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Ubuntu Phone Carrier Advisory Group Announced
An anonymous reader writes "With the focus from Ubuntu on phones, seven carriers have signed onto their Ubuntu Carrier Advisory Group including Deutsche Telekom, Everything Everywhere, Telecom Italia, Korea Telecom, LG UPlus, Portugal Telecom, and SK Telecom. The group is designed for the carriers to let 'mobile operators shape Ubuntu's mobile strategy. Members receive advance confidential briefings and provide us with industry insight to ensure that Ubuntu meets their needs.'"
Looks like Ubuntu Phone is getting serious. Mark Shuttleworth writes about their first meeting: "We mapped out our approach to the key question I’ve been asked by every carrier we’ve met so far: how can we accommodate differentiation, without fragmenting the platform for developers? We described the range of diversity we think we can support initially, received some initial feedback from carriers participating immediately, and I’m looking forward to the distilled feedback we’ll get on the topic in the next call. CAG members get a period of exclusivity in their markets."
If you want to enter US market you must have NSA backdoor included. We love STASI operating manuals.
Mark Shuttleworth writes about their first meeting: "We mapped out our approach to the key question I’ve been asked by every carrier we’ve met so far: how can we accommodate differentiation, without fragmenting the platform for developers?"
To which he added "Fragmentation or lack of differentiation, please pick one and we can move on."
CAG members get a period of exclusivity in their markets.
How can they if it's really all open source?
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
I realize that none of these carriers are in the US so that may very well be the difference here... BUT!!! Why pander to the carriers? What we need is open source in phones in a way that enshrines the consumer first. GPLv3 all the phone specific software so that it CAN'T BE TIVO'IZED and corrupted and used against the owner of the device. I'm all for people getting paid if they want to be paid for their work, but it will in no way ever justify locking me out of my own devices in any way or using my devices against me in any way. Remote software removal by anyone other than the owner? Nunh-Unh. Locking me into a market and excluding others? Nunh-Unh.
Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
Another bowdlerized Linux platform that you can't repurpose the existing ecosystem for. Isn't it possible to just have a new phone essentially run a vanilla linux distro like Maemo did?
I don't know why they're bothering. Android is free. iOS is "free" to Apple sort of. Brew and Symbian are probably pretty cheap given the phone prices of ones that carry it. So a free phone OS? Not as exciting as desktops. Then you've got free and open vs mega controlling overlords of pure evil aka wireless telecom companies coming together to work on a product? This had bad idea written all over it.
I realize that none of these carriers are in the US
Deutsche Telekom is on the list, and it has a U.S. division.
Maybe another 2 years are needed when a full arm or even x86 chip w components will be small enough to fit into a phone case. Then android, ios, wmobile will be gone as they should be. the only good mobile os in the last 10 years was nokia os (not symbian crap). Give me the ability to customize my phone gui down to a t. Or give me nothing
Doesn't mean that T-Mobile is involved. For example, Duetsche Telekom was selling the iPhone years before T-Mobile did.
Google is trying to wrestle control away from the carriers after whoring out Android under their terms when it first came out. Obviously to get carriers interested in Android phones, Google had to ensure they gave power over feature set and update release to the carriers. This "control" caused a massive fragment in the market were phones today are still being sold with Android 2 to 3 versions behind the version of Android Google wants to ship.
While it may have ultimately made Android the top phone platform on the market today, it's cause a huge headache for Google to try and now release value added features like Play Music and Apps while supporting a wide assortment of random versions. Its also a nightmare platform to develop on unless you ignore everything before Android 4 and accept the limited scope of customers.
Not sure this is the best model for Ubuntu to follow because they don't even have the clout Google has that still struggles to get control back.
Carriers need to be told that they features of a phone is defined by the phone, if their networks can't support the feature then they don't get the premium top brands to sell to customers. For instance any carrier that does not support iPhone has seen significant decline in their customer base, this forces the carrier to support the features that Apple wants, not the other way around, to get back customers.
Also this goes completely against the openness of the Ubuntu platform as carriers are more interested in "locking down" rather then "opening up". Not sure open source and phone carriers are a good synergy, this product is doomed.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
"The group is designed for the carriers to let 'mobile operators shape Ubuntu's mobile strategy. " This will do nothing but destroy the platform. Carriers have nothing good to "advise" any phone OS maker about. Every one of them shovel more crap on top of the phone that what is upposed to be there and destroy features they dont like.
Thus ends Ubuntu Phone OS.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I was hoping Ubuntu might possibly make a phone that doesn't suck, and with Nokia's exiting the market a couple years ago, there is a huge demand for that.
But this... Hey Shuttleworth, for the desktop OS, did you poll cable and DSL ISPs asking them about your desktop strategy? No. Because that would be ridiculous. So how is this less ridiculous?
0% of users want their ISPs to have a say in how their computer works. At most, the ISPs should be the supplicants in this situation, saying things like "we are going to have multicast, so please make sure your OS is able to take advantage of it."
How do you differentiate a Comcast customer's desktop and a CenturyLink customer's desktop? Easy: different users choose to install different packages from the repository. Indeed, that's how you differentiate one Comcast customer from another. Or not. A lot of people probably run Ubuntu with the same default set of packages, so they're not differentiated. But their ISPs don't care.
The field is already dominated by Android and iOS. If they add yet another OS to the mix, aren't they further fragmenting the market no matter what??