I have never made any secret of it I despise exclusivity deals between vendors and carriers. I find it appalling and anti-consumer. Now we have rural carriers are screaming “FOUL!!!!” because they have no input or access to handset manufacturers as it relates to smartphones. More importantly, rural carriers have no ability to steer the direction of handset development.
I have been vocal about the original iPhone and the fanatical nature of the Apple fans. I was an early opponent of the 2G iPhone and made no secret that I felt AT&T needed to push Apple into 3G for the benefit of AT&T shareholders and AT&T customers – pretending to be a 3G cell phone was not enough, it had to be a 3G cell phone.
However, that all being said Apple’s iPhone exclusive deal with AT&T got the entire handset industry off of its collective behind and got every major handset manufacturer competing. The fear of Apple becoming successful scared the-you-know-what out of every handset vendor. In other words, all other vendors started brushing off their own smartphone designs; all sitting in an attic collecting dust for the last several years.
Thanks to Apple’s intervention in the handset business we now have manufacturers going wild with new innovations. All because of a single exclusivity deal between AT&T and Apple. Fear is a great motivator for business decisions.
However, what I feared would occur has happened, the rural markets are being ignored. Now we have the rural carriers demanding direct intervention from the FCC because the handset vendors are ignoring the rural carriers.
I don’t want to see the handset industry being ordered by the FCC to make their handsets available to the rural markets. Frankly I believe that any direct interference on the part of the FCC can actually hurt innovation. If they make a decision based on AT&T’s arrangement they will be adversely impacting the entire industry. Don’t regulate innovation.
My knee jerk reaction is the FCC and Congress need to butt out. The FCC and Congress need to understand the way telecom technology proliferates – once one has it everyone else will have it soon thereafter. Of course the flipside of this argument is that the vendors are under the control of a small group of very powerful carriers. Hence, technology development is steered by a handful of carriers with the smaller carriers having no say in how technology is developed.
I had noted, the rural market is being ignored and its plight cannot be ignored. The rural carriers have made a good argument for their position. I am at a loss on how to motivate companies to do the right thing and spread technology to underserved and rural markets. I see both sides of the issue. Of course there is a third side – called a compromise but frankly I need to give that more thought.
Here is a thought: the recession ought to be motivator enough to entice vendors to expand their market footprint.