We Must Shatter Cellphone Companies' Death Grip Image courtesy of
Mossberg had a great column in the Journal yesterday delivering a shot straight to the skull of cellphone companies and how their oligopolistic ways.
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."It's like a guy builds a road and tells you what kind of horse you can ride on it. Or, as Mossberg points out, it's like the 70's, when you had to rent phones from AT&T and you could only use their phone for fear of "damaging" the network. Only when the government stepped in to break it up was the hammer lock broken.
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.”
It’s like a guy builds a road and tells you what kind of horse you can ride on it. Or, as Mossberg points out, it’s like the 70’s, when you had to rent phones from AT&T and you could only use their phone for fear of “damaging” the network. Only when the government stepped in to break it up was the hammer lock broken.
Free My Phone [WSJ]
(Photo: FastFords)
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