T-Mobile’s Decision To Ban 3rd-Party Apps

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T-Mobile’s Decision To Ban 3rd-Party Apps

There’s a muttering on the technology blogs about T-Mobile’s decision to block third-party applications from accessing the internet on its handsets, starting from this post on GearLog. “This means T-Mobile feature phone users are prohibited from surfing the Web with Opera Mini, checking maps on Google Local for Mobile, listening to podcasts with Mobilcast, and using any other form of software not pre-approved by T-Mobile.” I’m not sure exactly how new this policy is, but it isn’t popular. And as GearLog points out, its perverse because using 3rd party applications on the handset will increase the amount of data used, raising profits for T-Mobile.

James Quintana Pearce Feb 28, 2007 6:22 PM ET

Posted In: Companies, T-Mobile

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Oren Friedman

No surprise there, if you're a Telus (in Canada) user. Can't install anything not sanctioned by the operator.
And if you access websites directly from your browser, the model is $0.05 per _page_.

See also http://abouttime.wordpress.com/2007/02/23/walled-gardens-how-about-locked-in-a-dungeon/

James Quintana Pearce

Well, that's true… but with a greater variety of things to do more people will sign up for the data plan. Whether the network can handle the load is a question, though…

Barnabas Cleave

'will increase the amount of data used, raising profits for T-Mobile'

This is not true if the end user is on a flate-rate data charge, such as T-Mobile's Web'n'Walk. Looks like you can use as much data as you like with T-Mobile, but only on services that they have created. The walled garden lives on.