I'm reading a CNET article .. Democrats criticize AT&T's exclusive iPhone deal .. It's talking about a U.S. Congress committee meeting that was supposed to be about "wireless innovation and consumer protection". But iPhone-mania hit the Congresscritters with Republicans claiming the iPhone is an example of consumer choice in action ...
I dunno about you, the reader, but I'm more than astonished. I see Apple's move with this phone as a way to interfere with consumer choice. And in general the cell phone market is all about interfering with customer choice. Want to switch providers? Nope, you're in a locked in contract. Like your phone but want to use it with a different carrier? Nope, the phones you can buy are locked to specific carriers. And the iPhone is even worse because it's design, while using GSM under the covers, has specific features that are only going to work with Cingular. This all goes together to prevent the customer from having choice.
I think in other countries customer choice is free-er, in that you can buy phones and SIM cards as separate objects, and can insert the SIM card into phones based on your free choice. Since I don't live outside the U.S. my exposure to this is limited, but a few months ago I was in St. Petersburg and my colleagues there bought a SIM card for me to try in my U.S. Cingular-locked phone. Unfortunately the experiment didn't work out in that the phone didn't recognize the SIM card they bought.
