The ability for a network owner of any sort to control a client is on a long downhill slide. (Play tape of explosion in the Internet of Things, BYO PCs, etc) Fortunately, the ability for a network owner to monitor, shape, and control the traffic on the network is rising as the cost of cracking a packet declines. The problem is we won’t get there fast enough – especially at the edge of the network.

As evidenced by the outrage in this Techcrunch post on Apple and AT&T’s struggles handling the incredible traffic generated by iPhones, we are currently facing a bit of a nasty inflection point. Devices are now officially too hard to control, while it is still too expensive to apply the level of intelligence in the network needed to let go.

Your thoughts?

* Hacking the iPhone has a long history and while I was the first to point out it was an issue (horn toot), I’m wondering if any iPhone app developers have been asked to change their app based on the type of and volume of network traffic the app generates. Bueller?

Given the length of time it took to unlock the iPhone I (3 months) it appears Apple did a decent job attempting to secure the iPhone SIM. Despite that, someone at either Apple or AT&T is convinced they lost out on revenue from iPhones that were purchased and then unlocked and used on other carriers or even as wifi only devices.