PUBLIC MARKS from oseres with tags mobile & skype

Can you hear me now? The operator-centric mobile model is over Last week, T-Mobile Germany made some waves by banning Skype for the iPhone. Some might read this as a long overdue reassertion of operator power, but I disagree. A few months ago, I learned from a reliable source that a major operator was deliberately not shipping a very popular mobile phone model that they knew their customers wanted because the phone didn’t give them enough control over what the customer does. The phone was too open. This is exactly what Google was talking about back in 2007 when it insisted on openness as a condition to bidding in the FCC’s spectrum auction. Ten years ago, when I covered mobile operators on Wall Street, they used to cite their vast capital expenditure on building on their cellular networks as their core differentiator. This was the reality behind Verizon’s amusing “can you hear me now?” campaign.