@jbtaylor on tech

A few weeks ago, Kevin Fitchard, a writer with GigaOm, interviewed Sprint's CEO, Dan Hesse, to ask him about 2012 and what to expect from Sprint in the new year. Kevin's story was published today.

Dan explained a lot about our strategy and focus at Sprint, but he also shared his observation that increasingly in the wireless industry, there really isn't a "Big Four" -- AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile and Sprint -- but really a "Big Two".

Dan's right. That's why during our fight to stop AT&T from swallowing up T-Mobile, we called AT&T and Verizon, "Twin Bells".

You see, Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility, aren't really wireless companies at all, but arms of much larger descendants of the original Ma Bell phone system. And they are marching in lock step towards a duopoly which will harm consumers.

Take Verizon's recently proposed spectrum deal with the cable companies. The New York Times editorial board pronounced it, "worrisome".

The Times is right to be worried. Anyone who cares about competition in the wireless industry should be.

But being worried is useless.

What consumers need to do is speak up loudly and vocally. That played a huge role in defeating the T-Mobile takeover and, more recently, convincing Verizon to back off from instituting a new $2 fee.

I'm convinced that kind of consumer activism is essential to reign in the Twin Bells in 2012.

p.s. Remember, this is my personal blog and does not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.

The story I've linked to above is one of those fake trend stories that run far too often in today's newspapers. In this story, the New York Times has proclaimed that the tech scene is Washington, D.C. is newly revived.

The thing is, I'm not sure it ever declined in the first place. My experience is that as tech companies grew during the Internet boom and then laid people off during the bust, those engineers, programmers, marketers and other skilled employees moved on to other jobs in the D.C. area. Or they started their own companies.

This much I'll predict on Sunday night: the D.C.-based media will have fun with this. And they'll also link to that other New York Times fake trend story which trumpeted our revived restaurant scene. (None of these restaurants are new.)

Watch.

Nick Bilton with the NY Times has an interesting discussion of the "stolen" iPhone on the Bits blog. Bilton interviewed Mark Rasch, a former Justice Department official. Both Bilton's questions and Rasch's answers are worth a read.

My favorite exchange:

Q: Is Gizmodo wrong for publishing images of the phone?
A: The job of a journalist is to find information that companies and people don't want published.