I have worked in the wireless telecom industry over 15 years and still going strong despite all the ups and downs of the sector. So over time I want to share what I feel I have a learned on many particular issues and problems in the industry surrounding the evolving locked vs unlocked mobile phones available to US consumers. I do intend to share the good and bad as I see it and welcome your thoughts and feedback for the better of the people in the US. This is my first baby step into the unlocked wireless future.
We are contantly learning and changing as humans, but for some reason companies and industries are slow moving giants to change. Let me elaborate some more and provide some latitude on this topic. We are humans, people, working for these companies. Yet, we all find it difficult to get policies, programs, and other corportate mumbo jumbo changed for the better. I tend to believe it is corporate politics and/or deep financial pockets that force 'their way' to slow down or prevent an open playing field. This is where we are in the wireless industry in regards to unlocked mobile phones and open access wireless networks . This is such a big issue that even the US government got involved. The good old FCC established a ruling for and against Google when they wanted to launch a fully open and unlocked wireless broadband network for unlocked wireless products. This affects wireless telecom carriers today and their dominant stronghold on their walled garden approach to trying to 'own the consumer'. I dont know about you, but controlling the consumer sounds communist and un-American. Yeah, spectrum licenses were involved, relationships and a ton of cash on the line as usual so what can you expect but problems, right? . You can check out this link to learn more....http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/01/technology/01spectrum.html.
Anyway, I digressed a bit from unlocked phones and the issue with why US carriers are so against this notion. So consider this, from its genesis the wireless business charged customers a monthly fee with a minimum contract and provided a discount for the equipment aka mobile phone or to some old schoolers in the US - the cell phone. That was the age old business model for a US wireless phone. It sold great, it still sells well, but the world has changed over the last 15 years quite considerably in the mobile telecom space. The market is saturated for one. Plus more importantly, previously people bought mobile phones to just talk, then it evolved to talk and text. Fast forward 15 years, and now consumers are talking, texting, chatting, browsing, emailing, snapping pictures and video, finding their way using GPS, watching TV, listening to music and much more on their mobile phones. I equate it to using your mobile phone as a computer albeit a tiny one. One Nokia executive coined the term 'multimedia computers'. Most US people and the industry tend to call them smartphones. So think of it this way, what if you had your laptop or desktop PC locked to only view google sites or whatever yahoo wanted you to see?? What if you could only buy software and use software from the store you bought it from?? Do you understand the relevancy and madness? The US mobile phone carriers do this to US consumers today and most of us accept it. We have to use the mobile phones that they offer and approve. Otherwise, there are heftier prices to pay to access their wireless network using an unapproved mobile phone and in some cases they may not even allow them on the network. Moreover, the approved mobile phones are loaded with the carrier's custom software, bookmarks, custom website portal, and on and on. Some features of the mobile phone are even 'hidden' or deleted altogether. I remember a rumor a while back that Verizon wireless did not allow their approved mobile phones to have bluetooth since they took away from revenues generated from using their network to send info rather than let consumer bluetooth info for free. Many consumers have fought hard to win their wireless freedom - think back to when number portability was not possible which in turn prevented many people from switching carriers. So wrong. Learn some more about the background and more specifics on this at http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dltr/articles/2004dltr0006.html.
I say let the consumer choose their network, their phone number, and now which mobile phone they want to use. In comes the unlocked phone frenzy by the US savvy, tech leader demand that has been buildingover the past couple years. Nokia responded in the US a few years back by legitimizing and optimizing their unlocked phones for general use on the US carrier networks based on the GSM standard. Nokia has benefitted from this unlocked model globally and marginally in the US where the business model is being shunned by the US carriers. There are ways around it today though. You can buy any unlocked mobile phone that is based on the GSM standard that is compatible to the US wireless carrier network of your choice and just install your carrier's SIM card. You will be activated immediately without having to do anything else. It is just that simple. More manufacturers are adopting this business model as well. SonyEricsson and HTC are now offering US unlocked mobile phones in alternate sales channels with online being the easiest and most fruitful channel to date. Let me futher explain briefly why. This unlocked mobile phone choice allows for consumers to control the manufacturers business versus the 'over-bearing' US carrier requirements that leverage this power over manufacturers to do as they please to boost profits. Consumers benefit most from the unlocked mobile phone model since the consumer can get the best of both worlds by buying the hardware they want and the network they want it to work on without the carrier's customization bogging it down. This is logical and similar to how consumers purchase their TV's and cable networks, their landline phones and its landline telephone services, your computer and the broadband or dial up or wireless broadband network.....need I go further?!
So I say UNLOCK ME and let me be free to choose! This is America the land of the free.
Much more in the future....
