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- 3tcp, on 07/07/2009, -0/+68"ompetition is robust, innovation forges ahead and consumer prices continue to fall"
This is false. Cell phone companies in the US behave like a cartel. Innovation lags far behind the rest of the world. Consumer prices are manipulated so that they may fall but they remain much higher than their counterparts in the rest of the world and higher than they would be in a free & competitive market.
The telecommunications industry is among the least scrupulous in the country and they need to be smacked around a bit for their predatory practices. - inactive, on 07/07/2009, -1/+36It costs telephone companies fractions of a penny to send text messages.
The major cell phone carriers all raised their per-text price within months of each other to 20 cents -- quadruple what they charged just four years ago.
We are getting RAPED by cellphone companies. Congress SHOULD be investigating if they have an ounce of compassion for suffering consumers with very little choice in wireless providers.
http://a.abcnews.com/m/screen?id=7855563&pid=3 ... - immatellyouwhat, on 07/07/2009, -1/+28How the ***** do you charge $20 for unlimited text and $30 unlimited "internet" data? The text data is as small as a fly's dick and you charge almost as much as the data plan? ***** YOU AT&T!!!
- sousademiami, on 07/07/2009, -0/+23Are you kidding?
That's all.
Just amazed at how full of ***** WSJ is. - publiclurker, on 07/07/2009, -0/+21Anyone who claims innovation and competition exist in the US cell phone industry is either a bald faced lier or has never once set foot outside the country and seen what is available elsewhere.
- nicholasroussos, on 07/07/2009, -1/+22Is there any question that the WSJ, is a pro-business, anti-consumer mouthpiece? If so, you must not have to pay your cell phone bill.
- macromorgan, on 07/07/2009, -0/+20I now pay $100 a month where I used to pay $60. If I want a specific handset I have to go with a specific carrier (Storm: Verizon; iPhone: AT&T; Pre: Sprint; G1: T-Mobile). There used to be 7 large nationwide carriers (Alltel, AT&T, Cingular, Sprint, Nextel, T-Mobile, Verizon) but now only 4 remain. I have to pay $0.10 to send 140 bytes of data to another phone. The carrier I selected can tell me what to do with my phone even after I am no longer contractually obligated to obey, and they have the force of law (DMCA) on their side.
And we're just talking about the "rosy" outlook for the cellphone side of the telecommunications industry. Don't get me started on other stuff like deep packet inspection, wholesale prices above retail market prices, data caps, net neutrality and the whole lot.
Not that I ever really favor regulation in any meaningful way but let's face it, the status quo sucks. - protogenxl, on 07/07/2009, -2/+20Wall Street Journal? I didn't know Rupert Murdock had telecommunication investments.
- Animan351, on 07/07/2009, -0/+16This guy is full of *****. Our large U.S carriers have been ripping us off all to hell. Plans are expensive and text messages are extremely cheap and small to send which is why they were only about 1 cent to send when they initially were set up for cell phones. Because they got popular they decided to up that to a total of 20 cents ( AT&T 10cents to send and 10 to receive ) increasing profits 10 fold for something that is only getting cheaper.
- WasabiBomb, on 07/07/2009, -0/+14The author points to the increase of the number of consumers and says that indicates competitiveness. That's ridiculous; all that indicates is that cell phone usage is increasing.
A good indicator of competitiveness is the number of cell phone *providers*- and that number's been reducing, as near as I can tell. What was the last new cellphone service you've heard of?
WSJ is so pro-corporate it's ridiculous. - stubear, on 07/07/2009, -1/+14"One of the problems with the American market is the network infrastructure..."
No, the problem with the American Market is we allow lobbyists to work with congress critters to pass laws which entrench their clients position in the industry and kill off any serious competition. Make lobbying efforts open, public and COMPLETELY transparent and you'll begin to see competition start-up for real, not this half-assed nod to the concepts of competition as being a nice quaint 19th century invention that needs to be replaced. - BalancingAct, on 07/07/2009, -3/+14One of the problems with the American market is the network infrastructure - it is quite backward. CDMA, for example - that needs to be got rid of. I believe it is only recently when America got 3G, when we've had it for years.
America needs standardisation in their network so that the whole of the USA is GSM.
Americans also get phones much later than everyone else. What is released in Europe today is released in America in about 2 years time. Meanwhile, Japan and Korea is several years ahead of Europe.
America is a third world country when it comes to mobile phones. Japan and Korea lead the world in the mobile phone industry, with Europe following some way behind. America is last.
How do American tariff prices compare to the UK? On my contract, i get 300 anytime any-network minutes and unlimited texts for £22(35 USD) per month. - varun1s, on 07/07/2009, -0/+11Consumer prices continue to fall?
