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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
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.
.. 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.
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.
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.
if you aren't creating a list.
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
I doubt most people working in cell phone stores have any idea why their phones are crippled.
They're there to sell FEATURES, not limitations. They don't say that this phone can't be tethered to your computer, they sell you an unlimited data plan (phone only) and a tethering cable. Then they cackle with glee when they see that $.75/kilobit charge on your bill to the tune of $750.00. Should have read the contract, eh?
At any rate, you COULD use bluetooth to upload pictures or download ringtones from your computer to your phone, but its been disabled in the firmware. Also, you COULD use that built-in GPS with Google Maps to see where you're at, but that's disabled too unless you subscribe to whatever GPS mapping software they're getting kickbacks from this year.
The whole market is a perfect example of what would happen if 'trusted computing' ever took off. There would be no more of this "I didn't like the drivers so I installed hacked ones" or "Hey my nVidia card is a higher model that's been flashed to be a lower model, let me reflash that so it can be awesome again"
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?