It has been around for fewer years than you can count on the fingers of one hand but the open wireless internet already feels like a birthright. For anyone with a touchscreen smartphone, it’s outlandish to think you couldn’t download any app – or tap into any internet service – you wanted.
The era of Wap and walled gardens, however, with all its limitations and frustrations, is not that far in the past. And the US, where the iPhone and its kind have made their biggest inroads, is about to put the new-found freedoms to their first serious test.
This does not have to end in tears. What follows will be an exercise in posturing and brinkmanship by mobile operators and internet companies as they jostle for advantage. At stake is how the spoils of the smartphone revolution are divided up – but those spoils should be big enough to prevent truly self-destructive behaviour.