Good point. If you have a truly *unlimited* plan, the carrier has incentive to divert you off their system. All of the plans from my carrier, however, have per-minute caps, and its strategy, as demonstrated by snail-mail add-ins and SMS spam, has been clearly directed towards getting me to use *more* minutes.
I am interested to see how this plays out, as I have typically awful GSM coverage at home, but excellent WiFi coverage. This would be all I need to give SBC the boot it has long deserved.
In the current market for cel phones in the U.S., we buy phones diretly from the cellular providers. What is their incentive to offer us a phone that cuts out a source of their revenue, even if it provides value to us?
For those of us using GSM networks (i.e. Cingular, AT&T), we could always buy this phone from an independent vendor for top-dollar and transfer our SIM cards. Those of us willing to do this unfortunately represent a tiny part of the cel phone market.
Slashdot Mirror
Good point. If you have a truly *unlimited* plan, the carrier has incentive to divert you off their system. All of the plans from my carrier, however, have per-minute caps, and its strategy, as demonstrated by snail-mail add-ins and SMS spam, has been clearly directed towards getting me to use *more* minutes.
I am interested to see how this plays out, as I have typically awful GSM coverage at home, but excellent WiFi coverage. This would be all I need to give SBC the boot it has long deserved.
In the current market for cel phones in the U.S., we buy phones diretly from the cellular providers. What is their incentive to offer us a phone that cuts out a source of their revenue, even if it provides value to us?
For those of us using GSM networks (i.e. Cingular, AT&T), we could always buy this phone from an independent vendor for top-dollar and transfer our SIM cards. Those of us willing to do this unfortunately represent a tiny part of the cel phone market.