China Mobile: barrier or enabler?

Mobile browsing the internet was on the agenda of the Shanghai Mobile Monday meeting tonight in a rather packed Kathleen's 5. Obvious still 90 percent of the mobile phone users has never done it, so the digital vanguard was eager to convince this rather easy audience.
Ding Gang from Widsets, Jack Wong, representing OpenWave and Pierre-Andre Divisia who was representing Opera, painted this rosy picture of happy consumers finding everything they wanted on their mobile phone in open networks. More than once the name of China Mobile was mentioned, the world's largest telecom operator, by the audience as a possible barrier to mobile happiness for the consumer. In the past this quasi-monopolist had effectively been squeezing out both service and content providers and is not seen as the most friendly giant in the industry.
Remarkably enough, one of their representatives was present and moderator Bruno Bensaid was able to get him in the discussion. Not that he could actually said that much, but it improved the sense of accountability that is often lacking in China. The representatives of Microsoft were much more silent than this state-owned Moloch and that is telling.
The nice words of the panelists for China Mobile could easily be mistaken for professional politeness for a major force they are dependent on. But also more independent participants said that China Mobile is changing and it might be much more an enabler of internet browsing than a barrier, who wants to push only its own services.