You know if it was up to me I would ban subsidies all together, make operators compete on things such as coverage and prices versus the handsets they offer.

Services should be sold separately to device as they are in Europe. I get incoming calls for free, incoming text messages for free, unlimited data for 9 € a month and back when I was on prepaid it was close to impossible to spend more than 25€ a month on credit.

I went to visit my mom during Christmas and I needed to submit so many forms of documentation just to get a prepaid SIM card. Where I live, Finland, it is as easy as buying a pack of chewing gum or a bottle of water.

Do people really want subsidized handsets? Sure, they’ll take a free or cheap new handset every couple years when they renew their contracts if someone is offering one, but if they had the choice of lower contract price and keeping their old (still perfectly good) phone a couple extra years, I think most people would do that, especially in this economic climate. This is the perfect time to force concessions from mobile providers.

Imagine if cable/satellite TV providers locked TVs to their service. If you wanted a new TV, you had to buy from them and if you switched providers you had to throw away your TV and buy a new one. I don’t think many consumers would stand for that, so why do it with cell phones?

The tying is only egregious for high-end phones, where price is not a problem since it is already expensive. They can keep tying cheap, subsidized phones (like $0 phones) for all I care.

I’m not so sure. I’ve always felt that the listed price of some these phones is rather inflated. It seems that this is a strategy done to encourage people into accepting a contract (i.e. they see how much they would “save”). It’s kinda like inflating prices on jewelry by 250% and then having a 50% off sale. I think if phones were decoupled from providers, and there was more than one person selling a phone, it would be more open to competition and that non-contract listing prices would suddenly be closer to a fair market value. Hopefully. Or it will be the end of the world.

Let’s bring up one fact that I have not seen come up in this thread, and it is something that makes me very sad that not enough people know about. Both GSM carries in the U.S. will unlock your phone once you’ve had it on their service for two to three months. This isn’t an ideal solution, but it is what’s currently available to us. Once you’ve served your time in your contact, you could technically take your business to another carrier. If more consumers were made aware of this, it might help a little.

On the subject of taking away the subsidies, that’s the wrong way to approach the problem. Instead of taking away the subsidies, we should make the carries unlock the phone if the person purchases it outright without the contract and discount associated with it. This lets people who wish for cheap phones and upgrade every year and a half like expected and desired by the industry to continue their habits, and those of us who’d rather have the option to float around as needed can get our unlocked phone just for paying up front.

It is also worth noting that while the primary band of GSM is different for T-Mobile and AT&T, both carriers provide quad band phones that will happily work with either network, and both carries primarily offer plans that do not charge roaming rates anywhere within the continental U.S.

Also, on the subject of unlocking phones, from what I’ve seen thus far it’s still a legal battle that needs precedences set. Carriers want to claim that it’s illegal to unlock your phone without their help, laws are conflicting and can be read either direction, and consumer rights advocates are rabidly waiting in the sidelines to get something rolling to set precedence towards it being legal. Someone just needs to push the whole mess into court and hope that the consumer rights advocates have the most rabid lawyers on the case.

The small thing many folks ignore is what happens after you have saisfied your contractual obligation.

In other words, you have (at least in theory), allowed the wireless service provider to recover their cost and make a fair profit. In addition, you have (at least in theory), *PAID FOR* the wireless device you now have.

Why then, should you be stuck with a “brick” should you decide to opt out and go with another carrier at the end of your contract?

While there may be issues between GSM providers, the CDMA carriers (Verizon, Sprint, Virgin, Metro, etc.) all use the same technology. In addition, let’s not forget that Sprint was sucessfully sued and forced to provide the procedures to “release” the phones so that they could be programmed for other service providers.

Therefore, while it might be “acceptable” under most circumsances to lock the phone during contract, at the end of the term, the phone does (and should “freely”) belong to the customer.

does carlo work for the industry? he speaks of more costly new cellphones as being a result of ‘consumer groups’ wanting to rid themselves of contracts. there are usable older model phones available all day long that could be purchased if providers would just ‘hook them up.’ the concept of contracts for telephone service is Un-American and just another in the long line of corruptive business practices foisted on an increasingly an increasingly timid consumer. it is almost as if the businesses believe it is THEIR right to do and charge anything any way they want to. that is the epitome of arrogance. and stupidity rests on the shoulders of those of us who continue to let them have their way. fight dammit!