November 28, 2007
Verizon soon to suck a little less
Verizon Wireless has gotten top ratings from Consumer Reports for the last few years, mainly for the strength of its network and the fact that it's customers are less furious than those saddled with the other major players -- which is another way of saying Verizon's service sucks less than the rest of the industry.
Talk about damning with faint praise.
Most of my family is on the Verizon network, taking advantage of the free cell-to-cell calls, but the biggest drawback -- at least for technophiles like me -- is the lack of cutting-edge phones available through the carrier.
Verizon, with the confidence (read: arrogance) made possible by having the best cellular network, has long felt that it didn't need to offer "cool" phones; that was for the other guys, who had to entice users to sign up for hi-tech gimmickry -- and lousy service.
To make matters worse, Verizon crippled the phones, disabling many features so users would have to buy more junk from them. For example, fully-functional Bluetooth allows you to transfer an MP3 of a song you already own from your PC to your phone in a matter of seconds.
For free.
Well, Verizon won't have any of that. Not when it can make you pay for the song -- or ringtone -- again. So they cripple the Bluetooth function, preventing you from moving files between your phone and PC.
Tech-savvy users can hack through the block (and less tech-savvy folks -- like me -- can get their friends to hack them) and restore full functionality to their phones.
But still, how annoying. You've bought the damn phone; it's yours, you own it.
Cripes.
Other networks, the ones using GSM instead of CDMA (just different technologies), allow customers to buy "unlocked" phones from places other than the carrier (like Amazon) and then activate them.
Not Verizon. Until now.
By the end of 2008, Verizon Wireless will open their network to any device which meets a "minimum technical standard." What that standard is, exactly, VZW isn't saying yet -- that will come in "early 2008." So any device (including applications) tested and certified in VZW's new $20 Million test lab is fair game for use on their wireless network. In other words, Verizon becomes the data pipe, and nothing more for these new "bring-your-own" customers.
This is huge news. Not only will consumers have a greater choice of phones, but manufacturers will have an incentive to tweak their products and make them available to a vast market of frustrated techies.
And Verizon will instantly suck a little less, making it a tad better than the rest.
Posted by Mike Lief at November 28, 2007 07:18 AM
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