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WSJ: Americans' Phone Bills Are Going Up
There's been some positive news in the last year (and the last few) for American cellphone customers: certainly there's more visible competition for their business among the largest players in the market. Nonetheless, the Wall Street Journal reports that while more competition may translate into some more attractive service bundles, flexibility in phone options, or smoother customer service, it doesn't actually mean that the customers are on average reaping one of the benefits that competition might be expected to provide: lower price. Instead, the bills for customers on the major wireless providers have actually gone up, if not dramatically, in recent months — which means U.S. cell service remains much more expensive than it is in many other countries. The article could stand a sidebar on MVNOs and other low-cost options, though -- I switched to one of these from AT&T, and now pay just under $40 for one version of the new normal of unlimited talk and text, plus quite limited (1GB) data, but still using AT&T towers. Has your own cost to talk gone up or down?
35 USD for "unlimited" data and 400 minutes of talk time. Texting is "free" using my google voice number. If I really needed to talk more than 400 minutes, I could use something like Skype for voice.
Restore the madness of youth's lechery
It's still a lot cheaper than Canada. Here we're dreaming of having something as good as American plans! As a single parent I just can't afford what they charge here...
Yeah, Ting, my bill just went down.
ignorance is bliss. googlefiberatx.com
I was on contract with T-Mobile: a family plan and one phone (out of 4) 18 months through its 2-year contract (the other 3 were past their 2-year contract period). T-Mobile allowed me to switch immediately to their monthly plans, with a reduction of about $60/month.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I switched from Sprint to Ting, a Sprint MVNO that does strict PAYGO. $6/mo per connected device and charges for talk, text, and data based solely on usage in a given month; if I talk less next month my bill goes down, if I use more data it goes up.
My phone bill for two devices is around half per month what Sprint charged us.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
I don't understand how businesses are allowed to tack on fees to bills without disclosing these fees in their prices. Somehow they can't quote these fees when you are booking the service, but they can calculate them when billing for the services.
Some years ago, I rented a car from a large airport and one of the fees tacked on was for the property taxes paid on the car. Why don't they just tack on another fee for the property tax on their buildings, or their staff costs, car depreciations? These are all costs that must be paid by the business whether or not I had rented the car -- just like the property taxes on the car.
I am just waiting for prices for cellphone and car rental services to be $1 with the rest of the cost as "taxes and fees".
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Landline sound quality in 1975 was better than any mobile phone sound quality in 2014.
"Hi, I'd like to get directions on how to mmmRAWWWWW BOAWWWAAHH URRRBBEE URBEEE BUMPH RAWWWWLLLL at the corner of Park Street. Hello? I said, I want to get dir--fwwwwzzzzEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE URPP *crackle* ffffffFAZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ EEEP Park street."
The telecom companies raise prices, pocket the money and let their service rot, and the customers just keep shoveling cash at them.
With the discount for on-time payments, I pay $35 for unlimited talk, text, and web on the Sprint network. That's no contract, so certainly good prices are available.
Of course, many people pay $85 for the phone subsidy that comes with a three year contract. An extra $50 / month will certainly increase the bill. $50 for 36 months is $1,800 for a "free" phone that's worth $250. No thanks. I don't recall how often you can get a new phone subsidized, but if it's a $200 credit once a year and people are paying $50 / month for that benefit ...
Moved from ATT to RepublicWireless, another Sprint MVNO, has plans from $5 to $40. Right now, Moto X is the only phone.
My bill with Verizon dropped 40% after I threatened to switch carriers. Cell phone plans are a beautiful example of how prices are set based on the market's willingness to pay, not on the actual cost of the good or service.
Expect prices to continue to rise as companies employ more and more psychologists and statisticians to extract the absolute maximum amount of wealth from their consumers.
I haven't taken a look at plans in the past year, but a year ago I looked at all of the plans available to find the cheapest possible service for someone that doesn't have many needs. I ended up with TMobile pay as you go plan. They had a unique feature that if you put $100 on your account, the money would stay in your account for 1 year. $100 a year for a cell phone service is hard to beat. This obviously won't work for someone that uses their phone quite a bit, but it is perfect for someone that can mostly use land lines and wireless internet. It's also perfect for a child whom you want to give a phone, but make them responsible for their own account balance.
