Ovi Store won’t support US carrier billing; thank goodness!

In the past Nokia said that the US was one of the countries that would support carrier billing in the Ovi store. According to a Reuters article Nokia said on Tuesday that operator billing would not be available in the US. While the Reuters writer stated this was a setback for the US market, I am not really sure about that. There are currently very few Nokia devices sold through US carriers with almost all of the higher end Eseries and Nseries devices being sold as SIM-unlocked models. Thus, the impact of carrier billing really should be minor.

I purchase applications on my iPhone through iTunes and a credit card, on my G1 through Google Checkout and a credit card, and on other devices directly through the developer websites. While carrier billing may be more convenient at times, if a credit card is on file in your Ovi account it can be just as easy and maybe even more manageable. How often have you had messed up carrier bills? Now add on a whole other level of application purchases and you can see how you may be spending time arguing with your carrier each month to get bill corrections made.

I prefer to have my applications billed to my more reliable credit card company than my carrier, how about you?