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Comment by Steko | Hacker News Reader

Apple has a long roadmap to turn the carriers into dumb pipes. The original iPad deal was the first step. This is the second. Just because ATT locks the sim today doesn't mean Apple hasn't negotiated an end date to that. Just because Verizon has their own SKU today doesn't mean Apple won't slowly put the screws to them to bring them on board a universal model.

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After 7 years in the telecommunications industry with the nations second largest telco, I can say for certain that they are dumb, and so are their pipes.

Telcos CEOs and big shareholders are extremely arrogant, but not dumb. IMHO in the US, the balance of power between telcos and phone manufacturers is still in favour of the telcos. To have any chance Apple will have to bring back most of their foreign profits (and that will cost a ton of taxes) and ally with other vendors (Google, Samsung, etc.). So not likely at all.

Or will Apple, Google, etc form a US (or non-US?) company that's invested in by their foreign, profit-booking subsidiaries thus negating the tax situation?

It's hilarious that you could "launder" profits this way.

The balance of power between the telcos and most "phone manufacturers" is in favor of the telcos but for Apple and the telcos it's decidedly in Apple's favor which is why they are now all on board with no exception I'm aware of to Apple's basic demands on branding, logos and crapware.

I would argue the senior staff may not be dumb, but much of their staff is another story. For example, I was working closely with Verizon staff while they were petitioning the FTC to allow them to raise 411 rates. Their argument for the required rate increase was that they were loosing customers to things like google 411 search, so they need to raise rates to keep their service profitable.

How's that for logic? "Hmm, we now have competition for our product that is better and cheaper, oh well we better just raise our rates." Meanwhile they were very slow to make improvements to their product as a means of countering competition.

The logic is that they have already lost the knowledgeable, price sensitive customers. Raising the rates would allow them to extract more value from the rest, e.g. old people.

Do you have any sources for this "roadmap"? If anything this built-in Sim card seems like an idea that lessens the power of the consumer and goes in the opposite direction to weaken consumer choice/freedom.

There's no shortage of analysis explaining how being able to switch carriers with the press of a button would lead carriers to offer more competitive deals to consumers.

... or alternatively entrench the pricing power of the big carriers by freezing-out upstarts.

If you can only activate your SIM with A, B or C they can present a 'price war' face whilst monopolising the market.

Why would A undercut B by anything more than pennies in such a captive market?

We see this in the UK with the Big Three ISPs offering increasingly silly incentives like supermarket shopping vouchers to poach customers from one another, but not actually growing their shared subscriber base or offering better products.

But you can still take out that SIM and put in one you got from your provider (or bought as a prepaid card in one of a zillion of places), can you?

If not, how does Apple plan to sell these phones in Europe?

I knew the USA was bad in this respect years ago, but from this thread, I get the impression that the USA _still_ lives in the middle ages, as far as mobile phone subscriptions go.

It only supports certain carriers and now we learn that carriers can lock it upon activation. I'd rather there be a small independant card that can easily be hot swapped to allow access to different carriers. Oh wait

As true as that may be, it's not exactly a "source" for your previous claim.

I'm not claiming a source, I'm pointing out the obvious implications of their actions in the space. The original ipad data plan isn't something AT&T thought up, it's something Steve forced on them and it's still the closest thing we have to dumb pipes. IMessage was another end run around carrier cash cows. Multi-SIM is another step. And when this choice Sim goes global that will be another bullshit carrier ripoff we can wave goodbye to.

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