In the US, we HAD a history of controlling monopolies and oligopolies carefully - the trust-busting era, the steel breakup, the comparatively recent AT&T breakup - but the government has largely abdicated any significant role here. The notable exception was the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger, which, ironically, probably would have actually helped improve technology and push down prices because both of those carriers are moving into the prepaid/pay as you go space aggressively. Unfortunately, both also use GSM band technology...
With respect to unlocking, however, I can't fathom why the device manufacturers, particularly Google/Motorola Mobility, don't play the adults here. They have more to gain from impressing the end-consumer than making time with carriers. It has to be more expensive for manufacturers to create several different versions of the same device for different carriers. In many cases, these are all but different devices - not the same radios, not the same functions, often not even the same processors. If these manufacturers made their flagship devices with both CDMA and GSM radios operating on all common bands (deactivated or not, as need may be), they would benefit from economies of scale, lowering their costs and allowing the devices to sell, unlocked, at lower costs. This would make sales directly to end-consumers more realistic, which would FORCE the carriers to improve their service, in order to bring people into their no longer walled gardens. That would force improvements in speed, price, and quality.
Right now, I guess, manufacturers benefit from advertising done by the carriers, but they also suffer from the walled garden and loss of economies of scale. I have no way of knowing which is worth more to them, but we have yet to see a true, universal, unlocked device from a carrier. We can tweak world CDMA phones to "work" on GSM networks, but not too well so far.
In the US, we HAD a history of controlling monopolies and oligopolies carefully - the trust-busting era, the steel breakup, the comparatively recent AT&T breakup - but the government has largely abdicated any significant role here. The notable exception was the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger, which, ironically, probably would have actually helped improve technology and push down prices because both of those carriers are moving into the prepaid/pay as you go space aggressively. Unfortunately, both also use GSM band technology...
With respect to unlocking, however, I can't fathom why the device manufacturers, particularly Google/Motorola Mobility, don't play the adults here. They have more to gain from impressing the end-consumer than making time with carriers. It has to be more expensive for manufacturers to create several different versions of the same device for different carriers. In many cases, these are all but different devices - not the same radios, not the same functions, often not even the same processors. If these manufacturers made their flagship devices with both CDMA and GSM radios operating on all common bands (deactivated or not, as need may be), they would benefit from economies of scale, lowering their costs and allowing the devices to sell, unlocked, at lower costs. This would make sales directly to end-consumers more realistic, which would FORCE the carriers to improve their service, in order to bring people into their no longer walled gardens. That would force improvements in speed, price, and quality.
Right now, I guess, manufacturers benefit from advertising done by the carriers, but they also suffer from the walled garden and loss of economies of scale. I have no way of knowing which is worth more to them, but we have yet to see a true, universal, unlocked device from a carrier. We can tweak world CDMA phones to "work" on GSM networks, but not too well so far.