In a letter sent to the House of Representatives, Verizon has stated that after six months of exclusivity, it will offer its handsets to carriers with fewer than 500,000 subscribers. The letter was specifically addressed to Rick Boucher, chairman of the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and Internet. While Verizon is usually not the company that gets phones that really excite people these days, it still gets its hands on a lot of CDMA phones, most notably BlackBerry handsets. What’s important here is not so much who is now sharing, but who isn’t.
Recently, the US Government has been very interested in the Apple-AT&T exclusivity deal. This has expanded into an investigation into handset exclusivity deals in general. So what Verizon is doing is very clever. By sharing their handsets with smaller companies, they’re changing the game. Rather than exclusivity to be the norm, it becomes something that only the minority do. So AT&T comes out as the monopolizing bad guy who prevents everyone else from having the shiny toy.
Verizon’s sharing move is both good for Verizon and for consumers. If Verizon is successful in forcing AT&T to end its exclusivity deal, then Verizon gets a whole lot more by way of customers – there are iPhone users who are dying to break free of AT&T. That’s great for consumers because, hey, we get to choose between multiple carriers! We can go with the one that works best, rather than the one with the nicest handset.
In the long term, however, I hope the government realizes that what Verizon is doing is not normal. Verizon’s newfound kindness should not be mistaken for proof that the industry can successfully self-regulate at all times. Verizon is acting out of self-interest, and right now, it just so happens that its also in the interest of the consumer. But if Verizon had a smartphone just as popular as the iPhone, do you really think they’d be willing to pass it around?
(Original story via GigaOM)
