Mossberg: cell carriers are holding back innovation by not allowing people to buy cell phones directly– Absolutely true, and he didn’t make the obvious comparison — to Europe, where they’ve let you get whatever phone you want for years.
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Well, it depends on the carrier. Nextel won’t let you buy them directly because there aren’t other iDEN phones. Sprint doesn’t because they like people to have the Sprint Experience from phone to network, etc. Cingular does allow you to purchase phones directly. All they require is that it support the 800 and 1900 bands and be GSM (ie. compatible with their network). Really, you can get away with a GSM1900-only phone if you don’t mind reduced coverage. I don’t think T-Mobile cares either. If you go to Chinatown in Boston, the stores sell the non-branded phones. I’m not sure about Verizon. There have been times when they haven’t cared and times when they would only activate Verizon stuff.
I think one of the bigger problems is that American phones operate on different frequencies (800 and 1900) rather than the world’s 900/1800. Interestingly, the world seems to have chosen frequencies that make antennas much more effective since something that is a 1 wavelength antenna on 1800 will be 1/2 wavelength on 900. But more importantly, the rest of the world is a much bigger market than the