Was on TMOUS for 10 yrs., limited data, shared minutes, initially because it was the best family plan with no roaming charges for about USD 164/4 lines. Then when TMOUS went "no-contract", I actually paid early termination fees for 2 of the lines to go "no contract" and it was well worth it. Now there are never overage charges, all unlimited text, talk and data (one line for my wife's iPhone has unlimited high-speed data at extra charge), 4 lines for less than USD 120. When my wife got the installment plan to buy an iPhone 5 last year for an extra 20/mo., our bill went up to a little less than we were paying. So essentially, beside the aforementioned unlimited upgrades, we got an extra unlocked iPhone 5 for my wife for the same amount we were paying previously and when its paid off in 24 mos., our bill will go down 20/month again. I sure hope no one buys TMOUS because they will nix these crazy pro-consumer plans in a heartbeat. Not affiliated with T-Mo in any way except as a happy customer.
www.chihuahuarescue.com- Help to end dog abuse, abandonment and cruelty
...I have a feeling I could sell the the number.
I chuckle when people tell me they're paying $50 or more a month for a fricken' phone.
I recently saw a commercial for either AT&T or Verizon, can't remember which, and they were BRAGGING how you could SHARE 2GB/mo with up to 4 phones... and the price was rediculously high too... I just don't understand it. How do they have any customers with that kind of gouging?
I don't use mobile data, and I mostly use free VOIP when I'm at home, but for my actual cell phone I only pay $30/year with Page Plus.
It costs $0.10/minute (plus tax), I usually average just south of $10/mo.
Last month I spent $2.47.
There are options from most of the carriers. I'm doing the Republic Wireless $10 unlimited talk and text, but with no data. Having a 4G phone with no data sucks, but the price is compelling, and I should be able to add a prorated data plan for the times when I expect I do need it. Having WiFi calls when I'm at a place with no cell reception is also nice. However, counting the phone, my bill is higher than if I had been able to keep my dumbphone on somebody's T-mobile family plan.
Ting is a great choice for Sprint, Airvoice is a great choice for AT&T, PagePlus is decent for Verizon.
One interesting option is FreedomPop, but they seem to be in beta. Earlier versions of FreedomPop phones had poor performance and very poor voice quality, but they're supposedly improving. It would be interesting to see if they go anywhere with that.
Have a nice time.
LOL, trolling troll is trolly.
BTW, I'm trolling anonymously, too, but I'm doing it ironically.
I switched to Boost Mobile. $2 a day for unlimited minutes, text and data on the days that I only use the phone. works on the Nationwide Sprint® Network. Of course, I hardly use the phone. :D
WSJ is in the back pockets of big businesses. How can we be sure this is not anti-competition (i.e, pro-oligopoly) propaganda?
Table-ized A.I.
Same here. I hope they don't kill that account.
I didn't RTFA, but is it possible that the increased competition has made more features available to some users? If a data plan, for instance, is suddenly within financial reach, it may be a net benefit even if the overall bill is increasing.
I'm looking at these. They seem much less expensive with a payoff period of 3-4 months.
All my friends were on this last ski trip and had no problem at Denver Airport or Winter Park.
I'm currently on Sprint and had good service as well but there are three LARGE areas in houston that I travel through and there is essentially no service in those areas.
I get good service at my home and in galveston tho.
I recently cancelled AT&T basic line which was up to $40 (From $18 not that long ago)...
and went with Magic Jack.
It worked flawlessly for about 35 days. Then Comcast went down for a couple hours and after that the MJ didn't work for a little under 3 days (giving a 3002 error).
I changed the ip, changed the cords, etc-- nothing worked.
Then- it started working again and it's been flawless for a couple weeks.
Good for a second line- but not something I'd like to count on. Also- my credit card company could process the touchkeys on the menu- but not when I entered the credit card number! Wierd, eh?
But I mainly had the land line for long daytime 1-800 calls and to find my cell phone when I lost it. So MJ mostly works perfectly for that. Since I got it on a $20 off coupon- it cost me $29 total. I declined the 5 years for $19 per year until I know how the thing works. but $19 per year -- including long distance-- has got to put some pressure on AT&T and others.
There are other, mildly more expensive VOIP solutions like MJ to that might be more reliable.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
My siblings and I are on our parents plan, yet, most of our calls are to each other, and therefore not deducted from our minutes. We barely use our actual minutes. Unfortunately I renewed my phone about 2-3 months ago, but I think this will be the last time for me, as my company just got me a phone. So now I have two cell phones with liberal plans and I barely use either.
Here in Australia I pay $19.99 per month and get $300 worth of cap value to use on everything except international calls, premium rate calls/SMS and international roaming. (3 services I never use)
I also get 1000 minutes per month free calls to other people on the same MVNO plus 1GB of included data.
