Thomas Carter [who invented the Carterfone] was not a judge who broke apart a monopoly by fiat. Thomas Carter was an entrepreneur who wanted to bring an interesting product to market and was furious—madd as hell—to discover that he required permission to innovate.

I am an entrepreneur and I am mad as hell that I require permission to innovate in the wireless market. I don't have to go to the great companies that build our public highways and ask them for their views on what kind of cars I can put on those roads. I don't have to ask Con Ed for permission when I want to put a refrigerateor on the electricity network. I don't have to ask Verizon, thanks be to Thomas Carter, for permission to attach a computer to their network or to launch a Web site.

But for some reason I have never been able to understand, I have to ask permission of Verizon Wireless to attach a computer—or the computers that they now call phones—to their wireless networks and I have to ask their permission to run applications and services on those phones. Worse, I have to ask the permission of my comptetitors because they are competing with me to provide services to consumers.