This is big. To understand the root cause of this, one need only look to Mountain View, California (the headquarters of Google).
It was Google that pressed the FCC to open up the auction on the 700 Mhz spectrum. And it was Google that got the ball rolling on the Open Handset Alliance.
There is an interesting lesson that can be taken away from this:
Openness + Choice == Innovation!
Or, to quote Lowell McAdam, chief executive of Verizon Wireless:
“The trend we see here is an explosion of innovation. People want to take so much of what’s on the Internet and put it on the phone.”
Lots of other places in the software world that could benefit from applying this philosophy.