The Irksome Cellphone Industry

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday July 25, 2009 @03:19AM from the reach-out-and-regulate-some-one dept.

gollum123 writes "David Pogue of the NYTimes wonders why Congress is worrying about exclusive handset contracts when there are more significant things that are broken, unfair, and anti-competitive in the American cellphone industry. He lists text messaging fees, double billing, handset subsidies, international call rates, and 'airtime-eating instructions' among the major problems not being addressed by Congress. 'Right now, the cell carriers spend about $6 billion a year on advertising. Why doesn't it occur to them that they'd attract a heck of a lot more customers by making them happy instead of miserable? By being less greedy and obnoxious? By doing what every other industry does: try to please customers instead of entrap and bilk them? But no. Apparently, persuading cell carriers to treat their customers decently would take an act of Congress.'"

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Industry Response by Anonymous Coward · 2009-07-25 03:36 · Score: 5, Interesting

The industry response to these charges has been interesting so far. Apparently Pogue got at least one executive at a major carrier's attention long enough for a PR piece to follow that tries to poke holes in some of the complaints...