This is not what customers want. This is what carriers want. Providing reliable data will only cannibalize their current market by commoditization. The margins on data will get smaller and smaller so carriers can do one of several things:

1) Price fix to keep themselves as big and fat as they are now

2) Strip out their retail channel and the heavy sales and support team that comes with it to truly become a lean, network-only provider

3) Open their networks up to M2M so that device manufacturers can start pumping out millions of new devices that bring in recurring revenue with minimal support. Right now M2M is a big, expensive hassle and it’s holding up companies from just flooding the market with great devices.

I don’t want Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T trying to come up with the next Foursquare, Twitter, or Facebook. They had their chance when they locked us into their pitiful, closed “Get it now!” J2ME and BREW application stores. They blew it, made little money, and held up progress for at least a decade. Build a network, make it reliable, make it open, get rid of your retail stores and let other people sell the phones and support for you, and then I guarantee you that you’ll be making money hand over fist.

Oh, and please ignore suggestion #1 even though you’re doing it already.

IMO, this is the main (if not the ONLY) thing customers want even today. We really don’t want our cellular carriers trying to offer us anything more. Just give us a great, cheap data pipe, with plans and prices that make sense, and get out of our way. Amen.