Heading Change Off at the Pass ↦

It looks like Verizon has generously offered to make some changes, now that the government has (finally) started to investigate what has been going on in the cellphone industry:

On the same day as [the Senate] hearing, [Verizon] sent Congress an announcement on exclusive handset deals—that’s where you’ve got to take AT&T with your iPhone or Verizon with your Blackberry Storm (assuming you actually kept the Storm after the trial period; I fumbled around with the contraption for two hours, then traded it in for a Curve). “Effective immediately for small wireless carriers (those with 500,000 customers or less), any new exclusivity arrangement we enter with handset makers will last no longer than six months,” Verizon CEO Lowell C. McAdam informed Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA), and Senators Rockefeller and John Kerry (D-MA) “—for all manufacturers and all devices.”

The Tetrarchy knows that the best way to prevent meaningful change is to preemptively make token concessions.