Audio and video content is coming to mobile phones — although a new L.A. Times/Bloomberg Poll that Dennis Haarsager points to in his Technology360 blog suggests that the always-on generation isn’t so enthusiastic about getting audio and video content on their handsets. Certainly, as the pollsters found, young consumers registered concern that services would be uneven. But who doesn’t think that such quality would be terrible? Using cell phones today — merely as phones — is a pretty crappy experience (or should we be excited when we can maintain a call for 5 minutes?). Funny that the carriers (in the U.S.) are rarely mentioned for the roadblocks they’ve put up to prevent innovations from coming to your handset. Sure, you could argue that they’re only interested in helping themselves and that they’re right to do it. But the average user in the U.S. appears to think of their cell phone as a cordless phone. Too bad the carriers have mismanaged the roll-out of new technologies so badly that kids don’t think it’s possible to get great video service on a cell phone. I’ll recant when the carriers let us load any application we want on our handsets. If they did that perhaps the next L.A. Times/Bloomberg Poll might turn out differently.

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