I pay 40c per 30sec and 35c flagfall for normal voice calls, 25.3c for SMS, 50c for international SMS, 50c for national MMS, 75c for international MMS, 0.2c for 10kb data (above the 1GB included in my plan). $1.02 per minute plus 35c flagfall to 13/1300 numbers and 62c per minute plus 35c flagfall to 1800 numbers.
I have never once in my reasonably heavy use of my phone (lots of mobile data, lots of calls etc) hit my $300 cap.
Oh and I am not locked into a contract, nor does my provider care what phone I use or whether I use it for tethering. And they claim 98.5% population coverage with their network so I dont have to worry about coverage.
Oh and as long as I continue to use the same company for ADSL service, I can get $5 off (making it $15.99 per month)
All figures are in Australian Dollars.
Was at a client's site last week. She got a bill for $380 for two "business phone lines"!
Two frickin' lines!
She called AT&T and they "generously" offered to bring it down to $150/month if she bundled in DSL.
For two freaking POTS lines!
She's already on Comcast and already has a phone line through them. I told her to contact Comcast and have them tack on two phone lines. Total price increase. $-310 a month.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Baiscally the phone companies seem to want one's cellular bill to hover around the "magical" $100/month.
You can get 2, 3 , even 4 lines for $100/month.
But try to get a $25-35 plan for a single line?
Pfft. Yeah, right. Like that was going to happen.
And Sprint is trying to upsell my company. We're grandfathered into a plan with no data caps. They keep trying to sell us a plan that's just SLIGHTLY above our current data usage (and we know our data usage is only increasing). The grand total savings? $7/month. They've been told in polite, but no uncertain terms that we'll be keeping our current plan.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
....at the U.S.A.
Nuf' said.
Carriers started as monopolies and they have never really changed.
Now that there is 'competition' they are forming cartels. They are what I call 'natural'-cartels, they simply follow each other as they raise the prices.
However a few years ago, some of the ex-CEOs of carriers in the Netherlands have stepped forward and admitted that they did actually meet with each other many years ago to make that deal: "raise your prices when I raise my prices".
Back last year I used AT&T upping their rates to get out of my contract, 6 months into a 2 year contract. Had them unlock my phone and took it to T-Mobile. They have a web-only plan for $30/month that gives unlimited text/data and 100 minutes. $20 for their startup fee that included the sim card and activation, and another $20 to port the number to google voice and using that over data instead of minutes, I'm on unlimited everything for $30/month.
Cheap phone service is easy if you're willing to put a couple hours into making it happen.
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try." -Homer Simpson
companies employ more and more psychologists and statisticians to extract the absolute maximum amount of wealth
There's definitely a price/profit curve, the apex of which is the price that maximizes the seller's profit.
If you were the owner of a struggling small business, wouldn't you try to find the sweet spot that maximizes your profit?
If your honest answer is "no," then what price would you target --
the price that gets you 50% of your potential profit?
the price that gets you 10% of your potential profit?
-- and why would you choose to "leave money on the table" like that, to the detriment of the family you provide for?
If your honest answer is "yes," why should a large company act any differently than you would? In many cases the owners (shareholders) of a large company are just as needy as the owner of a struggling small business. Think a senior citizen who's very dependent on a pension, and the pension fund owns shares of Verizon. Should Verizon be "charitable" to its customers (many of whom are wealthy), to the detriment of its shareholders (some of whom are financially struggling)?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
It's cheap, a $20 card gives 600 minutes, 600 texts, and 600 MB of data with 90 days of service on Verizon in this area.
ZTE phones however remind you of the "get what you pay for" adage with the single core processors if you're demanding enough to be downloading updates and doing anything else concurrently.
vi? Who's that?
Living in Switzerland I don't see how the US is very expensive. It is cheaper for me to get a T-Mobile contract from the US and roam all day than use a Swiss contract. The only reason I have not yet done so is that people would not be able to call me very easily, and with my Nexus 5, I am not going to swap my phone for a dual-SIM anytime soon.
Here mobile calls have already a lot of competition and some obscure operators more oriented to foreign people (go figure) give you extremely good rates like 7 euros/month call anyone you want, or just pay a load every 3 months. I estimate I am spending 5 euros/months for the mobile bill. The bill you can find with the official operators is around 15 euros/month, and if cheaper they rip you off in the cost of the calls. Mobile Internet is an huge rip off, and the magic number is (again) 15 euros for the bare minimum service 1GB per month (ridiculous). They also sell 4G services for around 50 euros month, where they used to advertise unlimited data, and in very small letters * this is subject to a responsible user policy*. It turns out their unlimited data, was just 15GB, which at 4G speeds latest you only to about half of the month. The regulator, whilst being a puppet, could not ignore more that situation, gave them a slap in the wrist, and now in the adverts they just dont display the caps of the service tier. I get by using wifi hotspots and our Internet at home, and dont even try to play that game.
