Breaking Free of the Cellphone Carrier Conspiracy

[Onkel Neal]

Breaking Free of the Cellphone Carrier Conspiracy (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/04/technology/personaltech/t-mobile-breaks-free-of-cellphone-contracts-and-penalties.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

It's not a conspiracy, really, more of a racket. But that may be changing.

Last week, the landscape changed. T-Mobile violated the unwritten conspiracy code of cellphone carriers. It admitted that the emperors have no clothes. John J. Legere, T-Mobile’s chief executive, took to the stage not only to expose the usurious schemes, but to announce that it wouldn’t be playing those games anymore.

It was a Steve Jobs moment: when somebody got so fed up with the shoddy way some business is being run (say, phone design or selling music) that he reinvented it, disruptively.

I'm especially happy about this :)

T-Mobile is the first major carrier to eliminate the ridiculous, unnecessary, airtime-eating, 15 seconds of prerecorded instructions that you hear when you want to leave a message. (“To page this person, press 5 ... When you have finished recording, you may hang up.”) When you call a T-Mobile customer, you go right to the beep. Someone should organize a parade.

[AVGWarhawk]

The cellphone industry is full of many gimmicks, come on's and scams. They nickle and dime you to death.

[the_tyrant]

Finally T-Mobile is honest about their billing. This is something every carrier should do.

Wanna pay 99$ up front for you phone? Well you gotta pay 20$/month afterwards! Everybody else just rolls it into the price of the contract, and don't tell you anything. Carriers here in Canada are worse, we are stuck with 3 year contracts.


Too bad they are AWS (Aka, most phones out there won't work on T-Mobile), they lack LTE, and that their service leaves much to be desired.


But now the big Japanese telecom giant Softbank (phone company, not a bank) is buying them out, they can now use the stacks of cash from Softbank to improve their service.

[longam]

This commercial says it all....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7_Oiunf1go

[GT182]

The cellphone industry is full of many gimmicks, come on's and scams. They nickle and dime you to death.

And everyone has fallen for it with no questions asked. It's been spiced up to sound so good for so long that "we" just have to have it and can't live without it. Horse Hockey!

[McBeck]

Here in Denmark we can not be locked in to a contract for more than 6 months.
When the sell and phone with a contract, that HAVE to state full minimum amount you will end up paying for the period, incl the phone price.

This is good, but it also means the phones cost a lot more.

I really like my carrier, because when the 6 months are up, then can offer you a new phone at a discount if you sign up to 6 months more.

[Webster]

its high time they started treating customers better, not to mention getting rid of forcing you into service contracts that make it cost prohibitive to switch to the service you want any time you want to.

dish network is the same way as they charge you for the full 2 years contract by calling it a cancelation fee :huh:

I switched to those 1 year $100 go phone deals 2 years ago and love it but I don't talk much so it works for me.

I wish they would just go to the pay by the minute for what you use so minutes don't have to be prepaid or expire on a time basis if not used but that would mean being fair and allowing true competition and monopolies don't like that, just ask the big oil companies that "claim" to COMPETE with each other when they get together to price fix gas