T-Mobile Bans Others' Apps On Their Phones 349
cshamis writes "T-Mobile has recently changed their policies and now tell their customers with appropriate data plans and with Java-Micro-App-capable T-Mobile phones: no third-party network applications. You can, of course, still use their incredibly clunky and crippled built-in WAP browsers, but GoogleMaps and OperaMini are left high and dry. Would anyone care to speculate if this move is likely to retain or repel customers?"
T-mobile acting sys-admin (Score:2, Interesting)
I guess some people will like that, and it will probably increase security for the phone, third party network applications would include all kinds of malware if I understand it correctly.
Anyhow the problem with "sys-admins" is that if they start bothering the boss because he can not play whatever little game used to play and things like this they don't last for long in the job.
Only problem is that costumers are not employees here, in that sense they are all bosses so of course T-mobile is also going to loose some costumers on this.
I don't think it will be that big a percent of costumers they loose, I personally don't use my phone for anything than talking and those pesky SMS-messages. I don't think the use of WAP is all that widespread yet, so the earlier the better to try and implement a strategy like this, before people begin getting to happy with different third party apps. Perhaps this is going to count in the positive direction for T-mobile in the long run when malware gets more and more widespread on phones, it will make T-mobile different from other network providers which might be a good thing (at least outside Germany where they have the advantage of being the biggest player).
Seems a bit backwards. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:They won't care (Score:4, Interesting)
Well crap (Score:2, Interesting)
Sprint has been pretty good for me I guess I will probably stay with them.
Re:Well crap (Score:2, Interesting)
I can't vouch for all areas, but at least in terms of tech support for what I work with, T-Mobile is undeniably awful. They neglect basic steps that a first-day-on-the-job trainee at my workplace would know off by heart, routinely plunk customers into our call queues (which have zero hold time) without staying on the line to tell us what the issue is or what they've done, and sometimes they don't even tell the customer they're transferring to us - so the customer just gets put on hold, and when someone picks up again, he doesn't know what just happened or why he's talking to someone else.
They have a terrible lack of knowledge of their own systems, and zero knowledge of ours, when their jobs are meant to require full knowledge of both. My company is supposed to be offering the next tier of support for their customers, but it's gotten to where we are basic T-Mobile support, along with upper-tier support for all other carriers.
This policy of blocking things isn't new to them either. For instance, T-Mobile arbitrarily ruled that you cannot set up a Hotmail/MSN/Windows Live Mail email account on their devices (smartphones and BlackBerries and the like) that support it. Why? Who knows. My best guess is that it is because T-Mobile and AOL are owned by the same parent company and they are trying to make it inconvenient to use other email services, but I have no idea.
Best technical support is by far offered by one of the Canadian carriers, Rogers. They have awful customer service and billing policies though. But they sure as hell know how to fix anything.
I have T-Mobile and a Blackberry 7290... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Well crap (Score:2, Interesting)
And there's no attempt to lock down bluetooth. They tried locking it with one of their first BT-capable phones but then they did something very surprising for a cell phone company: they listened to customer complaints and offered a firmware update to unlock it and haven't locked it on any of the current models, as far as I know.
They're pretty flexible with data plans. Since my unlimited data is for a phone, not for one of their wireless cards, I'm not supposed to use it extensively with a computer. But after the DSL went out for three days, I used the 3G phone as a replacement connection and had it connected for almost the entire 3 days. No complaints from them and no extra charges.
So I'm surprised they're not a more popular company with the geek crowd. As far as I can see, they're the least restrictive of any of the major American carriers.
And now that I've said something nice about a cell phone company, they'll probably implement some terrible policy tomorrow.
Re:They won't care (Score:4, Interesting)
I hate the crippled nature of verizon phones as much as the next guy, but simply can't look past the fact that my phone is fundamentally there to place and receive calls reliably. No other network I have tried (and I HAVE personally tried all of the other ones) even comes close to Verizon's coverage in the Northeast. And it's not just average joe blow... Easily 95%+ of PhD's and PhD students I know have verizon service...
Cell networks are stuck in the 20th century (Score:4, Interesting)
Compare cell phone networks to the Internet which was designed mostly by scientists and engineers in an academic, peer reviewed environment with the simple goal of building an efficient network.
If the Internet had been designed phone companies, you'd by your computer from you're ISP and it probably wouldn't work with any other ISP, your ISP bill would list every site you visited that month, overseas sites would be charged at a higher rate, and DNS would probably be sold as a 'white pages' lookup service where they could charge you a penny for every click.
Phone systems are just plain dumb and the people who run them are concerned more with nickel and diming you for every trivial service they can think of than they are in building good network infrastructure.
The FCC is largely to blame for this because they choose to auction off the airways to the highest bidder almost without regard as to how that bidder is going use the medium.
I'm no fan of big government but if we're going to have regulation, then let's do the thing right. Let's require cell phone companies to provide mobile IP addresses and let anybody access their network with the hardware and software of his own choosing. Let the consumer buy *airtime*, nothing more, and let the consumer decide whether he'll use voice, download music, stream video, text message, etc., just like we do with landline companies.
O RLY? (Score:3, Interesting)
Seeing as this morning my office gave me a brand new Blackberry 8700G (Edge network, fast processor) and the first thing I did was install Google Maps.
It installed with Zero problems, and it runs great.
So... what's this about banning third party apps?
Re:Well crap (Score:3, Interesting)
Since when? AOL is part of Time Warner, T-Mobile is the US branch of Deutsch Telekom. Now while DT did or does manage the AOL Germany service, AOL is not part of T-Mobile.
It's the VOIP stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
The third party software they're afraid of is VOIP software that encourages people to use data services as a replacement for their overpriced phone plans.
(Why are there 160 comments above mine with no mention of this?)