Mobile Industry Should Be More Like PC Industry — Mossberg

What’s wrong with the mobile phone industry in the United States? Pretty much everyone knows, and only carriers seem to have opposing points of view. Walt Mossberg has gone on a bit of a rant on the topic at the Wall Street Journal, and lays the issue out quite nicely. Put simply, there’s no real reason for the carriers to lock the handsets to their networks, and only allow certain devices to connect. Sure, they subsidize handsets, but that’s not necessary any more. Not only are handsets pretty cheap, but people recognize the value of a mobile service — a different kettle of fish to a decade ago. The upcoming spectrum auction has the potential to address this issue, but it also has the potential to not achieve much change at all…we’ll have to see how it goes.

Mossberg also has a go at the government for allowing two mobile standards in the country, although can you imagine the government trying to make a decision between the “global” GSM standard and the “US-homegrown” CDMA standard? There’s a decision with no right political answer. As a bit of interest, Telstra is the only Telco I know that runs both a CDMA and a GSM network extensively, and the government recently forbid it to shut down the CDMA network until it builds out its 3G network a bit bigger. Telstra wasn’t happy.

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