You can like their practices or not, but it's difficult not to agree that this policy was good for end users. Had the carriers got what they wanted, you would have found iPhones in which Facetime would be banned for policy reasons, or maybe banned to use Whatsapp, Telegram and other alternative messaging systems, forcing the user to SMSs or some carrier backed service.
Some (most?) people here don't remember the days of WAP and the pre-smartphone era when features came with monthly and/or usage prices and those pricing models continued right on as phones gained sophistication. One area where apple did work with the carriers was tethering, many early jailbreak and sideloading was solely for this feature.
Well, originally iPhones didn’t do tethering at all, regardless of carrier wishes. That was the genesis of the early jailbroken tethering apps. Once Apple did release tethering in iOS, it came with a bunch of Carrier Entitlements a carrier could set in their carrier settings, so that it can be blocked entirely or limited to customers paying a surcharge. (If the carrier settings say nothing, then it allows it, IIRC.) But at least the actual phone software isn’t customized, so switching the same phone to another carrier would enable it, if the new carrier allows it.
I think FaceTime over cellular has a similar thing, though I don’t know off the top of my head any carriers that actually block it.
(Interestingly, iPhones sold in the UAE do actually have FaceTime removed, on account of it being illegal there in some way or another. And since there isn’t a special build of iOS for UAE phones, I can only assume there’s a flag in the serial numbers or something that tells iOS to disable FaceTime on those units. So there’s a vibrant market in gray-imported units in UAE, since FaceTime will actually work there on iPhones brought in from elsewhere.)
The cornerstone which the apple platform may be eroded on is net neutrality, all the services running over commoditised IP links could be throttled or blocked returning the control back to the carriers.
Yep, sadly. But at least it wouldn’t be full control. And the ISPs/cell providers would have to realize, I suppose, that carrier-specific services (for example, video chat) are of little interest to customers precisely because not everyone we communicate with will be on the same carrier.
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