You can tell the wireless industry didn’t much like the last few months of getting picked on before Congress for their closed networks, locked and crippled phones, nickel and dime billing and restrictive user agreements. Instead of addressing the problems, the industry does what it always does: fires up their public relations departments and think tanks to try to change reality.

The American Consumer Institute (an industry think tank run by a former Bell Atlantic employee) this week released a new study (pdf) that insists “the U.S. wireless market offers more choice and is less concentrated than any Western country s wireless market.”

Chiming in on the report, the Wall Street Journal (via) also wants you to know you’re very, very lucky: “U.S. consumers have access to more wireless operators and more devices than consumers anywhere else in the the world.” Ars Technica, meanwhile, notes that ACI simply took OECD data and reinterpreted it so everything looks rosy.

So, the next time you start yer bellyachin’ about how your crippled phone on some nickle and dime fee-laden plan can’t stream video because it violates your TOS, just remember you’re not looking at it from the right perspective.
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