More news from the "cellphone companies are evil" department: the collaboration between Apple and Motorola to produce the long-sought iPod phone is going to be delayed. The reason? Cellphone carriers don't particularly like the idea of consumers being able to put music on their phones at-will; they'd rather have them pay for every song that gets loaded, like the current situation with ringtones.

It's more or less tradition at this point, so I'll just stick it in here: cyber-serfdom! Perpetual revenue streams! Naked bodies in gel-filled pods!

If the carriers don't play ball, a phone becomes a much tougher sell. Standard practice is for carriers to chop a couple hundred dollars off the price of a handset, shifting the cost into the service contract. If the network operators don't want a phone released, they can simply decline to offer this price-shifting system, and suddenly the phone costs $200 more than it otherwise would. And if you think those shifted costs would be deducted from customers' service contracts, you're nuts. Owning an iPhone would get real pricey, real fast.

Anyway, the situation isn't all that dire. As the article notes, the iPhone could be a big win for a slightly-less-evil-than-usual underdog like T-Mobile; alternately, Apple might just try to sell the device at the full-price premium -- it wouldn't be the first time people have shelled out for a sexy slab of plastic from Cupertino.