Do Mobile Operators want to kill Free Netbooks?

What’s this, the end of free netbooks. No. Not at all. Let’s rephrase it. Mobile operators want to be able to kill netbooks which they gave away for free to people who don’t pay their bill.

This is what they do right now, and have been doing for years, if people take free or subsidised mobile phones and then ‘do-a-runner’ with them, or reports them as stolen when they are not. They can, through the mobile network send a deactivion or ‘kill’ signal to them, rendering them completely useless even on other networks.

These days, mobile operators are all keen to give away free (or very low cost) netbooks to anyone who is prepared to sign up to a mobile broadband contract. This makes the overall price quite attractive.

Right now though, there is no way to do the same thing for netbooks, so they are taking a risk given them away. While most people wouldn’t dream of doing it, there’s always some that would. This just costs money for the good guys who end up subsidising the bad guys.

Mobile networks are, as a result investigating ways that this could be done in the near future. If such a system is developed, netbooks could be renedered completely useless in the same way.