Walter Mossberg slams the closed networks of the cellphone carriers (Wireless Carriers' Veto Over How Phones Work Hampers Innovation).

I call these cellphone companies the new Soviet ministries, because they are reminiscent of the Communist bureaucracies in Russia that stood athwart the free market for decades. Like the real Soviet ministries, these technology middlemen too often believe they can decide better than the market what goods consumers need.

Amen brother!

He also notes that cellphone carriers seem to be resisting making deals with music downloading services until they get their cut:

More recently, unidentified cellphone carriers are reported to have balked at allowing customers to buy a new phone, jointly designed by Motorola and Apple Computer, that would let users synchronize and play back music from Apple's iTunes computer program. One possible reason: They want to sell music themselves.

At last month's D: All Things Digital technology conference, which I co-produce for The Wall Street Journal, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said he was wary of producing an Apple cellphone because, instead of selling it directly to the public, he would have to offer it through what he called the "four orifices" -- the four big U.S. cellphone carriers.

Won't that be great? Music DRM will be used to determine which cellphone carrier we can choose. Already spent a lot of money on iTunes? Guess you won't be switching to Verizon anytime soon, that is, if you want to listen to the music you've licensed. (Just a theoretical example)

Mossberg also punches quite the hole in the arguments cellphone companies use on behalf of their closed network ways:

Cellphone carriers say one reason they keep tight control over what phones run on their networks is to protect the networks from harm and assure service quality for their subscribers.

But we've heard that before, and it wasn't true then. Until the 1970s, when the government forced open the market, the old AT&T phone monopoly refused to let consumers buy phones and plug them into their home phone lines. You could only rent phones, and they had to be models made by an AT&T subsidiary. AT&T said the restriction protected the quality of the wired phone network. But, lo and behold, when the ban was lifted the phone network was just fine, even though consumers were plugging in millions of less expensive, more innovative phones.

If they could have, I'm sure that the companies involved would have said the same thing about the internet. Yes, the internet faces many problems because of its open nature (spam, viruses), but one problem that it hasn't faced is lack of innovention, strong censorship and stagnation.

via EMERGIC.org