Virtual Pants

Nilay Patel writing for The Verge:

And carriers rarely want what’s best for their customers. “The carriers have always been wary of ‘excessive’ innovation in the mobile space because of the danger that it might make mobile service cheaper,” says Columbia Law School professor and The Master Switch author Tim Wu. If companies like HTC and Samsung were able to compete directly at the consumer level, the carriers would turn into dumb pipes — and AT&T and Verizon would be forced to raise their service levels and lower their monthly fees to effectively compete against each other.

That’s good for consumers, but bad for carriers. “There’s a business model that needs to be cared for,” a Verizon spokesperson told us. But the wireless spectrum AT&T and Verizon use to build their networks is a scarce public resource literally leased from the people of the United States — shouldn’t we have some say in how this market operates? Shouldn’t the rules be set up to favor consumers instead of blocking innovation and increasing prices?

It is only a matter of time before the carriers lose control of the industry and are turned into dumb pipes. It just takes some big players like Apple, Google, Samsung and Microsoft to stand up to them. I can’t wait.