Cell Phone Prices

Cell phones are ubiquitous for most people in technologically current countries. Cell phones are almost as prolific as America Online disks, yet, unlike America Online disks, cell phones have not become free, rather, the price of a cell phone has sky-rocketed since inception.

Mobile carries push you to get a new phone every two years or more frequently, they cajole you into going for services that are pointless (TXT, mobile web, GPS), and they convince you that it’s OK to pay hundreds of dollars a month to subscribe to their phone service…yet they also want to rip you off by making you PAY for the phone!

Consider a cell phone bill of $25 a month for unlimited everything. This is far less that what most folks pay nowadays, but will serve for illustrative purposes nicely.

At the rate of $25 a month, a cell phone company will get $600 per year from a consumer. Over the course of two years, that’s $1200, yet they STILL would want to charge you for the privilege of PAYING them for a phone? AND they want to contractually FORCE you to pay them and only them for a period of two years?

Poppycock!

Cell phone companies are ripping off consumers. Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, ad infinitum. They simply picked up in the digital age where the Ma Bell left off in the age of analog! Even if you don’t remember ever paying to make a long distance call, rest assured, the old phone companies made billions and billionsof dollars off of folks who just wanted to call their family who lived far away. They ripped us off then, and now cell phone companies are ripping us off now.

Similar price points across cell phone companies, coupled with two-year locked-down contracts are clear examples of industry-wide collusion.

So did the Telecommunications Act of 1996 work as intended? It depends.

If your bill for monthly phone service has increased, it’s a safe bet that the promise of more competition has failed miserably.

If, on the other hand, you are scoring record profits from every new gadget and price point your ram down the throats of your customers, then it’s a safe bet that you are reaping exactly what you expected and laughing all the way to the bank. Oh hell, you’re not even going to the bank, you’re doing free wire transfers to Switzerland over telecommunication lines you own! Enjoy the money while you can - you can’t take it with you.