The customer may be always right in the United States and Americans used to seeing grinning, perky servers at Applebees may, upon getting served a cuppa with a frown, call Germany a "service desert", but considering the recent case of the iPhone's debut in Germany, Hans Musterman might just be a more valued customer than John Q. Public. T-Mobile was stripped of exclusive provider rights for Apple's new mobile after a German court ruled against the locked-in SIM that requiring a two-year contract to a single company. Rival Vodafone filed the injunction.

Apple was forced by the ruling to unlock the SIM and make the phone available also without contract to any provider the consumer might pick, i.e. free market economics that benefit the consumer rather than the highest-bidding provider. Says the NYT, "T-Mobile’s position is that tying a mobile phone to a contract with one provider is rare but not new in Germany, while Vodafone argues that all mobile phones sold there should be available for use with any provider." The same thing happened last month in France against exclusive operator wanna-be, Orange.

Farhad Manjoo, Salon's technology blogger, says this kind of government ruling would be unheard of in the States, whereas Europe has something America doesn't: real laws to protect consumers. Call it the over-reaching hand of a nanny state or, god forbid, socialism, but when a country like the U.S. can cut an anti-bancruptcy law with credit card companies just before credit markets collapse, something is awry.