T-Mobile takes on Nokia
In an Orwellian style move T-Mobile Germany is planning on getting rid of headsets that allow it users to access Nokia’s fantastic new OVI service.
“T-Mobile Germany is supposedly planning on getting rid of all Nokia handsets that can access the Ovi service. Apparently they are in fear of competition with their own in-house content platform. This sounds like something that the US GSM providers would pull and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it happen” Darla Mack
This is only the beginning of the flexing of muscles from these giants and I expect to see lots of this over the next 3 to 6 months especially with the launch of Android.
These guys are in no way interested in making the experience great for us the users, the are only interested in the continuation of the the status quo, huge profits and little or no innovation.
Truphone who announced their new offering on Saturday have also experienced this over the past year and had to take T-Mobile to the UK High Court to get access to the network at a level playing field and we also had the issue last year of Vodafone turning Nokia N-Series handsets into Eunich’s by disabling or removing the wi-fi capability on the phone.
Carriers will not allow innovation on their network when it is to the detriment of their profitability, Individuals and companies can continue to innovate but it won’t be getting anywhere near these phone’s unless they see a future revenue.
Repeat after me, the carriers will make more money than they ever thought possible if instead of focusing on content, they focus on becoming a five nine fat dumb pipe.
Orange did the same thing a while back, the carriers see Ovi as a threat to their walled garden strategy. It’s wrong but the carriers could cause Nokia a big problem if they all drop high end devices.
It’s a short sighted approach, but it’s not a surprise. The most forward looking wireless carrier appears to be 3UK right now. They have a huge under used network and a small customer base, so offering customers something that the big 4 aren’t offereing, Skype for example, seems to be their plan. So it’ll be interesting to see how 3UK deals with Ovi.
@phoneboy - how do you see them doing it?..lower ARPU, massive bandwidth increases, creaking networks with backhaul bottlenecks are just a couple of challenges facing the wireless carriers right now…
so interested to read if your views differ from mine in how it could be done, as I agree a utlity (sounds nicer than ‘dumb pipes’) approach could be the right model.
@robevans Let’s assume that in some parallel universe, a carrier decides to ditch all the expense and overhead of trying to “shape” traffic or provide actual content and focuses on being a fat, dumb pipe. What happens?
* All that overhead of dealing with content goes away. This includes backend servers, negotiations with content makers, and customer service reps who have to deal with customers who are purchasing this “content” and it doesn’t work right.
* All that time carriers spend “approving” handsets goes out the window. These devices? They adhere to standards. They’re called GSM, CDMA, WCDMA, HSDPA, etc. Let the goverments deal with that and quit trying to do a job someone else already does.
* That extra money “saved?” Pump it into making fatter pipes and improving customer service.
The carrier with the fattest, dumbest pipe and the best customer service will be sitting pretty.
@phoneboy. I agree that’s the route to sitting pretty, dumping the rubbish music services and ripp off ring tones too.
But who’s going to take the leap first?
The buzz words of the month appears to be Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) which isn’t a good sign.
@robevans Speaking as a security weenie, Deep Packet Inspection is certainly possible. There’s nothing wrong with looking at packets so long as you don’t act on them. Of course, the act of observing can also create some unforeseen problems as well.
Sprint here in the U.S., given their failing position, could easily decide to declare armageddon by doing the strategy I’ve outlined above. Hell, they’ve got nothing else to lose and within a matter of a couple years, they’d be in the black and making money hand over fist. It’s either that or be bought by Verizon or be bailed out by the U.S. government like Chrysler was back in the 1980s.
T-Mobile are shooting themselves in the foot somewhat on this one I feel.
I’m no big evangelist of Ovi by a long shot (it’s so unfinished it’s barely worth looking at) but blocking this kind of service can only be detrimental to the end-user in the long term.
Also - What’s to stop Nokia preventing Nokia from selling their handsets? It would stink of gamesmanship and again, it would be detrimental to the end user… but it might make TMO see that Nokia mean business.
Then again - Would Nokia have the balls to try something like that?
I doubt it.
@whatleydude it’s a bit of a challenge for Nokia to balance the needs of end users with their largest customer (in aggregate): the carriers. The balance is particularly tricky in North America where there isn’t an established alternate market for handsets like there is just about everywhere else.