I pay about 15$ for unlimited minutes/sms within country and 1GB of internet.
18 months contract without phone.
I recommend Republic Wireless. $25/month gets you unlimited 3G (5 Gigs, then throttled to 2G) data, voice and texting on the Sprint Network. You have to purchase the phone outright (Moto X) and they hope but don't absolutely require that you offload to WiFi. The WiFi turns out to be a great feature because you can make calls and send texts seamlessly--great if you work in a basement or live in a bad cell area like I do. I wrote a blog posting about my experience here: http://www.eroncohen.com/2013/...
I don't go out that much, thankfully. I have a Nexus 4 on a T-Mo SIM, replacing an Xperia Play (hey, it was a hundred bucks all in, including replacing the back plate.) Which is now my SIP phone, and I pay around ten bucks a month for that.
The plan I'm using costs $2/day for unlimited everything, only on the days when you use it. It only has EDGE but the $3/day plan has fancier mobile data. Much of my driving around is in the sticks where the 3G coverage is crap anyway, and this is adequate for navigation with google maps.
The only annoyance is having to pop out the SIM every time I want to try out a new ROM, since all of 'em default to mobile data enabled...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Unlimited UK texts.
1GB internet (that I can tether), good 3G coverage.
500 minutes.
Free calls to same network.
4G coming... same deal.
I dunno about everyone else, but AT&T not only just canceled the rest of my contract term, but also cut my bill by $30 and gave me 4GB more data.
I chuckle when people tell me they're paying $50 or more a month for a fricken' phone.
I don't want to tell Americans what I get for $50 a month in my "2nd world" country...
No sig today...
I'm in the process of switching to Wal-Mart $30 a month T-Mobile plan with unlimited data. Generally fuck Wal-Mart, but this is the one thing they seem to be getting right. There's not really a better deal out there.
I pay $30/month for 25 hours of talk and text with T-Mobile, but there's hardly a data plan (I think it's, like, 30mb/month). Suits me well since I don't use a smartphone. As soon as you set foot into the data plans, that's when things start getting expensive I think.
One of them told me yesterday, "I think I should send T-mobile a donation. AT&T has cut my price in half because of T-mobile". He was paying 300$ for five lines. AT&T reduced it to 160$ for unlimited talk and text and 10GB of high speed data, combined data quota, and hot spot ability, free international roaming at 128 kbps, free international texts.
It is to be expected, there are no new killer must-have features on the new phones, and so the customers don't feel the need to run on the upgrade treadmill. So they days of giving a "free" phone at some 200% margin in installments to the customers are gone. US cell phone market is trending towards sanity now.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Obama's FCC purposefully is forcing the market so that only 2 carriers remain and they are free to do whatever they like. The only question remaining is how much will the state and Federal governments tack on in new taxes and tariffs.
But the upside is that if you're a Sprint customer like me, there isn't any network at all so you will never experience any worsening of service. There is already no service.
Instead, the bills for customers on the major wireless providers have actually gone up, if not dramatically, in recent months — which means U.S. cell service remains much more expensive than it is in many other countries.
Bills may have gone up but that doesn't mean you are paying more for the same stuff. I'm paying less for voice but I'm paying more for data in total. I'm also paying less per byte in data than I used to but I'm using more of it. My first cell phone bill was around $40/month (15 years ago) and only included a "massive" 40 minutes/month of voice calls before expensive ($0.70/minute) overage minutes kicked in. My bill reached a peak of about $100/month/phone recently but now I'm paying about $70 per phone for unlimited talk, text and more data than I use in a month. Plus I'm not even accounting for inflation.
So yeah, my bill is higher but I'm getting a lot more in terms of data communicated per dollar and I expect that to continue to fall over time. The product the telecom companies are selling is a commodity so I expect prices to continue to fall unless we allow the companies to merge into a monopoly.
Ha! When will Google Voice start handling MMS, period? And no, changing it over to an email doesn't count.
Google hasn't done anything with the product since they bought it... other than put their name on it.
Google Voice will start handling MMS sometime after they shut down the ability to use it for VoIP in May and replace the SMS/MMS portion with Google+ Hangouts instead.
You were looking for another reason to "upgrade" to using Google+, right?
