As the Wall Street Journal reported today (in a story that remains behind the soon-to-be-demolished pay wall), Verizon has announced that it will open its mobile network to any device that meets a certain minimum standard — although it says it will continue to offer “locked” devices through its retail network. Like Cynthia Brumfield at IPDemocracy, I think this could be a pretty huge development.

It’s unclear whether this means that Verizon will be joining up with Google and its Open Handset Alliance/Android platform proposal, although Adam Ostrow at Mashable says the carrier was rumoured to be joining even before this latest announcement. In any case, Verizon’s move seems to suggest that being open is becoming a competitive advantage for companies in relatively mature markets such as mobile. That said, Om Malik seems somewhat skeptical of Verizon’s motives, and says open access could prove to be expensive.

As Adam notes, Verizon has clearly decided to forego short-term revenue gains in return for what it sees as longer-term benefits. An interesting choice. And when could we expect someone like Rogers or Telus or Bell Mobility to do the same kind of thing in Canada? Approximately never.

They’re at it again. As Om Malik reports, a story in the Wall Street Journal (which is now behind the pay wall), says the big U.S. telecom players are continuing their campaign for a multi-tiered Internet in which Google and Yahoo and Microsoft pay for their bits to get better treatment than someone else’s bits. Best quote: “During the hurricanes, Google didn’t pay to have the DSL restored,” said BellSouth spokesman Jeff Battcher. “We’re paying all that money.”

What are the big telecom companies smoking? They charge people $40 a month or so for high-speed Internet service, then put caps and download limits on them, or use “traffic shaping” to give some services priority over others — or even prevent some online applications from working at all — and then argue that Google and other companies should pay extra. Russ Shaw calls it a “shakedown.”

As John Battelle points out, this is all something that Internet users are already paying for, something Vonage CEO Jeffrey Citron also mentions in the WSJ article. Former Wall Street brokerage analyst Henry Blodgett says he wonders what all the fuss is about, but to me it is clear: the telecos want protection money from the big Net companies. I think Jeff Jarvis is right to call them “robber barons,” and of course the inimitable Doc Searls has written a treatise on the subject as well. Fred calls it a simple matter of jealousy.

Update:

Larry Page of Google and the chairman of the FCC both comment on the disturbing trend towards a tiered Internet in this Register story. And I also came across an excellent (and long) discussion of the issue by Mitch Shapiro over at IP Democracy.