The iphone came on the scene back in September 2007 and two years later I’m still waiting to buy one.  In theory, I should have owned at least two different version by now: the original and the new 3G; That would likely translate into some nice cash for Apple but I haven’t done it.   I love Apple products but I have no love for AT&T and Satan himself couldn’t convince me to taste the fruit of AT&T’s network.

I can’t think of any other industry in electronics where such a screwed up mesh of carriers and manufacturers monopolize markets.  If I buy a TV it works with any “carrier” like Comcast, Dish Network, Direct TV, Time Warner, etc.   I don’t have to go and get my TV “unlocked” to get it to work when I switch “carrier” so why does the cell phone industry work this way?

You can take a land line phone that works on Verizon, unplug it and plug it into AT&T and it will work just fine.  Ditto for just about any other network worldwide on those old tethered phones.

Imagine if the electricity grid worked this way too whereby if you buy an appliance from Maytag it would only work with electricity delivered by X company.   If you use Y company as your electric provider, your Maytag applicance wouldn’t work.

The free market is supposed to fix this but carries and manufacturers seem all too happy to create artificial monopolies and the FCC and other government agencies say nothing about it.

I do understand that there are some technical issues in that carrier like Sprint is running a CDMA network which is incompatible with GSM but that’s part of my point.   I like the Palm Pre but I would never buy one because I travel a great deal internationally and the rest of the world is on GSM.   AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon all have or have access to GSM network so there should be no real reason why the iPhone shouldn’t be sold for T-mobile or Verizon networks.

In the early days of the electric grid there were debates about using DC or AC based electric grids just as in the early days of VHS/BETA and HD-DVD/BluRay format wars.   It seems ALL of those debates were worked out and a standard was set and we’ve all moved on EXCEPT when it comes to cell phones.

I’m still waiting Steve, I have a few hundred dollars burning holes in my pockets for an iPhone all you have to do is not force me onto AT&T.