I’ve been reading lots of people’s thoughts on why the Nexus One not being as widely adopted as other phones like the iPhone is a failure for unlocked phones.
My reaction to that: Bullshit.
Defining “Unlocked” phone:
The Nexus One is a damn fine bit of hardware, and while you can buy it with out locking into a contract it is not really unlocked.
Why do I say that? Simple, the way that I choose to define “unlocked phone” is:
An expensive communication device paid for in full by the customer. The fact that the customer has paid 100% of the cost of this device out of his/her pocket would prevent said customer from being locked into one carrier’s set of plans for any length of time and would also prevent said customer from being locked into using any one carrier’s wireless infrastructure because this expensive device would be equipped with a radio that allowed it to acces all carriers’ wireless infrastructures.
In essence, what I’m saying is that I believe a truly unlocked phone would allow the customer to go to any carrier and say, “I bought this phone with out any help from you, but I’m willing to pay you [insert price here] dollars a month for this device to have access to your wireless infrastructure. If I’m ever dissatisfied with the service of your company or the performance of your company’s wireless infrastructure I’ll stop paying you and take my phone and pay a different carrier I think will perform better than you do.”
A Partially Locked Phone:
Back to the Nexus One. It’s true that this device could be bought with out a contact to use a carrier’s wireless infrastructure for a period of time, meaning the customer could ditch the carrier at any point without paying any sort of early “early termination” fees, which tend to be rather high. However, the lack of termination fees does not really matter because the Nexus One’s radio would only work with one carrier’s wireless infrastructure. So even though the customer did avoid a contract and the “early termination” fees that went along with those contracts, the phone (and the customer) were locked in because they could not take the phone to another carrier.
i.e. A person could spend around $500.00 to get a phone that would only work with one carrier’s wireless infrastructure, and opting out of using said carrier would also mean opting out of using the device. Full stop.
That is a partially locked phone. Not an unlocked phone.
A real unlocked phone will prevent a customer from being locked in to a contract, and also prevent the customer from being locked into a carrier.
So while the partially locked Nexus One being sold directly by Google might not have worked out the way that Google wanted and could be seen as a failure for Google, it could also be seen as a failure for the sale of partially locked phones. I don’t think it can be seen as a failure for unlocked phones.
A Comparison:
I want smart phones, in the way they access the mobile web, to be like computers and the way they access the internet.
A person would buy the hardware (computer) then take it to whatever internet service provider he or she wants to.
That makes sense right?
Tags: Android, at&t, cell phones, Fail, Google, iphone, nexus one, Phoens, Sprint, t-mobile, Verison, Wireless
Hopefully, we’ll see something a bit more like the ISP system with phones, but there are caveats to that model too as there are to any.
The initial problem with it is that carriers use different frequencies for the data service, and the other issue actually has to do with Net Neutrality, funnily enough.
If the FCC buckles to pressure from the major telecoms, we’re going to have a tiered access system. How that will translate into mobile data services has yet to be seen. That mobile services are already limited by unspecified soft usage caps built into “unlimited” plans is an early warning sign the internet — no matter how you access it — could soon become a lot less free.