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Straddling Wireless Carriers

For the next few years, one can expect debates and discussions to grow at a rapid pace as they argue the fine points of the wireless industry’s private and public interests in connection to the best uses of the industry’s spectrum. But before one can fully understand the implications of this trend, of what the current situation is and of how it will ultimately change, one must first be well acquainted with the practices of the wireless industry as well understand the influence of these practices on innovation and consumer wellbeing.

In a great many ways, the mobile cordless market, made up of digital telephone systems like cordless phones, wireless headsets and of others, remains a source of enduring astonishment. Due largely to policy as well as digital innovation, tech gadgets that were no more than the tools of science fiction pot-boilers are now in the hands of a great portion of the populace. For the last ten years, wireless mobile was known as a mere infant industry, inchoate and undeveloped, as it tried to set up sustainable economies on a larger scale. Today, that is no longer the case. In the U.S. alone, there are already over 200 million subscribers, users of mobile cordless telephones. Financial figures too have changed for those involved in the game. Mobile revenue has now reached over a $100 billion.

And as one observes how the tech gadgets available and the promising technologies that are springing up left and right, with Wi Fi in particular, one knows that the industry has yet to reach its peak. That as the business and platform both grow, expand and ultimately mature, one can expect greater things to come.

However, in light of such expectations, one hardly dismiss the fact that one has to eye the direction of present developments. Everyone knows where we are headed, that may be true to an extent. But how are we getting there?

Over the last few years, the wireless industry that has been responsible for bringing convenient and effortless technology into our homes, for providing the greater populace with an easy way to communicate and keep in touch, has made a number of changes worth noting. While it has entirely been successful in delivering cordless telephony at price queues that have proven competitive, we are also privy to the fact that a number of these wireless carriers are actively—aggressively—keeping their hand in on the product design as well as innovation in equipment pieces and application markets.

Is there a reason this matters? Definitely, since this control has made life for the many tech consumers living and breathing on this planet, much more difficult.

For one, carriers have a say in the entry of wireless networks so these carriers holds considerable control over the design of the device, say of a cordless telephone, home phone or any other sort of digital telephone. One should think that these carriers will do their utmost to provide consumers with cordless phones equipped with an extensive queue of features. However, these carriers have yielded this power to put equipment developers and manufacturers in a position to hobble their devices by omitting or disabling several of their consumer-friendly features or risk non-entry into the network. Carriers have, by and large, also coerced manufacturers to equip devices like phones with “walled garden” Internet access—that is, limited online access—a feature that both consumers and manufacturers have no liking for.

And of course, one must not forget the under-disclosed phone locking. This refers to the immobilization of devices, often of digital telephones, when they transfer carriers. Thus, a mobile cordless telephone is only good for use with one network. In the event that one wishes to switch, one must exchange one’s unit with a new one since it is more than likely that the telephone one previously had would be forbidden for use by the new network.