Let’s suppose for a minute that you are a customer of Sprint, Verizon, or T-Mobile and you want an iPhone. Chances are that you’re still caught in the death grip of your current service contract, and unless it’s about to expire, you’ll probably have to lighten your wallet by a hefty $200 to cover the early termination fee. Ok, so you decide to pay the fee. At this point you aren’t tied to a contract; but, then again, you don’t have a phone either. Off to the Apple store to get that gorgeous new iPhone!

With iPhone in hand, you walk out of the store, drive home, and with a huge grin on your face, you happily unpack your brand new phone. At this point you might want to wipe the drool from you chin and make your way over the nearest computer to activate the thing. You happily log on the site, and proceed to fill in the necessary details. Then, all of sudden, that awesome grin of yours fades and you’re pissed. You’ve just realized that, in order to actually use the phone, you’ll have to sell your soul all over again – this time to AT&T, the exclusive iPhone carrier.

To the vast majority of brand new iPhone owners, this might not be a problem at all. I bet most Apple fans would be willing to do a whole lot more to get their hands on the so-called “Jesus Phone.” However, now that the iPhone is out and other companies see what their phones should be like, what happens when the next super-phone hits the market. Will you be willing to bite the bullet and lay down another $200 to redeem your soul?

This question, along with a variety of others, is currently being debated in congress at the insistence of the Open Internet Coalition. Since these hearings are clearly a by-product of Apple’s world famous phone, they have been unofficially dubbed the “iPhone Hearings.” But, many will be happy to know that if these hearings are successful, everyone will hopefully be able to get whatever phone they desire.

Wireless service providers, and monopolies in general, love doing everything they can to limit the amount of money that they have to throw towards research and development, marketing, and support, while maximizing their profit margin. One way of retarding the inevitable advancement in technology is by locking people into contracts, and, by doing so, isolating them from the competition. According to Chris Murray of the Consumers Union, contracts with termination fees work wonders to virtually eliminate competition.

AT&T and friends will probably try to convince Congress that they are forced to lock consumers in if they want to continue offering cheap and free phones. Sure, if that’s the case, then the companies may indeed need some assurance that you’ll stay with them for a certain amount of time, so that they can pay off the costs of giving phones away for next to nothing. However, this excuse quickly falls apart when the asking price for an iPhone is $600 (for the 8GB model). As soon as the cost of a phone reaches those kinds of numbers the only reason for locking consumers in is stifling competition and simple capitalist greed.

Another issue that the iPhone hearings are taking a look at is the notion that the wireless spectrum should be open. As it currently stands, there are four major wireless broadband providers, each with their own closed network. Together, these for behemoths have managed to take absolute control over roughly 96% of the nations broadband network; in other words, creating a new, competitive company is downright impossible.

With the explosion of the Internet, a whole slew of new communication methods have become available. One of those is VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), which allows the use of an application like Skype to make regular telephone calls. The Big Four see the rise of Skype, and the hundreds of other services like it, as a real threat to their livelihood. VoIP is dirt cheap in comparison, and totally void of contractual obligations. What Christopher Libertelli, the senior director of regulatory affairs for Skype, would like to see happen is for congress to open up that 96% of closed networks to more competition. Back in 1968, there was a landmark case, which resulted in the Carterfone decision, which basically allowed for third-party devices such as caller-ID systems and fax machines to use the existing AT&T networks. Hopefully, this decision will be able to help consumers win this battle once and for all!