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David Berlind, executive editor at ZDNet asked that question in his blog today.

Customer choice is apparently out the window these days when it comes to picking a cell phone. Imagine for example, if when you purchased a car, it was only allowed on certain roads. You’d have to figure out which roads you most travel, and then buy a car based on which one was allowed on most of those roads. Would you tolerate this?

and

When there were a lot of complaints that the iPhone is only available for one of AT&T’s two networks (reminder: the slower of the two), I thought “normal.” Business as usual. When I realized the phones Microsoft was offering to me for testing only worked on certain networks, I thought “normal.” Today, while I was at the Samsung gadget fest in NYC and saw an array of phones, most of which were carrier-specific, I thought “normal.” But then I wondered, why are we letting them (the proverbial “them”) define normal. Or maybe it’s me. How did I come to blindly accept this status quo? This isn’t normal. This is anti-consumer choice. Maybe the network over there isn’t the best. But in Europe, at least you can easily interchange phones and providers without finding out that you have to give up on owning the one handset you’ve had your eyes on for six months.

Go watch the video here (a good rant and worth watching)

Source: David Berlind Blog: Under the hood of disruptive technologies