Google Android Effect on Cellphone Carriers - Open-Source Mobile Software - Popular Mechanics
But what’s got to be really scaring the carriers right now is the prospect of thousands of freely available applications that could subvert almost every communications product they sell. Why subscribe to Sprint’s GPS mapping service when you can simply download a free one that taps into Google Maps? Why pay for text messages to your friends when you can download an instant messaging client? In fact, why pay for cellular minutes at all when you can download Skype and just use your data plan? This sort of functionality has been creeping onto cellphones for years as they have become more and more like tiny computers. But OS’s such as Android threaten carriers with a loss of control over the applications on the phones on their network. And they may find themselves becoming nothing more than wireless Internet service providers, forced to compete on price and bandwidth (another brewing battle, by the way, with Sprint’s WiMAX rollout next year).
Great. I can hardly wait. One of the oddest, yet most predictable, phenomenons of technological advance has been the intense effort on the part of huge corporations to find some what of squeezing the tech toothpaste back into their last-millenium business plans and corporate structures. Hence we have Digital Millennium, multi-century “copyrights,” multi-year cellphone contracts, and so on, and so on, and ever on.
None of it will stand. The technology itself is too destructive to old ways of doing things. Geography used to matter - you had to be somewhere to get a job and then perform it. Making a living more or less tied you to (or forced you to go to) some place where jobs you could do existed. Soon enough that will no longer be the case - at which point physical location will become, for all intents and purposes, meaningless.
As will economic structures based on the scarcity of goods and services. We may find new and different meanings for scarcity, but the old ones are already vanishing fast.
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I can hardly wait either. Recently I picked up a couple of internet radio specific devices for the house, partly just to give them a try and partly for a practical purpose. The power level of a semi-local radio station drops to the point that we have a hard time picking it up during evening hours, and since they stream the signal on the ‘net, this solves the problem. Sure we could have used a laptop, and pushed the sound to quality speakers, but we just didn’t want to tie up a computer when we wanted to listen. What we have found however is that there are some really good internet only radio streams out there. What will be great is when those signals can be picked up coming across streams that were once only cell phone connections in the car, around town, and anywhere there are cell towers.
Yep, the concept of Place is going to take on less and less meaning as time goes on. Wrote a little blurb here — Link.
As to the big carriers. They are fighting a losing battle. AT&T, Sprint and Verizon are all now on prorated ETF’s having lost critical court battles in CA and WI. AT&T is fighting a losing battle in CA on unilateral contract terms. Verizon just lost to the NY AG on misuse of the term ‘unlimited’ in marketing plans even though the fine print had a cap. $150k fine and total reimbursement of all users kick off by Verizon for ‘abuse’.
What’s really funny is that the all the carriers except Sprint have the marketing plans that content is what saves their butts. If the Radiohead event is any indication, consumers want content by the drink and below $10. Content that cheap would not keep the lights on at Verizon.
John, I just added Third Pipe to the blogroll. Clayton has implemented categories, although I don’t know how to get them to display. In any event, your blog is the first to be entered in our new “Technology” blogroll.
What we have found however is that there are some really good internet only radio streams out there.
I found this out a while back. The local smooth jazz station (the only one, as far as I know, KKSF, owned by Clear Channel) likes to intersperse their music with crap that, IMO, doesn’t qualify as smooth jazz, and quite frankly it gets on my nerves.
After I finally took the plunge and signed up for DSL service, I discovered smoothjazz4u.com (online stream from WINR, Cincinnati) and I never turned back.
Geography still matters. I do RF optimization (”can you hear me now”) for the cellular providers, and this work has to be done where the antennas are. Because of my home situation, I have to turn down work in other markets, and when there are no upgrades going on here, there is no work for me.
Actually, I’ve been underemployed rather than unemployed, doing geek day labor putting computer cash registers in discount stores.
triticale,
From an infrastructure perspective, yes, geography will always matter. The placement, service and eventual removal of towers and the like have to take that into account. But for all your hard work, we the end users will not worry about Place.
Bill, thanks. Its an honor.