The big news today is that Verizon Wireless is going to open up its network next year, letting customers use phones and software not sold by the carrier.
This is certainly an interesting move, especially in light of Google’s Android, but how much this will impact Verizon in terms of new subscribers is questionable. More and more, the concept of openness is intertwined with universality and thus with the global wireless market. The reason people go to the trouble of using “unlocked” or more “open” devices is because they’re generally more tech-savvy. Thus they want more technologically sophisticated handsets (smartphones, more rich multimedia features) than those which their respective U.S. carrier is offering. The average U.S. wireless customer just wants something that’s a good value and doesn’t drop their call–an open system is not top of mind.
For the most part (the iPhone being the major exception), those “cooler” multimedia
handsets are being made by OEM’s in Europe and Asia where the dominant standard is GSM. Check out Nokia’s 880 Sirocco, right, and some other coveted foreign phones. (While Japan and South Korea are the market leaders in terms of bleeding edge technology, their devices aren’t truly compatible with any networks outside their home countries.) The competing system is CDMA, which is incompatible with GSM. If a phone is designed for GSM, it will not work on a CDMA network and vice-versa. It doesn’t seem to be of much benefit to jump to Verizon, which functions on CDMA/EVDO if the “cool” unlocked device is only available with a GSM standard.
Global handset compatibility has always been the Achilles’ heel for Verizon and a spot where AT&T and T-Mobile actually hold the upper hand.
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