tmktmk
tl;dr the sky is not falling
Cities may also provide "franchises" so that only one telco or cable operator gets the right to lay cable pathways, and all other companies are denied the rights. This is usually coupled with the company picking up the cost for actually building and maintaining the rights-of-way (ie, actually building the manholes/conduits, or whatever). There's thousands of cities, and many hundreds (if not thousands) of companies in the game, so its expected that there are many different variations between each municipal area.
1) Did the author get in? Yes
2) Did customs do their job and scrutinize the person's paperwork? Yes
3) Was the person held for an inordinately long time? No -- 3 hours is not a "long time." If you can't deal with the fact that you just flew (potentially) halfway across the world in an airplane
4) Was the author unduly molested or given harsh treatment, perhaps by being denied food, water, medication, or otherwise harassed? No -- the author points out that there was a water fountain and snack machines, and the author was not strip searched, nor was he otherwise harassed/degraded. Sitting in a waiting room while your paperwork clears is "not a big deal."
Please stop blowing things out of proportion, and criticizing the US for no reason. I've immigrated to and lived in 3 different countries, and BY FAR the procedure described here is not difficult or tedious. If you can't deal with a a 3 hour wait, how can you deal with anything? Patience is a virtue.
BTW -- I was a paying awe.sm customer -- I just cancelled my account due to this overblown blog posting. Enjoy.
I think this is most likely a reactionary move by Google to basically make sure Microsoft doesn't buy out / pay off all the cell phone manufacturers, and make them all go WP7.