Give it time, and it will, but not if the government starts poking its fingers in it. At that point it will get worse.
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U.S. Department of Justice Reviewing Wireless Carrier Exclusivity Agreements
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Exactly, if you want an iPhone that badly, you just need to deal with the crappy signal. If you don't want to deal with that, go get a Storm or something.
Don
Exactly. This whole thread boils down to one cold hard fact - there are people that want the iphone but don't want to switch carriers. They refuse to do so and don't think they should have to. So, they raise a stink and cry foul. Yet the same carrier that doesn't have what they want is the same one that is screwing them over from the get go. Locked phones, crap customer service, crap phones - etc etc. HOWEVER, that's ok.
Enough with the terrible car analogy. If you can't make the point without comparing it (necessarily imperfectly) to cars, don't bother.
The point is, it is not ATT nor Apple's job to do ANYTHING for the benefit of any customer but their own. Why would it be?
But if he wants to buy one particular product then why would they make life difficult for him? Why should the customer be forced to buy a phone they don't want?
That's not the problem. AT&T can be the exclusive reseller of the phone. No need for the government to interfere there. They can and should work out whatever they want between themselves. But once I buy the phone the agreement between Apple and AT&T should be done, and I should be able to activate it with T-Mobile. *I* shouldn't be part of the agreement, just AT&T and Apple.
AT&T and Apple are dictating to me I shouldn't do business with one of AT&T's competetors. Fair competition would prevent that obligation.
If you are so ignorant as to think that government run Health-care is going to save the day, I don't want to write the obvious.
Just think for just one minute and ask yourself a couple questions before this goes off the deep end. If government can run Health-care better than anyone else, why is it that most everything else that government touches eventually is in shambles, look at California and Michigan, both these states are run into the ground by government and there are more coming.
Or ask yourself, how are they going to pay for it.. There are two ways, high taxes, or limit care, where government decides ultimately whether you live or die because they will decide whether your care or you are an acceptable risk. While we all die eventually, I would prefer to have my own choices, and not some government bureaucrat making the choice for me, which is the ultimate outcome of any government run system.
This applies even here to this Telecomm debate, the free market will always decide if you leave it alone. Its when government meddles in the market, that it gets all screwed up, and if you cannot see that, you need to take the blinders off..
The government always casts a wide net with its reviews and then whittles down to more focused policies.
At the very least, I doubt they'll force companies to abolish exclusivity contracts and subsidies, but we can hope that they introduce policies to stop phone companies from hardware/software locking phones to specific carriers so you can take your phone to a compatible carrier once your contract is up, without having to hack it.
At the very least, I doubt they'll force companies to abolish exclusivity contracts and subsidies, but we can hope that they introduce policies to stop phone companies from hardware/software locking phones to specific carriers so you can take your phone to a compatible carrier once your contract is up, without having to hack it.
You misunderstand what "unfair competition" means. Then, you're mixing unrelated concepts together, into a black and white framework of politics, throwing some oddly inappropriate emotion on top, and sprinkling it with random words heard in AM radio.
It's unsurprising to realize that you don't understand the concept of competition, because you are quoted as saying "what is unfair competition", so I will explain it to you.
To compete is to vie for prices, if you want to make more money, you can't jack up the price, because the market does that through buyers and sellers. All you can do is drop your fixed and variable costs through the use of less/cheaper labor or capital.
Unfair competition enters the picture, and now a firm with better technology and more efficient operations can't compete because Microsoft owns ~90% of the OS market, and they've effectively locked in customers to a point where it's painful to change to something better because people don't have time, skills, etc.
Free Market is NOT a "free for all", it's the ability to enter the market to compete, and exit when you can't. When a company can block you from entering or exiting (the former more often than the latter), there is no free market competition, but a locked market where customers and sellers aren't making decisions, but where just firms are making those decisions.
What ends up happening is that YOU and I get less for more.
I'm not asking the government to "take over" anything, I'm asking the government to make unfair practices illegal. Private companies shouldn't be public, I would agree with that point because the public doesn't want to take risk in an everyone-in-or-everyone-out fashion. But if the government doesn't make some things illegal, the market can and will fail.
For example, only the government can make these things illegal:
1- lying in advertising. the free market cannot fix this. a good lie is a good lie, and you will buy something that's not what you thought it was. if this has never happened to you, you're the one that's lying.
2- monopolies. in a monopoly, everyone but a few lose. if there was one company making gasoline in the world, you would be taking a bike to work and milk would cost tens of dollars per gallon.
3- dumping carcinogens into the environment, possibly your backyard or source of water. if you don't want this regulated, you must hate your life. besides it being illegal, companies don't have an incentive to not do this, because it is not part of their costs, and if it's cheaper to dump and it's legal to do so, THEY WILL.
4- I don't have all afternoon to keep going. you get the idea. hopefully.
I think congress needs to pass a bill saying that Catherine Zeta Jones can be the spokeswoman for AT&T. It's not fair that she has signed a contract with T-Mobile, saying that she can only work for T-Mobile. T-Mobile totally has a monopoly on her. It's not fair!
I love it when someone uses an example that he thinks proves his point, but it actually proves the other person's....
They are not dictating to you. They are trying to get your patronage and you have a choice to give it or not to give it.
So you knowingly purchased a phone knowing full well that the only carrier for that phone was AT&T and you are now complaining that you should have a choice? You had a choice. You chose to forget the fact that you can not out of the box use the phone on tmobile. Now you want to complain? I guess the word EXCLUSIVE means nothing.
The amount of people claiming to understand how business works and how this is nothing more than government meddling is nothing short of
Government sets the rules by which businesses operate.
