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Is there anything we as consumers can do about the whole supergreed of phone carriers

deeddawg said:
Don't like the setup at the big boys AT&T or Verizon? Go to T-Mobile.

Still not to your taste, switch over to prepaid. Use an MVNO like Straight Talk or one of the others.

Lots of options other than the big boys. Trade offs too.

You're not going to get Ferrari performance at a Ford Fiesta price no matter how unfair you think it is...
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There are two issues with your car comparison. The first is that there are a wide range of cars in between budget cars and Ferrari. I can get a Corolla for a little more than the Fiesta but a lot less than the Ferrari and have an excellent, reliable car that will do everything I need it to do. I see no such alternative in the mobile world. Either you value coverage above price, so you go with Verizon or AT&T, or you value price above coverage and/or speed, so you go with T-Mo/Sprint or an MVNO. Where's the middle ground? There isn't any. Even Verizon's single line plan is $75 per month for 2 GB of data, an unbelievable rip off.

The other issue is that the Ferrari brand is actually valued, so the idea is that you get a higher quality car (or at least a car perceived as higher quality than lower cost cars) for your money. I would wager a large portion of Verizon and AT&T's customer base do not feel they're getting a good value for their money, they're simply going with the company that offers them the best coverage they can get.

Look at what AT&T is doing with the iPad Air 2. They're locking the Apple SIM to AT&T if you choose to use them for data. Why? So that it's harder for their customers to switch to another carrier, defeating the purpose of Apple's multi-carrier SIM entirely. What consumer is seeing this as a positive? AT&T and Verizon are full of policies and charges that do nothing but pad their bottom line with no added value to the consumer at best, and may be negatively impacting the customer at worst.

I'm sure there are customers who have been with Verizon or AT&T for many years and are totally happy with them. But the fact is that most of the beneficial things that these companies offer is due to FCC mandates or competition from T-Mobile. If those weren't in place, both companies would bleed us dry faster than we could blink.

Unfortunately, the only answer I can see to the original question of what we can do about the greed of these companies is to stop buying mobile phones and stop using the internet (Comcast and Time Warner are no better than AT&T and Verizon). The only thing that will make these companies change their policies is a serious threat to their bottom line.
 
Supermallet said:
There are two issues with your car comparison. The first is that there are a wide range of cars in between budget cars and Ferrari. I can get a Corolla for a little more than the Fiesta but a lot less than the Ferrari and have an excellent, reliable car that will do everything I need it to do. I see no such alternative in the mobile world. Either you value coverage above price, so you go with Verizon or AT&T, or you value price above coverage and/or speed, so you go with T-Mo/Sprint or an MVNO. Where's the middle ground? There isn't any. Even Verizon's single line plan is $75 per month for 2 GB of data, an unbelievable rip off.
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There are some decent plans on MVNOs popping up. Cricket Wireless (AT&T) for $40 ($35) 1GB, $50 ($45) 3GB and $60 ($55) 10GB is a very attractive proposition for 1-2 line users. Come to think of it, they're a pretty great deal with their group discounts. Seriously, if I didn't have iPads on our Mobile Share and use tethering a lot, I'd switch.
 
rui no onna said:
There are some decent plans on MVNOs popping up. Cricket Wireless (AT&T) for $40 ($35) 1GB, $50 ($45) 3GB and $60 ($55) 10GB is a very attractive proposition for 1-2 line users. Come to think of it, they're a pretty great deal with their group discounts. Seriously, if I didn't have iPads on our Mobile Share and use tethering a lot, I'd switch.
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And what speed do they throttle your LTE to?
 
T5BRICK said:
The only real course of action is to vote with your wallet.
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Yep.. People seem to forget that too often.

The problem, is that even if there's a few people who think that far, there are too many who won't. People just accept the prices and roll over because they can't imagine going without.
 
In other words, it's still a downgraded service from what you'd get going to the national carrier.

I'm not saying no one should get Cricket, it actually seems like a good deal if you're looking at tiered data plans on AT&T or Verizon, but just be aware that those 10 GB of data will cap out at a lower speed than the data will if you're on AT&T proper.
 
I still have an unlimited data plan with ATT and don't plan on changing because it won't be any cheaper if I were to switch to a mobile share plan.

The more businesses that offer free wifi the less and less people will use data on their phone. Right now the only time we use a lot of data is on the road in the car and that is because we now stream music through Spotify more than we use the radio. However, once we reach our destination chances are there is a free wifi service to use.

I think carriers are doing a good job of keeping things competitive now. As soon as one company drops the rate for data, the other company drops the rate or doubles the data. Or go to Tmobile for their unlimited data or one of the budget companies for unlimited data.
 
iolinux333 said:
They're becoming the norm in Europe, where the trend is towards unlimited everything for €10/month.
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You're telling me that cell phone companies in Europe offering unlimited data, text, and minutes for 10 euros a month?! There must be some catch to that. What are the speeds on the data plans? What kind of coverage do those carriers offer?
 
