If you thought you were annoyed when one of the big wireless carriers locked up a phone you were after, you have no idea how frustrated small and rural wireless carriers are -- they've just filed a petition with FCC seeking to ban the practice. The 80 companies in the Rural Cellular Association serve small markets not well-covered by the big guys, like parts of New Mexico, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, North Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming, and they say that carrier exclusivity deals not affect their bottom line, but also deprive consumers of desirable phones like the iPhone and upcoming Blackberry Bold. They've actually got a pretty good point: lots of rural customers
can't purchase and use an iPhone without technically breaking the AT&T service agreement. We'll see how this one goes -- although we'd love nothing more than to use any phone we wanted on any carrier, there are plenty of reasons it won't happen, and exclusivity is the easiest way for carriers to differentiate themselves to consumers.
posted May 22nd 2008 1:29PM
They do have a point. Not everyone can live in an urban environment, our country would collapse if that were to happen. They shouldn't be deprived of technology for that reason.
I too agree but the question then becomes, do you petition against technical exclusivity as well (CDMA phones never coming to GSM and vice versa)? I think (please don't quote me) alot of rural carriers are CDMA because they want to control their airwaves, so I'm guessing they want GSM phones to migrate over as well as VZ, Sprint & Alltel exclusive phones.
Also, I wonder if this all phones on all carriers thing would make carriers more competitive in terms of prices. Wouldn't AT&T, VZ and all of them be fighting it out to the death to give the customer more minutes, more txt, and more data for their dollar if they ALL had the BB Bold in their lineup? Sounds like all of this is a win-win if the RWCs have their way.
when lte comes for the most part this will all be over
I find the whole carrier exclusive phone thing to be completely retarded. It may be the easiest way to differentiate themselves, but i think they use it to distract the consumers from their crappy customer service or spotty coverage.
When i want to move to T-Mobile with an iPhone, i still want my phone to be covered under warranty.
This hardware/carrier locking crap has got to an end!
"....and exclusivity is the easiest way for carriers to differentiate themselves to consumers."
bzzzzzzt, wrong. Price, features and oh yeah PRICE are easier/better for consumers.
handset exclusivity is bad for the consumer, EOS.
This is the real world, and companies have rights to negotiate favorable deals with each other to reduce risk and achieve better predictability in their sales. So what if Jimmy's CellFoneHut can't compete with Verizon and AT&T - if this RCA group is really so excited about getting access to the hottest phones, then they should suck it up and sign the exclusivity deals as a bulk buyer and lock out the major operators. To say that Apple or Motorola or whatever should be legally barred from signing long-term, stable, low-risk contracts is unreasonable, and no operator will sign such contracts unless they get something out of it also.
Having spent the last 8 years in rural cell phone areas after living in a metro area for 10 years. Verizon is the only carrier in any rural town I have lived that have had any decent phones, but their coverage is guarenteed (along with Alltel) to drop out the moment you leave home. The local company here now is GSM, but they have flimsy phones with even flimsier options available. In order to have something like the iPhone out here, you have to sacrifice service, and in some cases even value. The cellular market is becoming more of a oligopoly with ATT, Verizon and Alltel as the only real options, and they seem to focus more on the metro areas rather than the rural.