Mossberg calling for freer phones

Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal who usually keeps his writing to the technology sections, wrote a rare opinion piece, Free My Phone - WSJ.com.
Some time back Tim Wu of Columbia Law School, a well known proponent of Net Neutrality wrote a paper on Wireless Carterphone. Mossberg's call is very similar to what Tim Wu talks about in his paper, asking for the freedom to buy any cell phone you wish and use with any service provider. Mossberg's asks, for the same freedom we enjoy with buying computers and the choice of ISPs we have. This is the old carter phone rule that allowed people to buy any landline phone with a RJ11 port and plug it into the jack in your house.

I am glad Mossberg is very strong in his message:

It's intolerable that the same country that produced all this has
trapped its citizens in a backward, stifling system when it comes to
the next great technology platform, the cellphone....

That's why I refer to the big cellphone carriers as the "Soviet
ministries." Like the old bureaucracies of communism, they sit athwart
the market, breaking the link between the producers of goods and
services and the people who use them.

The article goes on to talk about the absence of SIM card n CDMA phones, the locking of SIMS and the upcoming 700 MHz auction. However I do disagree with some of his claims regarding Apple's success in choosing its own hardware and software platform for the iPhone.

Both Mossberg's article and Tim Wu's paper are must reads if you want to understand why your phone is tied to your service provider or why Skype is not supported in iPhone platform.

mossberg, carter phone, wireless phone, iphone