Landline sound quality in 1975 was better than any mobile phone sound quality in 2014.
Do you really want to go back to 1975? There was no such thing as mobile service. There also was for all practical purposes no data service. There was no voice mail and no answering machines. Text messaging didn't exist and email wasn't available outside of academia and some research labs. You had precisely one company to deal with in the US (AT&T) and they're weren't exactly friendly what with them being a monopoly and all. You would get charged an obscene amount of money to call anyone more than a few miles from your house and you didn't even want to think about the cost of calling someone outside your country. Rotary dial phones were still commonplace. And I'm old enough to remember all this.
Yeah they had voice service that was optimized for voice and nothing else. Cell phones might have their problems but I'm not exactly eager to turn the clock back.
The roots of those high cellular prices go deep. I worked for one (bought out by AT&T) during the fourth cellular license allocations. One of our marketing team spent an entire day working spreadsheets trying to get our "costs" high enough to justify rates that'd already been set before a state agency. He added more and more people to the sales team. He gave them company cars etc. All to justify high rates with regulators. Sometimes I suspect the worst forms of business arise when there's no real competition and much that goes on is contriving added costs to get regulators to agree to the higher rates.
That's probably why you see so much cellular advertising and so many stores. A lot of money is being spent to add just a small number of additional clients and, since they're all competing with their advertising, the money spent by Company A often merely cancels out that spent by Company B. And you see the same with cable TV and broadband. I live where there are two broadband suppliers. Almost weekly I get a flyer from one or the others. It's stupid. All I want is the lower rate. No amount of propaganda is going to make me pay more than I have to.
In Romania (which is in Europe), 5 euro (almost 7 US$) brings you about 2500 in-the-network national SMS/minutes + 200 out-of-network or international SMS/minutes + 50MB of data. For other usages, like higher data consumption, there are other plans/promotions. There are occasional bonuses as well, like unlimited minutes during a certain time-frame (say, 21 days). Of course, they still make lots of money, let's not pity them. So the North-American prices (especially the Canadian ones) are pure theft. Been there, done that. I was paying about 40$/month for an extremely light usage.
I don't know how old you are but Ma Bell was nowhere near as evil as today's AT&T and Verizon.
Bullshit they weren't. My father and grandfather worked for Ma Bell for over 50 years between the two of them (both as line installers and in engineering) and I'm old enough to remember them pre-breakup. I've seen them operated behind the scenes and my father can tell you in great detail what a bunch of evil pricks they could be.
Ma Bell was a regulated monopoly with many constraints on what it could do.
Regulated yes. Constrained? Not so much. AT&T had vast power back in the day. Certainly more than Verizon and AT&T do currently, who BTW are also still regulated quasi-monopolies at least for some of the services they provide. The old AT&T basically monopolized all telephone and data communications in the US and I assure you that they behaved accordingly.
The Bell System was broken up in 1982 by a lawsuit brought by Northern Telecom because they wanted to sell the DMS-100 in the US.
The reasons for the breakup were FAR more complicated than wanting to sell some gear made by Nortel. Primarily AT&T wanted to get into the computer business but the breakup ultimately was the end result of an 8 year anti-trust suit begun in 1974 over the issue that AT&T was accused of using its Western Electric subsidiary (now Lucent, Agere, Avaya and some other companies) to subsidize the cost of their network. Essentially they were using one monopoly to maintain another.
Yeah except you can't keep that price and get a decent handset, that's why I just switched the wife over to Republic Wireless, same $25/month but she can use a non-sucky phone (Moto X) instead of her cruddy Optimus V on Virgin Mobile plus she now gets unlimited voice, twice as much data, and roaming to Verizon.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I use FreedomPop semi regularly in the NYC metro area. I got the older device that does 3/4g for $40. Pay $4ish per month to get 3g service. 500mb free. It rocks!
As a programmer, I have a pretty good feel for how much data i use and never go over. If you do text (google voice), email, minimal web, and the infrequent voip call, you will never use more.
I had $50/month (unlimited everything) with Boost Mobile and ended up switching last month to $25/month (unlimited everything) with Republic Wireless. Both under a "no subsidy, average-ish phone" plan.
I pay $13.99/mo (no taxes/fees). $10/mo to ATT MVNO Airvoice for 250min/mo with rollover (which I never come close to using all of), Google Voice for all my SMS (unlimited) and the rare times I'm not on WIFI I have a $3.99/mo Freedompop 3g/4g Mifi (free if only 4g but Wimax coverage is spotty so I pay for 3g). The Mifi is only 1GB/mo, but like I said, it's rare I'm on in WIFI coverage anyway.
