Are consumers being protected?

1) All cell phones in North America(barring pre-paid devices, and possibly Mexico has something else going on but I doubt it) are sold on a subsided business model.

2) The iPhone is not capable of using "any network". For this to be possible it would need to have radio chipsets for CDMA, UMTS/W-CDMA, iDEN, GSM/GPRS/EDGE, AMPS, etc. The Verizon lawyer is just plain lying. I mean well, it would be possible but the device would be an inch thicker, at least 10 ounces heavier, oh and it would cost more. It's the iPhone, not the iBrick.

2a) I suppose that if there was a Global System for Mobile Communication that everyone (government, corporation, etc) decided to use we would not have this problem. We decided (That's the carriers based in America... Public and privately funded companies) to use whatever technology seemed to do the job right at the time. Planning was poor and the fractured networks in the United States will continue to hinder the sort of "free movement" that we should have. Hey, if you want to move your phone to another carrier whenever you want move to Europe. They got it right the first time.

2b) It's true that tear down report from iSuppli shows that Apple/AT&T (who knows how they divide device profit) make a decent profit from the iPhone. Here's the thing. Apple is not Motorola or Nokia, they are not "married" to making profit off their phones that will be sold at a lost like most if not all except for the iPhone and PrePaid cellular phones are. They were in the position to go to a carrier and say "we're going to sell you this device at 3% below retail price. We make the cash of of the hardware and you're lucky we picked you since everyone and their Denali driving mother will want one of these motherfuckers.

3) The jackass from Columbia law is making a flawed point using televisions as a compairision. The television is just too old to be used as a good example for comparison to a cellular phone. If we decided to use something like a Direct TV or Dish Network cable box (which has a contract) it'd be a lot harder for him to prove that what AT&T is doing should be considered wrong.

4) Who wants the open spectrum? Oh.. A software company? This already should be drawing a few more questions as they're profit model is not built into investing billions in building a network and then pulling a profit from subscribers, contracts, etc. Nope, not these hippies. They're platform agnostic. :P

I'm all about more consumer rights and less corporate welfare and all that bullshit. Though I don't like to think that we're seeing large companies pulling the wool over our already naive Congress.