Agreed.
I've wondered, if you were to "buy-out" your contract or say AT&T did something to void your contract, shouldn't your iPhone be officially unlocked by AT&T or Apple without future harm and with full support? The fact is we all bought the iPhone without incentives or rebates for signing-up. We all paid full retail price. I'm having a hard time coming-up with another consumer product that has this same arrangement, although I'm sure there is.
I had an experience with contract based phone service, it was repugnant. I asked them to kindly unlock my phone at the expiry of the contract (Siemens C56) and they said it would cost me an additional 300 dollars. Since then, they've lost me as a customer. They've more than recovered that 300 dollars in two years worth of profits, that's pretty greedy in my opinion. At least I didn't pay the full price of the phone, which in comparison to the iPhone, seems a bit less damning.