When my cell phone company gave me the run around, I got tired of dealing with them and reported them to the FCC. That got some action. It also helped that I sent a letter to the company's CEO.It is bad business to be at odds with the FCC. For Microsoft, it helps if the FCC has their sights aimed at other companies that are behaving badly.
This blog post excerpt from Jason Calcanis, reprinted with permission here, is a rant against the machine known as Apple Corporation.
Apple took Google’s innovative and absurdly priced phone offering, Google Voice, out of the App Store and is currently being investigated by the FCC for this action. This point is similar to the browser issue, in that Apple wants to own almost every extension of the iPhone platform. How long before Apple decides to ban a Twitter client in favor of an Apple Twitter-like product? Seems crazy, I know, but by following Apple’s logic you should not be able to use Firefox or Google Chrome on your desktop.
Simple solution and opportunity: Let people have three or four phone services coming in to their iPhones and perhaps charge a modest licensing fee for those types of service. Or, just simply stop being jerks and let the free market decide how to use the data services they’ve BOUGHT AND PAID FOR. That’s the joke of this: you’re paying for the data services that Apple is blocking. You pay for the bandwidth and Apple doesn’t let you use it because, you know, they know better than you how you should consume your data minutes.
