On Thu, 2007-03-15 at 17:44 +0000, Ian Stirling wrote: > Benjamin C Burns wrote: > > Sean Moss-Pultz wrote: > >> Companies like Cingular have been known to whitelist handsets. > >> They *could* do it for the Neo. I highly doubt they would. > >> > > I mean no offense here, but by "whitelist," do you actually mean > > "blacklist," or ban? > > > > I don't really follow the day-to-day of this market very much, but does > > FIC have any branding agreements with Cingular or T-Mobile? If so, it > > A white list is the inverse of a blacklist. > Any device on it works.
Ah...I meant something slightly different. I was referring to Tim Wu's paper: "The method of exclusion is a “whitelist” of Verizon phones which, by implication, prevents others from working. Without an approved ID number, telephones not sold by Verizon will not be recognized and cannot be used on the network. This effectively makes Verizon Wireless the gatekeeper of market entry for telephones on their network, like the AT&T of old. The whitelist is not a matter of technological necessity. Sprint is also a CDMA carrier and its practice is slightly different. Sprint keeps a list of customer ESNs and bars the use of existing ESNs—which can be evidence of a “cloned” or stolen telephone. While Sprint “discourages” the use of non-Sprint phones on its network, and will not offer technical support for such phones, it does not block the use of phones on its network as Verizon does. In other words, a consumer who owns his own phone can call Sprint customer service and have his phone activated on the network. Hopefully that makes things clear. -Sean _______________________________________________ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community