How Wireless Providers Can Stay Competitive

T-Mobile already has built something close to what cloud services are like and it looks like they may be doing the same once it has the app store up and running.  Verizon Wireless has also done the same as well.  These evil ones have finally realized the need to provide services that customers want.

In fact, Verizon has gone as far as to get aid from Google to serve as its default search engine.  Given the history between the two, it almost seems like Verizon "gets it".

This is the gist of RCR Wireless' post about Mobile 2.0.  Cloud computing and services could be just the thing for providers to continue their hold on subscribers.  Funambol CEO Farizio Capobianco seems to advocate ways for carriers to just that. Lock them into specific wireless providers.

But as we mobile warriors know, it's about flexibility.  Not locking us into specific services and then limiting what users can do.  Whether they like it or not, providers opening is the only way they can keep subscribers.  They don't need to be dumb pipes as Verizon's CEO so eloquently put it.  What they are fight is against a tide towards true openness, not "open" in the weird double-speak the wireless providers love to borrow from "1984".

Like the RCR post said, they need to wake up.  Not to cloud but to reality.

Note:  RCR Wireless mentioned Oracle's objection to cloud.  It's weird since distributed computing is sort of like cloud right?  As for Apple's MobileMe fiasco.  It's still a fiasco.  They ask users until the end of the year to fix it all.

Another Note:  Blackberry Storm has no Wi-Fi.  Looks like the cloud is the only want Storm users can embrace mobile Internet and related services.