All carriers are borderline criminals, some worse than others. But all are terrible. If they had it their way, you'd be using a phone loaded with adware, home page default to carrier.com, sends all user data through their spy proxies, etc. It took Steve Jobs and iPhone to stand up to them and say NO. Nobody else could have done it, nobody else had the leverage. Don't forget the gift Steve and Apple gave you next time you use your phone, and don't forget the snakes you're dealing with when you're talking to $CARRIER.
