| ridiculous how is the carrier of the cell phone service going to charge the user for using someone else's network and bandwidth? thats worse than the $2 fee you pay when you dont use your bank's atm. it honestly costs the cell phone provider nothing, unlike the situation with the bank.
the key here is the phone itself. my phone, the HTC Touch, can only use sprint's network so they dont worry about me. but if I had a pda-type device that could connect to any carrier or wifi spot, and the device is independently manufactured, what can they do?
thats the future: independent devices connecting to whatever available network through third party software and hardware (as necessary).
sure the phone co will try and bill you left and right and fight tooth and nail until the bitter end, but eventually we will be able to make phone calls from our own homes using our own paid-for wifi, OR that of another person/group which has either freely shared their network or is legally allowed to resell it.
what next, ISPs that forbid people from allowing friends to use their wifi network? user-agreement forms that require you to agree only certain specific persons can use the network? etc etc?
let them try to stop this ... in the end, just find another provider or device and move on. resistance is futile. |
