I’m guessing that executives at Verizon are busily kicking themselves for screwing up the negotiations with Apple over the iPhone to the point that Steve Jobs moved on to Cingular/AT&T. The pain was at least enough to warrant this press release:
http://news.vzw.com/news/2007/06/pr2007-06-28.html
Hey! We’re open on Friday too! We’ve got THE NATIONS MOST RELIABLE WIRELESS NETWORK. [whispered] Pay no attention to the lack of the iPhone. CHEAP PHONES! MUSIC! VCAST! LOOK! LOOK! LOOK! LOOK! LOOK!
Too bad they don’t advertise that they’re run by a bunch of shortsighted brain-dead trolls who have nothing better to do than cripple the Bluetooth functionality of their phones. They probably weren’t happy with the idea that somebody might actually [gasp] synchronize contacts, notes, etc. with their computer wirelessly! The horror!
Idiots.
The reason that AT&T could work with Apple on this is because what they don’t force on customers: Their specific lockouts such for things like ringtones, music, video, or any other content. Thus they didn’t want folks buying from the iTunes store instead of their overpriced Verizon store. AT&T wasn’t afraid to experiment with a potentially new phone model because their income isn’t heavily comprised of content from them. I hope it works just because it will help to put the power of content purchasing more into the consumers hands instead of only being available from the service provider.
Yeah, it’s all about control for both Apple and Verizon. It would have been a match made in hell, if it had happened.
All I can say is … [newsradio:matthew class="british punk"]MAYHEM![newsradio:matthew]