Bill to Challenge Mobile Phone Contracts

if this bill gets passed, i can almost promise this will drive up the costs for subsidized phones and rate plans.

Why? It has nothing to do with subsidized phones, only full priced one.

This bill may eat into the profit margins and forecasted profits for their fiscal years and upcoming years. they would have to make adjustments to maintain their figures to keep the investors happy and not mess up the operational costs that were already allocated with the help of the forecasted profits. how will this affect profits? they make money off of monthly service ... they make chump change off of full retail phones.

tnt2k1 said:
if this bill gets passed, i can almost promise this will drive up the costs for subsidized phones and rate plans.

I hope it rids the industry of subsidized phones altogether, Then you will see the phones retail costs drop like a rock. People won't be signing their rights away for the latest and greatest phone of the month. They will actually keep their phones longer if they have to actually pay for them. Which will step up features and lower prices and manufacturers compete for fewer buyers every two years,

Look at the land line phones and what happened when carriers stopped providing the hardware. The hardware all of a sudden dropped in price.

I just want to say that this is my favorite post so far in this forum!

I personnally am willing to pay for features! And by the way, I hope your right about handsets going down in price, because I paid $572 including shipping for my beloved Nokia N95-3.

tnt2k1 said:
if this bill gets passed, i can almost promise this will drive up the costs for subsidized phones and rate plans.

I don't know if that will happen. If it passes and I were a carrier, I'd jack up two things: first the unsubsidized cost of a phone, and second, the activation fee on a non-contracted price plans. I wouldn't have the slightest problem doing either of those things, and it wouldn't surprise me to see the at the legislators wouldn't have the foresight to stop carriers from doing that.

Jacking up the price of an unsubsidized phone won't work because then customers will simply buy it directly from the manufacturer. The carriers don't have to compete with anyone else on price right now, but this change will force them to at least be aware of it.

h_aguilar84 said:
Honestly though, this bill only affects VZW and Sprint. AT&T allows you to get serivce and only purchase the SIM card and T-Mobile has the FlexPay option. I've also heard that Alltel and USC can allow people to activate their own handsets without signing a contract. I have to agree with staiano in that the market is really correcting itself in this case.

Exactly. You can already buy a phone without a contract on ATT if you pay full retail, You can buy the same phone at a discount from many retailers and just buy the SIM card.

It affects Apple too. They don't allow subsidies on their handsets and require a 2 yr commitment.

Blazers4ever said:
It affects Apple too. They don't allow subsidies on their handsets and require a 2 yr commitment.

Apple needs to remember they are a corporation, not a government, if the Congress passes a pro-rated law, or says a commitment on non-subsidized phone doesn't require a contract, well thats tough. You fanboys can jump up and down crying how this is going to cause financial havoc on the wireless industry, or how this is going to drive costs significantly higher, I just don't see it.

I do agree, if I get a $250 phone, for $25.00 a contract is in order, and I have no problems signing a two year commitment.