Truphone speaks to the BBC about the N95 VoIP castration preformed by Vodafone
By Stefan Constantinescu on Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 at 1:44 AM PST In Ideas and rants
Ewan found this audio interview on the Truphone blog and it is good to finally see this issue being brought forth to the public.
Us geeks know about the the N95 VoIP debacle, but I severely doubt the general population in the UK does. I hope this BBC interview begins a snow ball effect and people start asking: What else has my operator removed from my handset?
I know here in the states the ringtone market is huge since operators lock their devices so well that you simply can’t use a ringtone unless it was purchased from their library.
What’s more important, in my opinion, is that this is getting so much press, while US carriers do and have done this for years and no one seems to care.
It is a shame that they’ve done that to the Branded Euro N95s (didn’t someone already post how to Unbrand an N95 online though?)
The ring tone “lockout” depends on the Network and specific phone’s firmware since I have had great success using just about any audio file as a ring tone for my “Branded” Nokia N75.
For 99% of the Population in the U.S. Branded vs. Unbranded isn’t viewed as that big of a difference (yet.)
I suspect once the iPhone is released and gets a larger percentage of Mobile Device consumers (in the U.S.) to accept a $500 price point that very well may sway things but not much more than 2-3% of the total consumer base per year (that is my best case estimate.)