The age of free cellphone games is dead, killed by the greedy profit gluttons in charge of major cellphone companies. One ambitious Slate writer set out to find a phone with “a good selection of games.” He failed, even after visiting five carriers.
In the early part of this decade, cell phones started to become less about the phone call and more about the ring tone. Mobile-gaming types began to realize two things.
Kimberly writes:
My concern is over another fee that I get nailed with every month that I had never noticed… Not only do I have to pay a federal universal service charge, but the District of Columbia, where I live (obvs), charges me another time – to the tune of $8.90 a month. That seems exorbitant and arbitrary! Not a good combo! What the hell is this and who do we complain to?
While perhaps exorbitant, the fee isn’t arbitrary….
Jack recently got a new phone for one of his AT&T cellphones. In the process, he of course had to extend his contract another two years. When he got his bill, he discovered a mysterious $18 “upgrade fee.” When he called AT&T, they told him it was the standard contract extension charge.
Mossberg had a great column in the Journal yesterday delivering a shot straight to the skull of cellphone companies and how their oligopolistic ways.
A shortsighted and often just plain stupid federal government has allowed itself to be bullied and fooled by a handful of big wireless phone operators for decades now. And the result has been a mobile phone system that is the direct opposite of the PC model. It severely limits consumer choice, stifles innovation, crushes entrepreneurship, and has made the U.S. the laughingstock of the mobile-technology world, just as the cellphone is morphing into a powerful hand-held computer…That’s why I refer to the big cellphone carriers as the “Soviet ministries.”
It’s like a guy builds a road and tells you what kind of horse you can ride on it. Or, as Mossberg points out, it’s like the 70’s, when you had to rent phones from AT&T and you could only use their phone for fear of “damaging” the network. Only when the government stepped in to break it up was the hammer lock broken.
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Ben Popken will be on Fox Business News this morning at 7am Eastern, discussing ways to get out of your cellphone contract without early termination fee.
Here’s some news for those of you out there who have so much money you literally can not think of anything else to do with it: AT&T has announced a partnership with Napster in which you can download songs to your phone for “only” $1.99 a track or 5 for $7.49.
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson is whining about the “open access” rules the FCC put in place governing the coveted 700mhz spectrum that is to be auctioned off in the near future, hinting that AT&T might not take part because the rules make buying the spectrum unprofitable.
Various sources are saying Apple has agreed to sell unlocked phones in France—because, well, French law says they have to—but our own Gizmodo says it’s only rumor at this point: “Apple told us that the piece was based solely off of reading French Law, not from statements by Orange or Apple.”
When Verizon calls you to upsell you on a higher text message plan, it costs you minutes. Reader Alex got a little ring-a-ling from Verizon this morning:
After he identified himself (“Mike”), I immediately asked the salesperson if this call would count towards my daytime minutes. The representative informed me that, yes, it surely would. Needless to say I wasn’t exactly pleased with this revelation.
Today at 10 a.m., the Senate Commerce Committee will pry through bone and muscle to see if cellphone companies really do have hearts of pure stone. The Committee will question the industry’s most egregious practices: junk fees, illegal contract extensions, and early termination fees. The industry is working overtime to cast itself as the consumer’s best friend, with AT&T recently agreeing to prorate ETFs as part of a desperate attempt to show that federal regulation is unnecessary.
Maybe the T-Mobile lawsuit has scared AT&T a bit, because they’ve announced that they’re changing their early termination policy: they will now prorate termination fees instead of charging a flat fee. They’re also removing the policy that required existing customers to extend a current agreement or sign up for a new one when changing their level of service. No word on when these changes will go into effect, but there’s nothing on their website yet.
Verizon says the information sharing opt-out notices it sent to customer, that we told you about a month ago, are only so other Verizon companies can market discounted service bundles, and is not for resell to third-party advertisers.
Just a little over a month ago, we alerted Verizon Wireless users to an opportunity to opt-out of Verizion sharing some of your information with unnamed third parties. Specifically, the information is subscriber’s CPNI, which consists of what numbers you call, what numbers call you, and how much the call costs. It is not linked to your name, number, or address.
Here’s the current text-message rate plans for the different cellphone providers. Most providers also offer unlimited text message plans: AT&T: $19.99 a month, Sprint: $20 a month, T-Mobile: $14.99 a month, Verizon: Unlimited messaging isn’t optional feature, but it is part of the America’s Choice Select Plan.
When asked about their home telephone situation, 67% of responding Consumerists said they only had a cellphone. 27.7% have both a cellphone and a landline. A paltry 3.6% only have a landline, and just 1.4% say the use neither cellphone or a landline, using payphones instead. The survey had 7735 participants. Clearly, the cellphone is king.
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