T-mobile turns off Twitter

You've probably read this on Techchrunch, but apparently the American mobile operator T-mobile is blocking Twitter (Twitter is an opt-in text message). At first this might seem like a small issue, but it is not.

Imagine if Internet operators blocked individual sites without any apparent reason, what would that mean to capitalists willingness to invest in startups? "Well, it's a great service, but what if you're blocked by AOL?
Where would we be if our ISP's had blocked ICQ, Facebook, Amazon or Google in their early days.

I understand that operators somehow want to have control over the revenue from our cellphone and Internet usage, but if their own services aren't good enough then they have to live with it. It's (on a different scale) a bit like with MySpace. There is an API for third party developers, but MySpace's history of blocking services without good reason, has made third party developers cautious about creating MySpace applications. The great risk of having revenue streams turned off prevents startups from getting into that development race.

It's all the same with this case. If more operators were to follow, investing time, sweat and money into mobile applications would be discouraging and the whole sector would suffer. The cornerstone of the great, fast development of the Internet rests on the fact that a great site or application is available for billions of customers around the world from day one. If the same doesn't go for cellphones, we wont see the same development of this industry and in the end operators themselves will suffer.

I urge all T-mobile customers to leave T-mobile for another operator, and that you'll leave other operators cutting off good third party services as well.

Leave T-mobile! Spread the word on your own blog, on Facebook and other social networks. Let T-mobile know that they are a bad guy.

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