Wired on Friday:Last week, mobile phone provider 3 (Hutchison Whampoa) in the UK made what it claimed was a momentous announcement. With luminaries from eBay, Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! standing by to heap on the praises, the third generation (3G) company announced it was switching to a new open model, after years of "walled garden" connectivity.
Subscribers would pay a fixed fee and have endless access to the internet, rather than a limited set of websites or a "pay-as-you-download" charging structure for data.
Internet applications such as Google Maps would be available on your phone, as well as a receiver to pick up television and films from your own PC rather than from Hutchison's expensive and exclusive deals. It will enable your PC to record shows and then re-broadcast them down the phone to wherever you are.
Hutchison was clearly excited by this revolution. Frank Sixt, Hutchison's group finance director, declared it "the end of rationing".
Minds not currently employed by the company might describe it as the arrival of the blindingly obvious - or the death of 3's insane original business plan.
Back when 3 was one of the first European 3G networks, the company somehow got it into its head that it was better to "ration" services and wall in its customers. This meant customers were prevented from using the wider internet and were instead confined to 3's restricted (but lucrative) applications and shows. 3 saw itself as a media group, producing football shows and video collections for users to snap up at the same exorbitant profit margins as ringtones and text messages.
Hutchison's policy wasn't entirely without merit - most of us are happy to play around with our phones without exploring their possibilities too far, so the lack of the wilder corners of the web were not greatly missed. But by deliberately battening down its customers' hatches, Hutchison instantly lost two key markets.
The 3G first-adopters hated it, because most of them wanted to use 3G broadband for what God intended: faster internet data rates. They wanted to plug their laptops into their phones and get online. A 3G offering that didn't do that wasn't 3G at all, but an expensive brick of a phone.
Secondly, by isolating its customers, 3 also cut off 99.9 per cent of the potential innovators who might have created a killer application that would have used 3G to its maximum potential. I remember the behind-closed-doors development frenzy that went on at Hutchison before its launch: the games developers it hired, the UK soccer deals it signed, the dreams of global domination. Hutchison is and remains a company open to ideas and innovation - but only if you have a contract with it.
That's not an unfamiliar approach in mobile telecoms - but ask any internet broadband provider if they know what the next popular website will be and whether they will have an exclusive deal, and they'll look at you as if you were crazy. Predicting the internet? That's the job of those who provide the pipes, they'll say.
It looks like Hutchison hasn't quite learnt its lesson. It has opened up its network, finally, but to show what was out there, it merely introduced a few of the usual suspects. It's a move on from the time when it only allowed its users to sample a smorgasbord of websites chosen by Yahoo! and banned all the others, but it still smacks of selecting a few chosen ones.
By far the most exciting - and odd - choice of these internet giants was Skype.
Skype allows users to make free phone calls over the internet using voice-over internet protocol (VoIP). This means that installing the Skype client on a flat-rate 3G phone would effectively gut 3's normal voice-call income.
Why would 3 agree to this? A number of reasons pop up. One, Hutchison could be really desperate: at the same time as it announced the X-Series, it also admitted that plans for a profitable initial public offering or sale had been long abandoned by the company.
Two, and perhaps more cynically, Hutchison knows that Skype isn't going to have the quality of service and ease of use that its phone service provides. This demonstrates a somewhat contradictory view of its own 3G network, however: either its broadband is good enough to carry Skype calls or it's too flaky to provide a really competitive high-speed internet experience.
Third, and more cynical still: Hutchison isn't planning an entirely open internet after all. Skype calls will be allowed, but other VoIP services will be banned. Ebay and Google will get premium access to customers, but only at a price. Other websites and services can get the same speedy connection, the same pre-installed applications, but only if they pony up to the mobile providers.
The walls around the walled garden go down, but unless you want to swim over a moat to get to the users, you'll need to pay Hutchison a small entrance fee.
I've no evidence to prove that Hutchison doesn't mean it when it claims it really is changing its tune and providing open internet access. But even if I don't have to worry about sacrificing the famous "network neutrality" of the internet - the open way anyone can connect to anyone - Hutchison certainly does.
A flat-rate, non-discriminatory 3G network would truly bring mobile users all the benefits of the internet. But working out how 3 could make the money it needs to survive off that is a far tougher proposition.
The only advantage over Hutchison's previous money-making schemes is that if it's smart, it might actually work.