Governments do NOT have a profit motive only a duty to represent the best interest of the people (even if they screw it up)
To those who say government shouldn't ever be involved in business....too late!!
If you break your ridiculous 2 year agreement and refuse to pay the ETF where do they take you? That's right.....court (part of the Judicial branch in the US)
And how is it possible to even entertain a 2 year agreement with ETF's that are non negotiable and completely legal? Yep....the Legislative Branch of government.
Businesses have NO problem using the government to swing everything to its advantage. However, when the people decide that the government is supposed to work in the interest of the people, suddenly there's a cry of "interference"................ nonsense.
Beyond that, the real way businesses work has nothing to do with competition . As an earlier poster stated, its about "competitive advantage". However, there is a point at which trying to gain competitive advantage itself becomes anti competitive.
Competition takes place in the market place, NOT in who can buy a Senator to change laws to favor business. To that end, many large companies in the US do not compete, they consume or sabotage.
+1 insightful.
people think 'I know the meaning of the words free, market, and competition, and I go to the store every week, so I think I know how it works, and I don't want NoBama controlling anything!'
All they have to do is pick up two books, one on economics, and one on history. Take a few days reading each. Then come back and let's have an intelligent discussion on relevant data and theory, not an emotional bash-fest of dirty words and Rush Limbaugh quotes.
Case in point: Apple today.
Great OS, but where did it come from? Buyout of NeXT.
Logic Studio? Emagic. DVD Studio Pro? Spruce Technologies. Color? Silicon Color. Shake? Nothing Real. Motion? Silicon Grail.
Apple also bought the FileMaker guys, but they haven't incorporated the software as an Apple product.
Hehe. Thats the best post in this thread
I love the T-Mobile commercials when she is in them. I love the "milky minutes" commercials from AT&T too.
Exactly. This whole thread boils down to one cold hard fact - there are people that want the iphone but don't want to switch carriers. They refuse to do so and don't think they should have to. So, they raise a stink and cry foul. Yet the same carrier that doesn't have what they want is the same one that is screwing them over from the get go. Locked phones, crap customer service, crap phones - etc etc. HOWEVER, that's ok.
Okay, let me get this. I walk into an Apple Store and buy an iPhone without a contract for $599 (or whatever) and walk out of the Apple Store and go home (see, I didn't even bring the car; I walked this time). Now I go home, get on the internet and start comparing cell phone service plans (as consumers do when they live in a country with a fair, free market), and I find a plan that is nice and I go to activate my phone, but WAIT! The phone is LOCKED! It says I can ONLY use AT&T! That is NOT freedom, that is a monopoly. The consumer does not have a choice.
If there did not appear to be something wrong with this whole situation, then the FCC would have never begun an investigation into it. Think about that. The FCC sensed that something was not right.
I never realized so many people on this forum hate the government. I figured most Mac fanboys were the liberal hippie type.
And I don't know about the rest of you, but when the state government here in Massachusetts deregulated the energy industry a couple years ago, my energy bill doubled in one month. Wasn't too psyched about that one.
And of course we all know the result of the financial industry deregulation over the past two decades - the biggest financial meltdown since the Great Depression.
So yeah, more regulation among in the wireless industry is sounding pretty good to me.
And I don't know about the rest of you, but when the state government here in Massachusetts deregulated the energy industry a couple years ago, my energy bill doubled in one month. Wasn't too psyched about that one.
And of course we all know the result of the financial industry deregulation over the past two decades - the biggest financial meltdown since the Great Depression.
So yeah, more regulation among in the wireless industry is sounding pretty good to me.
How could one company dominate the OS market, simply they did everything right in the early days. Microsoft is not a monopoly, just a success story.
You can unlock the phone if you want, there are tools to do it, if you want to. The iPhone will only work on one network, GSM, so you cannot get it to work on Verizon or a CDMA network no matter how much you whine.
You have no clue what a monopoly is, its the government, they have the power to tax you, take away your freedom for real. You have choices with the iPhone, and right now its whether you want to get one and use it on AT&T or unlock it yourself. its your choice.. Eventually it will change, but not right now.
Life isn't fair, never has been, never will be, get over it..
You have the choice not to buy an iPhone. End of discussion. I want it unlocked more than anyone else. ANYONE. Else. But this is the same thing as suing McDonalds for making you fat.
Look up the word "monopoly" in a dictionary.
Okay, let me get this. I walk into an Apple Store and buy an iPhone without a contract for $599 (or whatever) and walk out of the Apple Store and go home (see, I didn't even bring the car; I walked this time). Now I go home, get on the internet and start comparing cell phone service plans (as consumers do when they live in a country with a fair, free market), and I find a plan that is nice and I go to activate my phone, but WAIT! The phone is LOCKED! It says I can ONLY use AT&T! That is NOT freedom, that is a monopoly. The consumer does not have a choice.
If there did not appear to be something wrong with this whole situation, then the FCC would have never begun an investigation into it. Think about that. The FCC sensed that something was not right.
Nevermind the fact that you know full well that the iPhone is only available on AT&T. Further more, if you do not know this, you are either living under a rock or did not do your homework before hand. Who buys a phone first and then shops the carrier? You shop the carrier and then pick your phone.
You do realize on the BACK of the shiny new iphone you "theoretically" purchased, it states that it ONLY WORKS WITH ONE CARRIER and then goes on to tell you the requirements of said carrier.
Again, you failed to read and research. The only thing you are proving is the fact that anyone NOT ON AT&T that wants the iphone are whining because they cant have one on the carrier they are on. Again, boo ****ing hoo.