It's not for everyone, but it's great for me.
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
At that level of usage, you might look at Page Plus (VZW MVNO); I pay $10 3 times a year for (each of) my kids' phones. It's 10c/min but no additional taxes (there is a 50c deduction per month service fee), so they basically get 20min/mo with roll-over. Not sure it would be any better for you, but the coverage is great (statistically) and I think it's always worth looking at options.
You can use any post-paid VZW phone except the iPhone (last I checked, they might be able to use the iPhone now, doesn't affect me). They also have an $80/yr 2000min plan that amounts to 4c/min (and under $7/mo) which I used to use - a great deal!
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
$45/month "unlimited" talk/text/data and they have phones for ATT, VZW, or TMO networks so you can pick which network is best for your coverage area. But you have to very careful in researching for yourself the phone. Do lots of internet searching and follow what others have proven will work. You cannot get a straight answer from straight talk themselves about which handsets work on which networks and whether or not your BYOD will even work thru them. Getting the phone and account set up with them can also be a pain in the ass, especially if you're trying to BYOD, but once you're finally set up, things work pretty well. Just keep in mind that you need to try to avoid involving ST's customer support as much as possible because it's worse than terrible.
What most of these posts don't advertise is their actual speed of connection. Today with smartphones, LTE should be standard. But most of these cheap plans are MVNO's reselling cheaper 3g plans as most major carriers don't resell their LTE plans only 3G/3G+/4G (latter being marketing). While fine for those driven primarily by cost, it's not ok for those that want speed. That and they use their own definition of "unlimited" or even the 2/3/5 GB plans they offer where they knock you down to Edge speeds after a certain amount.
So you're telling me if I don't use my phone, my bill will be cheaper!
Some of these perks are necessary in the federal system that the United States adopted in the 1780s. How else should carriers advertise across state lines when these regulatory costs differ from state to state?
...is still garbage. We Americans should not feel at all good about how badly we're getting fleeced by the telecoms just because someone else has it worse, just as an American McDonald's worker shouldn't brush off their own depressing work conditions after witnessing work conditions in the third world. That kind of thinking is a race to the bottom.
Americans will not see fair prices for phone service until we accept that utilities like phone service are a natural monopoly and that the government must step in to to force sufficiently competitive conditions. Break up the oligopoly. Force them to act as common carriers. Separate the ownership of transportation mediums from those providing the actual service and compel them to allow many companies to compete over the same medium. Subsidize infrastructure build out where it is not normally profitable (like any other utility). Forbid vertical integration with, e.g., content companies so to avoid the blatant conflict of interest. Stop outlawing municipal broadband. So many other countries have made these exact structural changes with extremely successful results, much in the way that many of these same countries have very successful healthcare systems that the US also refuses to emulate.
Of course none of these changes will occur unless we take care of our corrupt political system ( http://www.represent.us/ ). Politicians will claim there is "no political will" which translates to "I don't want to be decimated by the telecoms' campaign money and PR offensives next election" and perhaps "maybe I'd like to quadruple my salary by becoming a telecom lobbyist in my later years". But I'm digressing...
And the "As a single parent" line sounds like something from your typical shill script and is rather out of place on Slashdot--especially since it's coming from an AC.
It would make life much easier if they forced the mobile providers to quote the prices inclusive of the taxes.
After rattling off the prices for every county in the United States that assesses a sales tax, the ad would have to become tens or hundreds of times longer than it is today.
On Straight Talk (using the AT&T service).
$45 month: 2.5 GB LTE / 3G data (slows down after that), unlimited talk + text. About half what a similar AT&T no contract plan would cost.
Was on the $30 / month unlimited T-Mobile plan but found data & voice service pretty bad outside metro areas.
That line worked 10 years ago, but the pay phones are all gone. You need to pay a little bit per year to keep a phone in the glove box just for occasional use. Or you can do what my in-laws do and just borrow strangers' phones! LOL.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Trac Phone. $100/year and more time than I will ever use.
That is because they have their fingers in their ears. I've been gradually getting everyone I know to switch to Ting like I did. Or at least, if they really do need an unlimited plan, telling them to stop using freaking overpriced Verizon or AT&T, because seriously why would you do that? Pay twice as much for worse service than one of the 50-bucks-or-so unlimited plans? I rarely use more than the smallest tier, though, so I definitely do *not* need an unlimited plan. As such, I generally pay Ting about 15 bucks a month, and enjoy customer service that's almost unheard of these days (i.e. if you have a problem, they'll actually fix it, instead of passing you around a dozen times and then hanging up on you.)
