Thursday, June 2, 2005
The US Cell Phone Carriers Are The New Soviet Ministries
Posted by Ed Hansberry in "NEWS" @ 10:00 AM
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20050602.html
Walt Mossberg had a pretty good article in the Wall Street Journal this morning taking the US cell carriers to task for stifling innovation.
"I call these cellphone companies the new Soviet ministries, because they are reminiscent of the Communist bureaucracies in Russia that stood athwart the free market for decades. Like the real Soviet ministries, these technology middlemen too often believe they can decide better than the market what goods consumers need."
Hey, if I had known I could have summarized "they know what you need better than you do" as "new Soviet ministry" some of my Palm articles would have been much shorter. :wink: Cellular providers in the US are desperately trying not to become a dumb pipe for voice and data. They want to sell more than the service. Profits are enormous on ring tones and applications, and retaining customers via locked devices that only work on their network help keep people in place. They can't win. They are only delaying the inevitable. There is no difference in a phone line, cable/dsl modem and cellular services. The cellular providers just haven't picked up on it yet. They will.
Walt Mossberg had a pretty good article in the Wall Street Journal this morning taking the US cell carriers to task for stifling innovation.
"I call these cellphone companies the new Soviet ministries, because they are reminiscent of the Communist bureaucracies in Russia that stood athwart the free market for decades. Like the real Soviet ministries, these technology middlemen too often believe they can decide better than the market what goods consumers need."
Hey, if I had known I could have summarized "they know what you need better than you do" as "new Soviet ministry" some of my Palm articles would have been much shorter. :wink: Cellular providers in the US are desperately trying not to become a dumb pipe for voice and data. They want to sell more than the service. Profits are enormous on ring tones and applications, and retaining customers via locked devices that only work on their network help keep people in place. They can't win. They are only delaying the inevitable. There is no difference in a phone line, cable/dsl modem and cellular services. The cellular providers just haven't picked up on it yet. They will.
