On Beyond A T & T: 1 out of 3 iPhones roaming free?

As a Verizon customer looking longingly through the shop window at an iPhone, (love the phone, hate the cell service) this Mediapost missive made me sit up and take notice:

Now, it looks as if somewhere around 1 million phones have been unlocked without authorization. Of the 3.7 million sold by Apple, only 2 million have been activated by AT&T. The wireless company is believed to hold around half a million, but that still leaves more than 1 million phones missing.

Wow.   Where’d they go?  Speculation is that yeah, a few of ’em have been hacked for other carriers (workarounds started to appear within days of the iPhone’s release after all), but most of them have been put into play overseas – far beyond any spotty AT & T coverage map, as it were.  Huh.   Another example of the global economy – both legal, gray, and black – at work.    Apple’s attempts to block/lock/and “freeze” iPhones seems to be having the same effect as those RIAA lawsuits are having on P2P file-sharing, too:   Or, as Wendy Davis suggest:

Perhaps Apple could escalate the software battle, but it seems inevitable that more workarounds would follow. In the meantime, it would make sense for the company to focus on forging new wireless deals that will result in more choices for consumers.

Death of the Dialup

Yes, yes, I know, we all hear a lot of hyperbole about the “dizzying pace of change” these days. But I was floored by a sidebar to an article in Saturday’s Washpost about changes in PC buying and usage habits. The sidebar chronicles the differences in how people get online, where they obtained their computers, how many they own, etc. in just one year, from 2005 to 2006. In one year, mind you. Check this out:

Primary Method of Internet Access

Dial-up:

8.7% (down from 39.6 percent)

Cable:

50% (up from 36.3 percent)

DSL:

39.7% (up from 22.2 percent)

Satellite Internet:

1.6% (up from 0.7 percent)

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Home Networks

86% have a home network

63.8% have WiFi

30.6% use wired ethernet

4.8% use phone-line-based network

0.8% use power line

Amazing. The “scree-bzzzzzz-uk-uk-uk” of a modem connection is about to go the way of the sound of a coal scuttle. You’ve got to look in the fine print, by the way, to see the source of these stats: Its’ from the giant IT research firm IDC,