(2004-11-16) Bray Beattie Telco Garden

Tim Bray [offers](http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/11/15/Walled Garden) an Open model for the TelCo providers based on Russell Beattie's picture of the Walled Garden where they're trying to go now. At the end of the day, the core competence of a network operator is operating a network: providing connectivity and bandwidth. Why should they think they're going to become world-beaters offering games and ringtones and location-enabled apps? In fact, their garden walls have a net effect of discouraging bandwidth usage, that is to say people driving people away from their core competence... So I suspect that the only way forward is some combination of consumer revolt and government regulation. The consumer revolt will happen sooner than anyone thinks; Russ Beattie is the canary in the coal-mine. Whichever government is the first to get a clue will be doing its citizens a big favor. Plus, it will have the most profitable mobile-network operators in the world.