Imagine if ISPS could block users from Facebook to suit their own business interests.

This kind of situation would be unimaginable bitterly protested [*] in the PC world, but happens routinely in the mobile space.

It’s exactly the situation I found myself in when I tried to install the just announced Facebook app for the RIM Blackberry. Having seen it on a friends phone, I know that it’s a fast, native app that gives a significantly better experience than their site for mobile browsers. 

(For more on the app, see Facebook teams with RIM for Web 2.0 on-the-go; Facebook already claims 4 million unique active mobile users and 300 million mobile page views a month.)

No joy– I got an error saying "Sorry, your wireless carrier doesn’t allow the mobile Facebook app to be used on your phone." 

Walt Mossberg has it exactly right in his column Free My Phone:

A shortsighted and often just plain stupid federal government has allowed itself to be bullied and fooled by a handful of big wireless phone operators for decades now. And the result has been a mobile phone system that is the direct opposite of the PC model.

It severely limits consumer choice, stifles innovation, crushes entrepreneurship, and has made the U.S. the laughingstock of the mobile-technology world, just as the cellphone is morphing into a powerful hand-held computer.

As Walt says, the status quo is stifling innovation, limiting consumer choice, and hurting US competitiveness.

[*] Update: DennisG correctly notes in the comments below that Comcast is behaving a bit like a wireless provider in the way they are blocking/throttling BitTorrent. Walt Mossberg’s essay can be read as a commentary of the importance of net neutraility. I believe or at least hope that internet ISPs won’t be able to go too far down that road.