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Today is the release of the iPhone 3G S as we all know.  We also all know that unless you want to deal with AT&T it is impossible to use the iPhone (jailbreaking excluded).  There’s also the Palm Pre, which until the end of the year is exclusive to Sprint.  It can be tiresome trying to find a cell phone that fits what you want on the carrier you need.  Well, here comes the Federal Communications Commission.

FCC Acting Chairman Michael Copps released a statement saying that the group will look into the effects of exclusive deals.  More specifically they will be examining if the exclusive deals “adversely restrict consumer choice or harm the development of innovative devices.”  Given that of the ten top selling cell phones, nine are carrier exclusive (the BlackBerry Curve being the one exception, coincidentally at the top of the list) it might not be too hard to prove the first part.  There’s also the fact that these exclusive deals tend to happen only with the four largest carriers (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint), which can severely harm smaller network like US Cellular that operate in more rural areas.

Its nice that the FCC is finally looking into this, but it comes off as a bit late.  Given how slow the government tends to work, by the time anything they look into comes into effect the Palm Pre exclusive deal will be done, and maybe even the iPhone’s lock into AT&T.  It’s doubtful that many people outside of the four big carriers will oppose the idea of having every phone available on every network, or at least unlocked.  While that will still encourage innovation among the cell phone manufacturers, it’s hard to say how the carriers will respond.

Read [Wired]