* Illustration: Harry Campbell * I have the most awesome mobile phone. You wouldn't believe the sick stuff it can do. There's a webcam for videoconferencing, email, a full browser, and instant messaging. I can install whatever apps I want — Rhapsody's music service, SSH clients, document and spreadsheet editors, even software to access my desktop machine remotely. Oh yeah: It also makes free voice-over-IP calls. It cost $400. It incinerates the iPhone.

The only catch: I had to build it myself.

My "phone" is actually a pimped-out Nokia N800, a pocket-sized tablet computer. Technically, it's not a phone at all, but because it's Linux-based and has built-in Wi-Fi, it can run tons of great software. I loaded Skype, and presto — voice-call functionality whenever I'm near a wireless network, which nowadays is basically always.

So why can't your handset work this way, too? If the hardware and software are all available to make these incredible do-it-all phones — how come the wireless carriers aren't rolling them out?

Because the wireless mobile industry is the laziest and least innovative sector of the entire high tech world, full stop. It's more interested in preserving its old-school profit mechanisms than in breaking new ground.

Cellular-industry critics have been complaining about this for years. As they point out, phone companies rake in millions by overcharging for things that cost little to provide — a buck or two for a ringtone or TV-show snippet here; a few cents for extra text messages there. Much like the record labels with CDs, they're wringing all the money they can from these old economics.

Only a few high-end smartphones can be customized with software you select. With virtually every other phone, you're stuck with those apps the wireless companies will permit you to download via their network — for a tidy fee, of course. Why would they let you download freeware games when they can ding you $7 to play a Tetris rehash?

This is also why so few phones have Wi-Fi. If they did, you'd simply tap into free nodes instead of suffering through your mobile carrier's glacially slow data network. It was a minor miracle that AT&T let Apple put Wi-Fi into the iPhone — though notice they're certainly not letting anyone install Skype on it. AT&T's creaking, 1980s-era business model must be protected at all costs, no matter how much it makes your phone suck.

Wireless executives have many excuses for their paternalistic behavior. They need to keep phones locked down, they claim, because if customers downloaded all sorts of freeware, it could wreak havoc with their network.

I don't buy it. Indeed, I could disprove it with a simple hack. Verizon offers a laptop card for $60 that lets you access unlimited high-speed data anywhere Verizon covers. I could rebroadcast that signal via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth to my N800 — and then use Skype to make phone calls on Verizon's wireless network. The only thing I'd be hurting is the bottom line.

It's a kludge, but such a setup shows that the various components for killer phones — fast networks, free software, cheap hardware — all exist. The sole obstacle to their being assembled is the wireless carriers' desire to protect an antediluvian business that its consumers loathe.

So, is there hope? The OpenMoko project is working on an open source, Wi-Fi-enabled phone that works on any GSM network. That's pretty cool. In my more feverish dreams, the government actually grows a pair and realizes that we, the public, own the airwaves that the wireless companies so mightily abuse — and the FCC simply forces the carriers to open up their services to true smartphones. (Google's lobbying for this, with no success yet.) Or here's an even more delirious vision: A venture capitalist funds a next-generation mobile-phone carrier that blankets the nation in Wi-Fi, then uses that as a backbone for truly PC-like handsets.

I can dream, I guess. Until then, if you want a phone of the future like mine, you'll have to build it yourself.

Clive Thompson (clive@clivethompson.net) writes a column for Wired.

Start Next: Avoiding a Faux Pod: Five Tips for Spotting Fake Electronics