I feel it’s pretty safe to say that Amp’d is going to be an incredibly disruptive (or destructive, depending on where you stand) force on the US mobile scene. Their general strategy seems to be “Okay, so everything every incumbent carrier does? Yeah, we’re doing the opposite of that.”

So it’s EV-DO phones (from Kyocera and Motorola at launch, which sounds like it will be towards the end of the fourth quarter) without the usual restrictions: open Internet, tethering (supporting both PC and AC), sideloading of content actively supported (”We don’t care where you get your music,” they say), and a consumer-driven mindset that sees it be as agnostic as possible. Whereas some CDMA carriers hamstring devices and close down their networks, Amp’d’s thinking is that if the phone supports it, go ahead and do it.

And that doesn’t even consider the content. As appealing as Amp’d is in general, its library of content sounds pretty staggering as well. Its target market is 18- to 35-year-olds, and the stuff it’s got lined up should be wide and deep enough to satisfy the whole range: lots of video (streaming and download), music, tons of games and so on. The phone ships as a blank slate, essentially, and users set it up via the Amp’d Web site to make it appear exactly as they want. Amp’d also has a pretty slick UI for its content portal that organizes things in a much more intuitive way than the usual list-based carrier deck. Amp’d thinks of itself as an entertainment company more than a telco, and it shows.

One of the most telling quotes from the company’s rep was “We don’t want to ask people to change the way they do things.” And they don’t. Like I said, that’s pretty much the opposite of most carriers.