Because I buy no contract phones that are GSM I am part of the only real competitive network in North America. ATT vs T-Mobile. ATT's 3 billion contribution to my plan now means I pay $50 (1st line) + $30(2nd line) + $10(3rd) all with data, text and talk. Previously 2 lines cost me $175 under contract. Thank you ATT.
Straight talk uses T-Mobile
I'll see your unlisted rental/phone fees and raise you... UPS. You pay for a package to be shipped to you, based on the weight, size, destination and description of contents provided by the seller.
Package crosses the border.
Border agent charges you a small amount to cover taxes, and then *doubles* the cost of your package in brokerage. Sometimes they'll ding you at the doorstep, sometimes you'll get an unexpected "present" in the mail in the form of some butt-puckering bill.
Fedex is similar in fees.
USPS/Canada-Post do not screw you this way. In the odd case where they do charge you fees, they're much more reasonable.
You know what else is fair? Taxes and regulations.
Not always. For example, airline deregulation was a good thing. "In 1974 the cheapest round-trip New York-Los Angeles flight (in inflation-adjusted dollars) that regulators would allow: $1,442. Today one can fly that same route for $268." -- Stephen Breyer, who worked with Ted Kennedy on airline deregulation in the 1970s
With tax rates, like with prices charged to consumers, there's a sweet spot that maximizes long-term government revenue. A government that goes above that rate is being worse than unfair; it's shooting itself in the foot because even as it's imposing very burdensome tax rates on the people whose economic liberty it should be protecting, it's not generating as much revenue as it could.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
I'd consider an MVNO, but they can't beat my plan ($25 every 3 months). So I could get a smart phone and use data over WiFi when available. But I'm not sure if AT&T will pull their mandatory data plan B.S. even for wholesale customers. I just don't need data that much and I'm not likely to be shot for my flip-phone.
Have gnu, will travel.
I wrote an ebook/guide to MVNO's and how to save yourself about $1k per year by going off-contract, and bringing your own phone to an MVNO, like StraightTalk (and others). If you want to check it out... https://leanpub.com/StraightTalkGuide
I have a TracPhone. Old Samsung smartphone, obtained through slickdeals.org and the home-shopping-network. $7/month for 180 minutes, 180 texts, & 180 MB. WiFi supported. Haven't come close to hitting those limits yet. Min/Txt/MB values roll over month to month. Totally anonymous spy-like burn phone if I so choose. (I didn't. Tied it to my gmail account.)
Granted, I like *never* use my cell phone. And I'm an old foggy so I still have a landline. (No cell reception at home.) But there are cheaper options...
but I'm on an older t-mo plan that they no longer offer, $30/m for 100m voice(so it doesn't get used alot for voice just the necessary or voip), unlimited messaging, "unlimited" data 5GB @ 4G then it drops to 3G... never overrun the data yet, but I prefer to have more data than voice.
Drawback is well, T-mo's coverage sucks even worse than AT&T's and Sprint's. Verizon's stil the 10 trillion pound gorilla in coverage terms...
MVNOs: I'd watch those, if they're anything like sprint's they're only allowed access to a subset of the original carriers, e.g. sprint's, "towers", so sucky coverage to begin with is already more sucktacular in some areas...
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I'm like, WTF is DFW?
My cell phone costs are completely controllable with Tracfone. My CenturyLink landline bill hasn't changed in three years and is guaranteed for another two. I cannot comprehend paying $150/month for cell service as some families do.
creeper
When my son was a teenager, admittedly fifteen years ago, he ran up over three thousand dollars in charges to phone sex lines. Not only did AT&T eat all of those charges, THEY are the ones who caught the problem and called us.
If I used my cell phone more it would be on AT&T. Right now, my Tracfone number is an AT&T network number and it works fine.
As for my CenturyLink land line, that will be the other thing they pry from my cold, dead fingers.
is the sheeple's willingness to put up with such crappy quality for the convenience of mobile communication. This is not progress.
creeper
My monthly bill has been going down. Three times in the last year, and, during that same time frame, the services I am provided have increased (either during a drop in my bill, or outside of a drop in my bill where my bill didn't change). But T-Mobile's been pretty good about that.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
It is easy to see how the phone companies were upset with cell phones and how it cost less than a wired grid combined with a history of new cheaper technology maintaining similar profits drove prices down and hurt the old businesses.
But then they realized it was an opportunity and they embraced the change and exploited it as opposed to fighting or ignoring it (like the power companies are doing.)
