Four-Eight-Four [dot org]

This past Saturday, the issue of what to do with my cell phone service came to an abrupt head. I broke my (un)trusty old RAZR cell phone, so I found myself needing to make a decision on what to do in a hurry.

I did some quick research and found out that … surprise, surprise … Verizon has stopped the most heinous of their sins, the automatic contract extension they foisted upon any customer who dared change to a different calling plan.

That change alone killed my main reason for wanting to switch to AT&T … I was now able to change my plan as needed to allow for trips, etc. without chaining myself to Verizon for eternity. Changing to AT&T wouldn’t save me any more money, especially on top of the $130 early termination fee I was going to eat if I switched.

So, I finally decided to take them up on their “new every two” scam (since I am happy with their service) and pick up a BlackBerry Pearl. I managed to get the Pearl at the princely sum of $5 and some change (sales tax), due to the fact that it was on sale for $250, minus the $100 off for taking a two year contract, minus another $100 for activating a PDA data plan for the first time, and the $50 mail-in rebate. Cha-ching!

Now I know why they call these things “crackberries” … this device is everything that Palm wanted to be and more. Although my initial plan was to just use it as a phone and enjoy the ability to sync it with my Mac, and to continue to use my Asus MyPal as my PDA, I’ve actually found the bizarre keyboard setup on the Pearl quite easy to use … easy enough that I’ve moved all my notes, calendar stuff, task list, etc. to the BlackBerry and quit carrying the MyPal around. I’ll wait a couple of months to make sure I’m happy with the BlackBerry, and then if I haven’t found any compelling reason to keep the PDA around, I’m just going to sell it, along with the stylus and the Bluetooth keyboard I got with it (which doesn’t work with the BlackBerry).

Heck, I don’t even miss the stylus. Funny that even a week ago I was dead-set against anything that didn’t have that sort of input device.

Back to Verizon … I was surprised enough to see Verizon doing the right thing in regards to the contracts, but then I see this today:

Pigs Fly, Hell Freezes Over and Verizon Opens Up Its Network — No, Really

Please, somebody wake me up before this dream gets too bizarre.

However, this sort of thing isn’t really without precedent, and I don’t mean that (as the article points out) Verizon is the near-last of the major carriers to make a move like this.

What it really reminds me of is AOL back in the bad old days when the sort of bandwidth we enjoy today from DSL and cable modem internet plans seemed like a far-fetched dream (at least at any reasonable price). Remember back when using AOL meant that you had to use their software to browse the internet and access their email? Using Eudora or Netscape just wasn’t acceptable or possible, given the proprietary nature of their software and network at the time. Yet eventually they realized (around 1998, I think) that given the overall openness of the internet that trying to lock people in to their software would ultimately be a bad business decision. I think Verizon is in essentially the same position today.

I suspect that some kind of warm, fuzzy convergence of the wireless networks and the internet is well on its way right now. After all, I’m using Verizon’s very nice Broadband Access to have net access when I’m out of the office, and very often the connection quality and speed is as good as, if not better than what is available at most free hotspots, and even some un-free hotspots as well, with the exception of the Wayport stuff that McDonald’s has. It seems to me that internet via wireless phone providers is the next logical step in the evolution of wireless access, and I fully expect to see hotspots start to peak and fade away within the next five years or so.

Add to that the fact that the boundary between “smart phones” and your average, run-of-the-mill cell phone is becoming more and more blurred by the day (after all, my RAZR had a full-featured address book and a relatively useful calendar) … meaning that keeping a network artificially closed is going to become more and more difficult. Today only a few customers are willing to try extreme measures like flashing their phones with software from other providers and other means to enable the artificially-disabled stuff on their Verizon phones … but as phones become more and more powerful, and the inevitable standardization of operating systems occurs, it will only become easier for customers to unlock the disabled functionality of their phones.

I’m happy to see Verizon making this move. The iPhone aside, I really didn’t want to move to AT&T, especially since I’ve been very, very happy with Verizon’s service. If they keep this up, I may well be a customer for years to come. Of course, unless I’m wiling terminate my contract early, I am for at least another two years …

PS: I did poke around at one of the Voyager phones on Saturday. It does seem to be a nicely done phone, and the interface is pretty intuitive. I do really like the full keyboard inside. I haven’t played with an iPhone yet, so I can’t say how it compares (or if they interface is as much of a rip-off of the iPhone as it looks), but it does look like a very nice unit. I might have bought one myself if it wasn’t completely impossible to sync it with a Mac right now. Of course, now that I’ve gone BlackBerry, I don’t think I’ll ever switch to anything else.

Of course, I did say that about Palm one time.