My ideal cell phone

The introduction of the iPhone has led me to think about my ideal phone. It would be a phone on permanent roam that would chose whatever network was providing the best service. Imagine, for example, using your cell phone to talk on Sprint because it had the best voice coverage in Alaska, while at the same time using Verizon's 3G network for Internet access.

The iPhone has Wi-Fi access, which is a giant step forward. Wi-Fi has been kept off American cell phones for years, for reasons that have never passed the smell test ("for security reasons" or "to protect battery life"). The real reason the cell providers have kept Wi-Fi out? To keep consumers eating up minutes on the carriers' networks and to prevent people from grabbing ringtones and other media from their computers, which the industry calls "revenue leakage." Don't you love "revenue leakage"? Only corporate thinking could give us that.

But while the iPhone has Wi-Fi, it doesn't let you do one very obvious thing with its Wi-Fi connection: make phone calls. In an ideal world, you might want to use AT&T when on the road and have your phone switch automatically to Skype or Vonage when at home, since they're much cheaper and can have better voice quality.

I hope the development of the iPhone will spur others to think outside the box.