Now they have people paying MORE for service that costs them less to maintain; their profits have gone up significantly the whole transition period. Naturally, due to the stock market they will never let go of these profits despite the competition, all the players have publicly traded stock value to maintain.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Straight Talk does both AT&T and T-Mobile. You pick out which one you want when you order the SIM.
Bills may have gone up but that doesn't mean you are paying more for the same stuff.
People don't care about that. Just like people bitch that data costs too much, even though 1 GB is more data than a 2,000 minutes of voice.
http://www.virginmobileusa.com/cell-phone-plans/beyond-talk-plans/overview/
The official VMUSA site shows $35 for 300 minutes. Was 400 an error, or do you have a promo/plan that's not shown?
From what I understand, it depends on the area of the country you live in. So it is possible to be on "T-Mobile" Straight Talk in some areas and "AT&T" Straight Talk in other areas.
In my area, it was possible (for a while) to run locked AT&T phones on straight talk. They've stopped, because some folks were taking the pay as you go smartphones, using them maybe a month, and quickly switching to Straight Talk.
Odd, I just saw one yesterday actually. Right in front of a convenience store in Arizona.
I use open scanning to hunt WiFi first if downloading because that's the only limit and it's easy to find open WiFi, but it does not really matter when you can use the tools installed on BackTrack that destroys WiFi encryption. I'd use the tools on DSL (50MB) or Puppy (100MB) though, since they're way more compact.
I came here to engage in this conversation. I am leaving because of Beta. I will not read stories presented with Beta. It sucks.
Today the reason is because I tried to use the "Parent" link and I got "Coming soon!" Coming soon? What the fuck are you talking about? Don't you think you should write that feature before foisting Beta onto users?
You are successfully driving me away, Slashdot. It's been fifteen years, and I can see the end coming.
I switched from Verizon (~$80/month including a company discount) to AIO wireless at $45/month. That $45 gets me unlimited minutes and texts and 2.5GB of "high speed" data (4Mb/s on HSPA, 8Mb/s on LTE) and unlimited data at 256Kb/s after the 2.5GB limit has been exceeded. No contract. It uses AT&T towers, so I have great coverage. I am very happy with the service.
God is imaginary
You can't have the audience enter a postal code before seeing prices on a print ad, radio ad, or TV ad. Nor can you have the viewer enter a postal code before seeing prices on a web ad if the viewer has chosen not to be tracked.
It is fair for the companies to raise prices as high as possible without scaring off their customer base. It is fair for government to raise taxes as high as possible without scaring off their tax base.
When goods or services are sold, the transaction is completely voluntary for both buyer and seller. Furthermore, multiple sellers typically compete for the buyer's business on the basis of price and/or quality.
When government collects taxes, the transaction is completely compulsory and coercive. (Can you name one person or business who, if they got a letter from the IRS stating this year's tax payment was waived, would voluntarily send in the money anyway?) There are never multiple governments competing for the taxpayer's money, on any basis.
Do you really fail to see how the completely different nature of these transactions completely invalidates your analogy?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Does it work?
If so, then they missed one.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Inflation is a big part of it.
"No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session." -- Judge Gideon J. Tucker
I switched to Republic Wireless after being with Sprint for 14 years. Used 5 year old Sanyo phones. Plan was $25 for 300 base minutes, with no text or data plan. The phone basically pays for itself after one year on the $25 plan.
A big factor in the quality and price of cell service is population density. Density matters because it is directly related to the cost of providing service. Lots of people in a small area are less expensive to serve than a population spread out over a large area.
Europe (the entire continent), the USA, and Canada all have roughly the same land mass. Europe has a bit over twice the population of the US. Canada has just over one-tenth the population of the US. The ranking of their price and quality of service matches their rank of density. Want even better prices than you can get in Europe? Try Japan or South Korea, which have population densities considerably higher than Europe. Want to pay a lot? Move to Australia, which has population density similar to Canada.
is it even moral for the government to set tax rates that maximize its revenue?
A great question. And think about this: thanks to incomes growing faster than the rate of inflation, basic commodities, like a gallon of milk, consume a significantly smaller fraction of a family's income than they did a generation ago. And that effect is orders-of-magnitude larger for technological commodities, like a gigaflop of computing power.
Government services, too, ought to be costing a smaller fraction of a family's income. (Especially because government uses technology to provide its services. Most government workers sit in front of a computer all day.) But government services are about the only thing that is bucking the trend, and consuming a larger fraction of a family's income!
That that is is that that that that is not is not.