SIM cards for Freerunner

ian douglas ian.douglas at iandouglas.com
Thu Jun 12 01:18:36 CEST 2008


Robert Taylor wrote:
> Which part of "a portion of the contract pays for you phone ... phone 
> ISN'T FREE, YOU ARE FINANCING THE PURCHASE OF THE PHONE VIA THE 
> CONTRACT" is hard to understand?
> 
> Why do americans have such a hard time grasping this?

Your statement makes perfect sense, Robert.

But the carriers in America, in my experience (and I currently use a 
phone on each of Verizon, AT&T and TMobile), simply don't discount their 
monthly plan rates for using an unlocked phone on their network. 
Whatever portion of your monthly plan isn't otherwise going towards a 
subsidy is pure profit for them.

They're not about to give us a 10% or 20% break on our monthly bill, or 
whatever percentage pays for the subsidy of a locked phone (like the 
iPhone), otherwise the 'subsidy' no longer appears as a subsidy to the 
end user who *does* buy a locked phone, the user sees it exactly as you 
stated it -- they're financing their phone. And AT&T is going to want 
that to appear as 'transparent' as possible to the consumer.

That's my thought on it, anyway.

-id




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