• Fortune, Thursday, October 25, 2007 10:47 AM

The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association is supposed to be a forum for the telecoms to soapbox about the future of proprietary networks and exclusive partnerships with handset makers. However, social networking giant Facebook stole headlines at the annual conference this week as the site's 23-year-old co-founder Dustin Moskovitz lectured telecom executives on the benefits of open platforms.

On stage for the announcement of a Facebook program for Research in Motion's BlackBerry smartphone, Moskovitz warned industry executives that their closed business models run contrary to the future of the mobile business. He told them to unlock their handsets and operating system software or they risk falling behind pioneers like Google and Apple. Most mobile phones are programmed to operate on one carrier's network. Some also control the software users download to their phones.

Moskovitz said that Apple, in opening its iPhone to third-party developers, and Google, which is developing mobile software and is rumored to be planning its own phone, are paving the way toward a "big" and "open" mobile future. He advised the crowd to open their networks and let developers profit from their applications. "This means you have to be okay with leaving some money on the table," he said. Pundits said the speech didn't go over very well with telecom execs, who left the room shaking their heads.

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