Nexus One Needs a Bigger Playing Field

There's a little article on Wired expressing sorrow that the Google Nexus One is not the revolutionary device it could conceivably have been. The problem isn't with the phone itself, which is great, but the fact that you can't use it anywhere but T-Mobile.

It basically sounds right to me, but there isn't a lot that Google can do about it: the problem is with the telecoms, of course. Author Ryan Singel does end up pointing the way to the real solution, which is for the FCC to impose the Carterphone decision on the cell networks. The Carterphone decision helped mightily to spur the deployment of the modem, and hence of the Internet itself. A similar decision regarding the cell phone networks could only work to the greater good of society, while the cellphone networks would just have to find other ways to increase their profits (and I'm sure that there are other, more productive ways) than by exploiting their market power.