Apres Moi le Deluge......

.....said Marie Antoinette, and so too thought many current top management teams in Planet Mobile. It was also the motto of 617 "Dambusters" squadron in World War 2. And the cracks in Planet Mobile's dam walls have been showing awhile, but the first real bomb was dropped by Google a few weeks back with project Android (see our coverage here - the Future of Mobile is not in the hands of Planet Mobile anymore
Well, the first breach in the wall has been Verizon, who today announced that (quoting the NYT "Bits blog"):

Verizon Wireless has stunned the wireless world by announcing that by sometime next year it will open its network to “any apps, any device.”

There is a lot of fine print, but the essence appears to be that Verizon will offer two flavors of service: its traditional bundle, which typically includes a subsidy for phone purchase and various other features, and “bring your own” device service, which will be open to any device that meets “minimum technical standards.” The company went on to say:

While most Verizon Wireless customers prefer the convenience of full service, the company is listening through today’s announcement to a small but growing number of customers who want another choice without full service.

So, will this open up a flood of new open plays from Planet Mobile*? We would expect that at least one player in each main market will try this in the next year or so (and we would hypothesize it will not be the iPhone prime contractors).

One of the drivers of this is the increasing realisation that 90%+ of revenues remains voice/sms, and the phones used in this space are a low cost commodity - so why go for an expensive subsidy bribe and the need for long term customer lock in when you can get them to buy their own phones and you sell em transport.

Another is the realisation that the traditional Planet Mobile handset players were caught napping by iPhone, and that the handset part of the market is going to be broken wide open in short order - so why not let people connect anything to the network...Kindle anyone?

And of course which operator is going to attract all the new application developers working on Android?

Looks like rather than Apres Moi les Deluge, the top brass of the mobile Telcos need to prepare for La Revolution today - we are in for an interesting ride....

Postscript - GigaOm among others thinks it could also be a play to placate the FCC in advance of the 700 MHz spectrum auctions as well

*...except we've been here before with Planet Mobile. Every year, next year will be the Great Year...till next year. Still, this time the economic forces lining up are far larger, so movement is far more likely