The American cellular empire has fallen, let the wars begin

This is what Europeans have had forever:

Verizon Wireless Says ‘Bring Your Own’ Device - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog:

... Verizon Wireless has stunned the wireless world by announcing that by sometime next year it will open its network to “any apps, any device.” There is a lot of fine print, but the essence appears to be that Verizon will offer two flavors of service: its traditional bundle, which typically includes a subsidy for phone purchase and various other features, and “bring your own” device service, which will be open to any device that meets “minimum technical standards.”...

The excellent NYT blog post connects this move to the big bandwidth brawl (BBB) over the 700 MHz US spectrum. On a related front T-Mobile announced a month or so ago that their future phones will support VOIP over Wifi.

The American cell phone empire as we've known it has fallen. It was a rotten tree of an empire, it only took one shove from Apple to bring it down.

Now we will see the mother of all bloodless battles. May the struggle be glorious and long.