USA Today is running a little piece about how Skype is totally Pee Oooed about how some carriers won’t let phone owners run outside applications on their handsets. They were so angry, in fact, they wrote a sternly worded letter to the FCC about it and they intend to take this all the way to … zzzzzz… what? Oh, sorry.
Essentially Skype is pissed that Verizon won’t let people run third-party apps on their phones. Skype is one of those selfsame banned apps and, because most carriers are insane — Verizon being the insanest — and don’t want anyone to do anything, Skype is getting locked out of many Wi-Fi-enabled handsets and, generally, a new market.
ANYWAY, that’s the story. Big poots.
Skype: ‘Locked’ phones unfair [USA Today]
I hope the petition is heard and they win, it is frustrating buying a wireless phone, only to have the carrier lock me out of features because they feel like it. How the carriers have groomed us sheep in NA to think this is ok, is beyond me – but they managed to do it.
I can’t say enough good things about Skype… if they can only do the same thing with sat broadband… then we are free from any net related bills!
Jon
Skype winning this would be a huge deal for mobile customers. Things like Verizon’s locking out of bluetooth functionality and locking down the Java runtime on a phone is pure greed.
How does that work actually? I always figured the cell phone provider is giving you that phone on those terms because they are susbsidizing part of the cost of the phone through your wireless contract. Given the cost and difficulty of obtaining/importing unlocked phones sans contract and how rarely it’s done by most folks, I guess this is generally considered an acceptable trade-off. Also since at least half the providers in the US are using CDMA without SIM cards, getting even an unlocked CDMA phone onto their networks would probably involve jumping through some hoops.
I never really delved into the details or the legality of the thing however. Does anybody know what (legal) basis the providers have for the position they’re taking in the market with respect to handset features?
Peter, I don’t think what they are doing is technically illegal per se, but this petition might answer that question. They way I look at it, if I buy a phone (subsidized or not) it is mine – and I should get the features the manufacturer has put in it. The carriers order phones from Nokia/Samsung etc., with specific requests to ‘disable feature x (bluetooth for example) as that would reduce the usage of our overpriced data service etc.. or disable wifi, because that would reduce the number of minutes you use on our network if you could use VoIP services etc. They simply don’t put up with this in other countries, you can buy a phone and use it on pretty much any network (granted they are mostly GSM/SIM). This has to happen in NA.