This is probably going to cause more controversy than needed: Chris Sacca, head of special initiatives at Google, said on a panel this week that operators have lobbied the search giant, asking it to stop people accessing Google Mobile Maps,” reports ZDNET UK.
He said this at an Oxford University event on a panel..."They’re inserting themselves in between you and an application that you want. I think that has scary, scary implications,” said Sacca.
Reid Hoffman, CEO of LinkedIn compared the arrival of general IP and open protocols to the mobile phones industry as a bursting dam, and asked “are you sure you want to be standing there when the dam finally goes down?” I think operators are well aware of the cracks in the dam, but are patching it up to give them time to ride the wave rather than get swept away. Whether there’ll be enough time for that I don’t know.
One interesting comment came from Bobby Rao, Vodafone corporate strategy director, about VoIP (at a different time): “VoIP is not a service. It’s a technology which provides only one thing—cheaper calls—and we can provide cheaper calls very easily by cutting prices...We think the best way to offer people cheaper calling plans is to offer them cheaper calling plans”. So why don’t they do so? Because the majority of their revenue still comes from voice, and if they lower that even further they’re going to be in real trouble.