Incoming FCC Chair Agrees to 'Review' Exclusive Phone Deals
FCC needs to find somthing better to do
NokiaGoth 😈
It's how business has been done in America for over two hundred years. The manufacturers benefit by this as well as the carriers. Let's not go socialist or you will have no choices and pay more for the few you have.
SPCSVZWJeff said:
The carriers are signing contracts with the hardware manufacturers. This is a perfectly legal and acceptable thing to do. Other carriers could sign the same contracts with manufacturers if they wanted to.
It's how business has been done in America for over two hundred years. The manufacturers benefit by this as well as the carriers. Let's not go socialist or you will have no choices and pay more for the few you have.
There's more choices in "Social Democratic" europe with mobiles then there is here. So point not well taken.
You can get a lot of those phones on US GSM carriers if you wish to. The problem is American consumers are cheap, and want the carrier to pay for the phone without the promise of a contract.
BUY AN UNLOCKED PHONE if it is that big of a deal to you. Nokia has a spiffy new one out, go look at it.
European consumers pay way more for their phones than we do here and their service costs way more as well.
So while they have the choices they cannot afford to buy the handset and pay for those services so what good are the choices?
Europe is not the wireless Utopia it is billed as by some on this forum.
Our susidized model while imperfect works well
Other carriers could sign the same contracts with manufacturers if they wanted to.
Can someone please find one shred of truth in this statement for me?
If that comment were true, this thread would not exist. I WANT your comment to be true.
Even if T-mobile were to approach Apple and offer to pay them DOUBLE the profit margin they were getting off of AT&T, Apple would be prohibited from selling them iPhones based on an exclusivity agreement drafted nearly 3 years ago!
That is NOT open market competition! That is cartel economics pushing to shutter the competition by any means necessary and it needs to stop YESTERDAY!!!
Oh, and apple was pushing for exclusivity too, it wasn't just ATT. And they reworked the terms with the launch of the 3g, because apple allowed ATT to subsidize the device. This also pushed the exclusivity forward.
If you want it to stop, then get all your friends to buy unlocked phones. As long as customers are willing to sign two year contracts in exchange for cheap(er) devices, there is no reaso...
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"Every handset in production needs to be available for LEGITIMATE purchase in an unlocked status."
Every carrier should have the right to approach a manufacturer with a business proposition without being told "XYZ corp made us promise not to talk to you."
Point me to the link on Apple's website where I can buy an unlocked iPhone and I'll shut up.
I don't even want to own one. I'm perfectly happy with my BlackBerry. It's the principle of exclusivity that bothers me.
And you can (or at least you could) purchase an unlocked iphone through Apple's hong kong site.
Gorillanorth said:
You really believe that the government should be allowed to step in and tell company's that they can not sign exclusive contracts with other companys? You are an idiot and obviously have no idea how business work! Almost every company in the world has exclusive contracts with other company's! Hell the US government uses them!
No, you are the idiot if you are too ignorant to see that wireless handset exclusivity is a special case because the "company's" [sic] in this case are wireless carriers whose operations are founded upon use of public property, hence subject to government regulation.
An important part of that regulation is preservation of healthy wireless competition. If ...
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Look up CDMA and the GSM. That is why there are different models of the same phone.
If you hate the carrier controlling your phone, go with a GSM carrier (or wait for 4g) and buy an Unlocked device. It's really that simple. Then you have a phone you can use on any carrier who supports the technology (GSM/4G), you don't have to lock yourself to a contract, and you can do everything the phone was built to do.
This forum is closed.