Give a carrier a great idea like WiFi, let them tinker with it a while, and you're always going to get the same thing back.

Something crippled.

NTT DoCoMo, first to market with a WiFi-mobile phone, has delivered a deliberately-crippled product, writes Carlo Longino (left) at The Feature.

How crippled is it? It will only work with the user's own WiFi network. It won't find public hotspots, although DoCoMo says it is "considering" support for its own paid hotspots, called M-Zone.

People in Japan (that's the only market it's at so far) are going to be paying hundreds of dollars for a phone they think bypasses the mobile network, and they're not going to get it. How do you think they will feel?

I can't wait until Verizon tries to import this business model...