March 24, 2008
Verizon's Open Development Initiative
Verizon announced it's Open Accesss Program on March 19th. One that I think bodes well for the future of the wireless industry. The website is really short on details. The press releases and artiles seem to have more information, like this one which mentions several rate plans, including a "custom" one.
Verizon is promoting the idea that non phone devices may drive growth, and they want to support that. As an entrepreneur who would like to make a device that has wireless data access that is not a phone, we have had basically no options in the past. As Adam Grosser mentions in Business Week article above, the process of dealing with carriers is brutal, long, and chokes off all innovation. So this is a welcome step, we will see how it pans out.