When some Vonage customers were dissatisfied with its service and tried to use Vonage supplied ATAs with alternate service providers, they realized that they could not provision the ATA to use the new service provider’s resources. This is similar to the situation in the cellular world, where the phone issued by one carrier can not be used with another carrier. Both the cases came to be known as “locked” devices, meaning the entity that subsidized the device locked it so that it can not be used with an alternate service provider. A few maverick service providers prided themselves in supplying “unlocked” ATAs.
But recently a new trend is emerging where some have hijacked the term to mean something else altogether. First Gizmo Project claimed that their soft client is “unlocked” because it can be used to reach any other SIP service provider (see the comment by Jeff Bonforte). It looks like PhoneGnome continues the trend by suggesting that it is also unlocked because its users can access any internet-to-phone service provider. But these are not the original definition of the term “unlocked” ATA.
What is in a name? Nothing, except when it is used to derive some positive attribute.
Posted by aswath at July 17, 2005 09:49 PM
Aswath:
Doe this mean that a PhoneGnome user is "locked" and cannot use an ITSP of his or her choice?
Also, if PhoneGnome went out of business, can I use the device as a "plain" Sipura 3000?
Posted by: Kanti Purohit at July 29, 2005 03:33 AM