Re: My Dinner With Marc Andreessen

On Fri, 05 Jul 2024 10:56:20 +0200, Andreas Eder wrote:

Free markets ten ro become oligopols, if not regulated.

Case in point: the introduction of mobile phones. The Europeans decided
that there had to be a common standard, rather than having every carrier
build its own proprietary network. So they came up with a Government-
mandated spec called “GSM”. Yes, it was a complex. bureaucratic spec, but
it was a proper spec, with compliance tests and everything. So you had
proper interoperability. The only thing that tied you to a particular
carrier was that you got your SIM card from them. So switching carriers
was as easy as getting a new SIM card.

Meanwhile, in the USA, the prevailing ideology was “let the market
decide”. So each carrier created its own proprietary network, and its
customers were locked into that network.

And so you had the interesting situation where, in Europe, you could buy
your phone first, then decide which carrier to sign up to, whereas in the
USA, you first chose your carrier, and then you had to buy your phone from
them.

And not only was the European system successful in Europe, it became
popular in most of the rest of the world, too. So you had the situation,
in the early days of Android, where a new model from Samsung or HTC or
whomever would be available across the entire GSM-using world within a
matter of days, while customers in the US had to wait another couple of
weeks, for carrier-specific versions to come out for their particular
carriers.