers saves Apple lots of expense in having to create a CDMA-based iPhone model.
There's an old saying that if you want to know what's really going on, follow the money. While killing off exclusivity deals would help small carriers and the consumer, we all know lobbyists and politicians rarely pay more than lip service to small business (even though they should) and consumers (even though we elect them). So the question is, where does the "real money" in this deal go?
Let's see... Apple gets out of its AT&T deal without penalty, saving face and selling lots more iPhones on more U.S. networks (without losing overseas exclusivity). Development of the most-likely rival to the iPhone is set back by a need to support more carriers, which benefits Apple and the iPhone. Severing the exclusive deal between Sprint and Palm sticks a knife into Sprint, which was already in trouble anyway, and which just happens to offer the two best alternatives to the iPhone. Looks like lots of money flows Apple's way if this goes through, and Apple loses nothing if it doesn't.
Just to make the tinfoil hat scenario complete... Consider that Al Gore (former Democratic Vice President of the U.S.) is on the Apple Board of Directors, and that this particular anti-exclusivity effort is headed by fellow Democrat John Kerry. It doesn't take too much of a paranoid fantasy to imagine Apple management going to Al Gore and asking for help getting out of the AT&T deal early, Gore calling up his old buddy John, and John suddenly "noticing" all these letters he's been getting from small carriers over the years wanting an end to exclusive handset deals.
Al Gore connection not enough? Consider also that Apple CEO Steve Jobs was a consultant on the John Kerry campaign. Don't believe me? Search on Google for "Did Apple contribute to John Kerry campaign" and see what you get.
I'd like to think that Apple and Steve Jobs aren't that "evil" but this timing is awfully coincidental...
...they would either pick a crap standard (or one with a crap implementation)...
I think that any standard is better than no standard. It worked out reasonably okay for broadcasting, maybe not ideal, but can you imagine having a different receiver for different stations? There should be one national telephone network that would allow any and all receivers or handsets to work properly. After all, the Internet and its standards are worldwide. Why cannot we have a worldwide wireless telephone standard as well?
All theory is gray
Exactly. Cell phones and Cellular connectivity should be handled the same way as computers and the internet. You should be able to buy ANY phone without talking to a telco, then take that phone and use it on ANY compatible network. In fact, the carrier shouldn't even need to know what type of phone it is, just the serial number for identification and the protocol (3g, gsm, etc) for connectivity. It's time to rip the telcos and the phone manufacturers apart and force them to supply their products separately.
Well, sorry, but that's just how it works. If you can't sign the contract... don't. There are other options, more expensive, usually, but that's the tradeoff you have to make. The initial month is nice to figure out if your phone will work in the places you care *now*, and that'll have to be good enough. Again: if you don't like the terms, don't accept them.
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.
You are preaching to the choir here. I was just laughing at the fact that they even give you 30 days to reconsider.
Here in Croatia, if you want to cancel your plan you have to pay the full price for remaining months. For example you have 2 year plan for 70$/month and you want to cancel it after the first year. You would have to pay 12(remaining months)*$70 = $840 which is a downright robbery unfortunately.
Trolls are like broken clocks. They show the truth two times a day. The rest of the day they talk nonsense.
I had one for a minute, and I couldn't hear shit!
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
It's when I hear fascinating inside stories like this regarding the gigantic telecoms industry, that I really wish somebody would do a Fast Food Nation style expose of all the ugly guts of the industry. If only Joseph Heller were still around to write it.
Ain't that what got us x86?
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
Except that is a completely invalid comparison, and you know it.
For that matter, if you take a real close look, I'm sure you can see where a clutch pedal could be mounted, should your vehicle have a manual version. Mine has a big plastic footrest in that spot, but if I rip that off, I can CLEARLY see where a clutch pedal would be mounted.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...