TXLF: Defining and predicting the mobile "ecosystem"

Posted Apr 15, 2011 19:42 UTC (Fri) by jhhaller (guest, #56103)
Parent article: TXLF: Defining and predicting the mobile "ecosystem"

Minor nit - people were allowed to own their own phones in 1980, the consent degree breaking up the Bell System was signed in 1982, and was complete on January 1, 1984. I know, the article was just repeating an audience member, but they were wrong. I worked for the Bell System in 1980, and got a sticker to put on the phones I was renting to show I owned it (employees didn't have to pay for their existing phones, up to 5).

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owning your own phone

Posted Apr 15, 2011 22:53 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link]

That's a funny way of saying it, anyway: "people couldn't own their own phone - they had to rent it from the phone company." The financial arrangements and property rights aren't relevant to the analogy the speaker was trying to make. Had the phone company sold the instruments to subscribers, it wouldn't have changed the point.

The point is that the phone company controlled the network all the way out to the terminals (and beyond -- a landmark court case found that a subscriber couldn't even slide a rubber cup over the microphone to improve privacy -- that was a modification of the telephone network!).

The important change in 1980 was that people were allowed to attach any terminal equipment they wanted to the network (as long as it met certain specifications so as not to damage the network).

I don't know if the fact that phone companies started offering terminals for sale as well as for rent at that time was an auxiliary part of the rule change or just an economic result of it.

TXLF: Defining and predicting the mobile "ecosystem"

Posted Apr 18, 2011 22:37 UTC (Mon) by n8willis (subscriber, #43041) [Link]

I don't think the audience member said people couldn't own their phones *in* 1984; he said it was the situation _before the break-up_. I added the 1984 to the sentence because I originally intended to link to the Wikipedia article on the case, but somehow forgot to add it. In any case, the point is still valid regardless of the exact date that the practice in question ended.

As to giraffedata's point on property ownership, I do definitely think the situation *is* analogous: smartphones are given away "for free" only when on contract, and the contract/TOS dictate what the user can and cannot do to the hardware.

Nate