Mediaholic

I have been saying over and over again that carriers are behaving like dictators and it is time for them to open their networks for any phone or phone software. You can imagine how happy I was to see this recent write up by Walt Mossberg. Here are a few interesting quotes:

"A shortsighted and often just plain stupid federal government has allowed itself to be bullied and fooled by a handful of big wireless phone operators for decades now. And the result has been a mobile phone system that is the direct opposite of the PC model. It severely limits consumer choice, stifles innovation, crushes entrepreneurship, and has made the U.S. the laughingstock of the mobile-technology world, just as the cellphone is morphing into a powerful hand-held computer."

"That’s why I refer to the big cellphone carriers as the “Soviet ministries.” Like the old bureaucracies of communism, they sit athwart the market, breaking the link between the producers of goods and services and the people who use them."

Looks like Walt is at least as angry as I am about the current state of affairs. Now we only need to find the Mihail Gorbachov that can free the wireless world and end the cold war between Skype (or other software / phone vendors) and the carriers.