First of all, those "Rural" phone markets have not deployed the technology for the iPhone to work in their markets. You cannot install full 3G towers with unlimited access for the 5 farmers who live within 50 miles of a tower in Western Kansas for example. It is not cost effective.

But if we are going to guarantee that every American that wants to buy a product have full and equal access to it.... then I am going to petition the FDA to get IN-N-OUT Burger to open up a franchise in my neighborhood immediately because I have been deprived my IN-N-OUT here in the Midwest for way too long.

"There are markets in the country where if you wanted an iPhone, if you wanted a Pre, you just couldn’t get it -- from anyone,"

NEWSFLASH! AMERICAN'S CAN'T GET WHAT THEY WANT WHEN THEY WANT IT.

Seriously. How childish. Do people really think they're entitled to everything they want?

"You cannot install full 3G towers with unlimited access for the 5 farmers who live within 50 miles of a tower in Western Kansas for example. It is not cost effective."

That was the argument conservatives used to try to defeat rural electrification and phone access in the 1930's. The truth is we have a right, when we allow a company ownership of limited public bandwidth, to make sure the general public good is served. You can't have a company skimming the most cost effective customers and refusing service to everyone else.

That said, I don't think every hermit living in the middle of nowhere is guaranteed every utility that city folk get. I think the FCC should make sure the cell companies aren't excluding parts of the country just to maximize profits.

Your In-and-Out burger example doesn't relate to this on two counts. 1) They aren't basing their business on using limited public airwaves, and 2) If burger chains had to serve a public good, since I'm here in Seattle, I'd insist on Dicks Burgers. ;-)

I live in North Central Kansas and travel much of Central and Western areas of Kansas for my job. There is a fairly decent tower access in most of the area when Kansas Cellular sold out to Alltel. Now Alltel has merged with Verizon. Unfortunately, its on the wrong network to work with an iPhone. I get 600-700kbps down and about 200kbps up when I tether my MacBook with a RAZR2. I know 3G is considerably faster, but I'd enjoy an iPhone that works, even if a bit slow on the network. Maybe someday between Apple, Verizon and AT&T, somebody will work my area of the word into their business plan, but until then, oh well. I like where I live more than my desire for an iPhone! :-D

This is not about the rights of hermits in the boondocks. The complaint was brought up by rural carriers; those that already have a network and paying customers. Ironically, they most often are the only operator in their area, so they get all customers. As such, they don't NEED iPhone, or Pre, or Storm, or G1 in order to get people. All they are asking is to be allowed to sell these cool devices. Such a deal wouldn't threaten the big carrier that already has an exclusionary contract -- they don't HAVE a presence in the rural markets anyway.

Every big carrier has a few cool exclusive devices. This is exactly what they use to poach each other's customers. People served by rural carriers can't get ANY of these cool devices. All they can get is two-year old models that are commodity. Letting these carriers sell new devices in markets where nobody else is present won't hurt anyone's bottom line, but would allow rural guys to offer newer devices to their 100,000 (or fewer) customers.