Walt Mossberg and Katie Boehret were at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, and sent back this report on some of the highlights of the show.
I recently spoke at a conference on Web video held at the Finnish embassy in Washington, D.C., and sponsored by Beet.TV. In this excerpt, I spoke about several obstacles to the Web’s emergence as a replacement for standard TV, including the very slow bandwidth that is marketed as “broadband” in the United States.
As regular readers know, I have frequently attacked the U.S. wireless phone carriers for exerting near-total control over what phones, software and services American consumers can use on their networks. In fact, since 2005, I have dubbed the carriers “the Soviet ministries,” for inserting themselves between the producers of mobile hardware and software and the [...]
Suppose you own a Dell computer, and you decide to replace it with a Sony. You don’t have to get the permission of your Internet service provider to do so, or even tell the provider about it. You can just pack up the old machine and set up the new one. Now, suppose your new computer came with a particular Web browser or online music service, but you’d prefer a different one. You can just download and install the new software, and uninstall the old one. You can sign up for a new music service and cancel the old one. And, once again, you don’t need to even notify your Internet provider, let alone seek its permission.
Walt Mossberg is the author and creator of the weekly Personal Technology column in The Wall Street Journal, which has appeared every Thursday since 1991.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
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