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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