In Matthew Gast’s I wish Apple had taken on the telcos, he writes:
The “control your customers and force feed them†model cuts against my entire experience, which is based on open systems and architectures. In theory, an upstart could design a cool GSM phone and sell it directly to end users, bypassing the control-freak middlemen telcos. I had hoped that Apple would do just that. They are the one company that could build a phone that they could sell directly to hordes of consumers without help from the carrier.
Ask a North American carrier about fixed mobile convergence and dual-mode handsets and you’re going to get an interesting answer. “Those European carriers are mighty innovative guys, but we don’t need to do that… yet.” Fascinating answer. Further digging reveals that the European’s have apparently got networks operating at near capacity, which is why dual-mode WiFi devices are appealing. Apparently we don’t yet have the problem in North America.
So I’ve been told…
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry maker Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
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