These arguments are pathetic. I registered just so I could post how moronic the folks that are arguing that this isn't a "significant" deal sound.
You logic is flawed to the nth degree. When you purchase a cell phone, many times you have to sign a contract to help pay for the phone (i.e. it is subsidized). You obviously understand this, but you are taking it to the extreme. You act as if the $70/month is only buying the privilege of owning the phone. Are you not aware of the voice and data capabilities that come with that? Surely you do realize that you can call people, receive calls, email, surf the net, etc? Do you not understand that this purchase is really for 2 (or 3) items? 1) The physical phone 2) The SERVICE!!! WTF is so hard to grasp about this?
Like someone said before with the car analogy: Do you factor in the cost of interest you pay on the life of the loan for your car (assuming you don't pay cash)? Do you factor in mandatory insurance? Do you factor in the cost of oil changes/maintenance for the life of the car? Do you factor in the cost of gas for the usage of the car (i.e. cell service)? You should if this is the way you make your purchases. Since you are bashing everyone here, I assume you wouldn't take $1000 back from the dealer on a $20,000 car because this only adds up to an "insignificant savings". On the face of it, this is only 5% savings, but by your horrible logic, it is probably more like 1 or 2% or something petty like that. I'll take that $1000 if you don't want it...
The car analogy is flawed because the cost of the car is equal to, if not more, than the cost of everything else (insurance, registration, taxes, maintenance). One could easily imagine $350/month for a payment and another $350/month for the other items.
However, the cost of the phone is relatively small compared to the cost of overall contract. Simply put, if one averages out the cost of the phone over the length of the contract; the $50-100 savings averages out to a few dollars (about $4) per month over a two period out of total cost of $80-$120/mo. Therefore, the overall savings is quite insignificant.
Personally, it doesn't really matter to me. If I want a 3G iPhone, I'll just walk down to the Apple store (50 meters) and buy an unlocked one for 500 and run whatever plan I want (they have one pay-as-you-go over here with unlimited data transfer for 8SEK/day or about $0.90).