Cingular Renews Vows to Microsoft

Personally, I think that is a horrible idea...

Reason being, for the unsavvy user, they would go in, buy a phone, and not know anything about it, and expect it to work with every provider. I understand there are ways around this, but I don't feel that a "sales person" would always lead them in the right way. Either from ignorance or greed. Atleast when they are in the Cingular Store and you have to get a Cingular contract, you know that it will work flawlessly on their network.

Now on the other hand, if we were in a Utopia and all networks were exactly the same, and people didn't have to worry if there handset was going to work on another provider, or if this that or the other feature would work correctly I could see this. It would be nice to be able to pick up a phone without having to go through the hassle of either buying it online, or spending an ungodly ammount for the "retail price" that is severly overpriced, but either way... We don't live in that society so I do not believe that is going to happen anytime soon.