My issue isn't with service, rather locking devices and being unwilling to unlock when traveling, even though ATT knows I could just get a third party to unlock m device. Sure it will cost me ~$70, but that's a hell of a lot cheaper than buying a new device for my travels, so really, what loss is it of theirs? They could argue they don't want me skipping out on my bill, but I could just buy the unlock and do exactly that. My bill is almost three times what an unlock costs per month... locking me to their network isn't what keeps me coming back.
 
flyinmac said:
Yep.. People seem to forget that too often.

The problem, is that even if there's a few people who think that far, there are too many who won't. People just accept the prices and roll over because they can't imagine going without.
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Voting with your wallet is difficult with an essential service which is almost entirely controlled by two companies that probably collude with each other

Supermallet said:
You're telling me that cell phone companies in Europe offering unlimited data, text, and minutes for 10 euros a month?! There must be some catch to that. What are the speeds on the data plans? What kind of coverage do those carriers offer?
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No catch, unless you consider living in Europe to be a catch. Speeds are much faster than ours too -- their HSPA+ is typically faster than what I get on LTE with AT&T.

The European countries all have real competition in their telecom industries, so they actually have to work to keep their customers
 
lordofthereef said:
Generally speaking, there is no roaming from country to country, unless I am mistaken.
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Might not be free roaming, but I believe it's still cheaper than international roaming is for us.

Also, prepaid plans are quite prevalent in Europe and not really as limited as they are in the US. So you can just buy a SIM from another country and load a few Euro on it when necessary.

They may also have some special plans like we have here for Canada and Mexico. I never really looked into it in depth
 
I'm actually thinking of starting up my own telecommunications system. You know, start small, local, and then expand interstate.

Step one is finding a cheap source of twine. Second step is to buy a pellet worth of tinned spaghetti.

I might make it a kickstarter.....
 
£15 for 300 minutes, 1000 texts and unlimited 4G/HDSPA+ data for 30 days here in the UK. And that is prepaid, no contract.

And it really is unlimited - I regularly go past 100GB a month. So, I don't think the telcos are greedy here. I don't even bother with home wi-fi because mobile data is cheaper and faster unless I went fibre optic.
 
terraphantm said:
Voting with your wallet is difficult with an essential service which is almost entirely controlled by two companies that probably collude with each other.
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Not exactly collusion (they'd be fined heavily for that). More like a waiting game to see what the other company does and matching it.
 
Supermallet said:
In other words, it's still a downgraded service from what you'd get going to the national carrier.

I'm not saying no one should get Cricket, it actually seems like a good deal if you're looking at tiered data plans on AT&T or Verizon, but just be aware that those 10 GB of data will cap out at a lower speed than the data will if you're on AT&T proper.
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Sure, it's downgraded service but imho, it's a good middle ground which you were saying didn't exist. Reasonable rates and data caps, decent speed and AT&T coverage. Cricket's much faster than most free wifi hotspots I've connected to. Heck, where I work, AT&T proper is just 2-4 Mbps faster than Cricket. :rolleyes:
 
MacDawg said:
We could get pitchforks and torches and storm their castles
Wait, that never works out well

Shop around, get your best deal for you and move on
Supply and demand
Way things work
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However, let's be real. Everyone always says if you don't like, don't buy it and vote with your wallet.....as that will induce a change in behavior. However, one guy voting with his wallet will not influence any change.
 
Supermallet said:
There are two issues with your car comparison.
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It wasn't a comparison of car models nor a comparison of two vastly different industries. It was comment on unrealistic expectations. Particularly that of expecting national carrier coverage and so forth at bargain carrier pricing.

The difficulty with establishing a true free market in cellular service is the extremely high barrier to entry for any new provider. There's some degree of natural monopoly effect simply from the huge amount of infrastructure build required to be a national player in the US market.

Don't misunderstand, I'd love to see increased competition and a much freer market. However it's a tough nut to crack and significant change isn't going to occur over night.

Interesting map showing the country sizes in Europe vs US. http://goeurope.about.com/od/europeanmaps/l/bl-country-size-comparison-map.htm

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dukebound85 said:
However, let's be real. Everyone always says if you don't like, don't buy it and vote with your wallet.....as that will induce a change in behavior. However, one guy voting with his wallet will not influence any change.
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Very true. One person alone won't effect any substantive change. Yet in sufficient numbers there is significant power. The trick is to achieve those numbers.
 
Do without cellphones use landline only get away from them completely we didn't have cellphones when I was growing up in the '60s and I survived somehow
 
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