What's the real scope of hardware openness?

[Luca Dionisi]

Hi all,

I have a likely silly question.

I'm wondering why is it that in the mobile phone world there has
not been a revolution similar to the P2P that we have seen in
the internet, e.g. with emule or bittorrent, that is where the
users are benefitting from each other instead of relying in a
centralized service provider.

I mean, what if each phone in a neighborwood could be used as
a "radio-bridge" in order for a caller to find a path to a callee
without having to rely on a network operator and pay for it?

I thought that the absence of this feature was a limitation
imposed on the user from the phone builders. So when I saw the
FIC initiative I thought that this kind of openness could lead
to the possibility of such a scenario.

But I think I'm mistaking it.

What's the real problem?

--Luca