When I went to India last month, I brought a pre-paid SIM which let me call US (landline or mobile) for Rs1.99/min. Thats 4 cents a minute. Granted India has higher population density making it cheaper to call within India. But let's not forget that when you call US, the other half of the call takes place in the United States. - badqat, on 07/07/2009, -2/+13I wholeheartedly agree with your statement that exclusivity leads to competition and pushes everyone to innovate.
But seriously - the Storm is a better piece of hardware than the iPhone? - realeskimopimp, on 07/07/2009, -1/+10The price it costs companies to send texts has gone down, meanwhile, the rates have quadrupled.
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=7855563&page ... - JordanTW90, on 07/07/2009, -3/+11The first company to go with unlimited everything plans for a flat rate will win the cellphone industry.
- BalancingAct, on 07/07/2009, -2/+10The Storm is notoriously unreliable.
- JohnT511, on 07/07/2009, -0/+8You really can't tell that WSJ has been sold, or rather sold out, to rupert murdoch can you?
- publiclurker, on 07/07/2009, -1/+9so that explains the complaining from the health insurance companies.
- MasterQ, on 07/07/2009, -0/+7Congress shouldn't be looking into the exclusivity deals, they should be looking into the raping the cell companies are giving their consumers with the pricing and idiotic backwardness of their terms of use. Text messages are free for the networks but they charge us a ton for them. We pay more for cellular internet connectivity than our wired connectivity but get terrible speeds and more limitations than you can shake a stick at. We are forced to buy certain extras if we choose to use certain phones (such as data plans for iphones). Exclusivity deals are the least of consumers' worries.
- smacksaw, on 07/07/2009, -0/+5That article would make perfect sense if we lived in a bubble, didn't have the internet or foreign communication or know anything about the rest of the world.
The only thing I'll add is that the development costs portion is dubious. When I moved to Canada I was shocked how much cheaper my parents medications were than back in the US. I learned that the Canadian gov't negotiates a price and Big Pharma pretty much has to sell at what Canada is willing to pay. Worse examples are Brasil, India, etc with retroviral AIDS medications who will pirate them unless they get them for next to nothing. The reality is that since we are for-profit, Big Pharma makes their money and passes their development costs onto us. If we negotiated price the way everyone else did, the costs would be spread out amongst everyone.
If that analogy rings true (pun) for the iPhone, why are we bearing the brunt of development costs with exclusive contracts while other nations do not have exclusive contracts with similar phone costs? Either we are bearing the brunt of the subsidy or we are screwed from lack of competition. But what if that question is wrong? What if it's BOTH? - Teknikscian, on 07/07/2009, -0/+5glad everyone feels the same way i do about that article and cell companies. they are just as bad as cable/internet providers. all corrupt and money hungry
- protogenxl, on 07/07/2009, -0/+5I see your iPhone and raise you any Japanese Cellphone
- PopeSmoker, on 07/07/2009, -0/+5"The partnerships lead to more choices and lower prices." The opposite is true.
Less Choice - If you buy an iPhone or Palm Pre, you do not have the ability to choose your service provider.
Higher Prices - There is no need for providers to offer competitive pricing because buying the phone you want forces you to use their service. - TurboSquid, on 07/07/2009, -0/+5Granted, this article is pointed towards the US, however, in Canada we are in a strangle hold. Almost every provider in Canada locks the phones they sell in house down to their network. The cost of this hardware to buy outright is outrageous, and the contracts that subsidize these phones are similarly Machiavellian.
The one thing I feel would save the Canadian consumer, and encourage growth and competition in the industry would to require all phones to be sold "open", allowing the customer to buy the phone they want, at the store they want and then shop for the best carrier/plan that meets their needs. I doubt this will happen though as it would take away the near monopoly some of these carriers exploit. - kylere, on 07/07/2009, -0/+5When I saw, "consumer prices continue to fall" I skipped the rest, only an idiot thinks that is true.
- Arachnivore, on 07/07/2009, -1/+5No, but colluding is illegal. If these companies were really competing in a free market, they should be in a price war over SMS. Texting should be essentially free, instead the prices for text messaging have been going up simultaneously over the past years.
- apackofmonkeys, on 07/07/2009, -2/+6Not even a fraction of a penny. It costs them absolutely nothing. Text messages don't even get their own transmission through the network-- they are sent along within the old unused buffer space of other transmissions, transmissions that would have been sent anyway, to complete some other task such as a real phone call to someone else, or synching up the clock on your phone. That's why the character limit of text messages is so small-- they have to fit in that pre-defined buffer area. It is absurd that phone companies charge so much for something that costs them nothing-- but it's even MORE absurd that so many people actually pay it.
- penmanship, on 07/07/2009, -1/+5Straight up lies on competition and competitive pricing, straight from the mouth of Murdoch's financial blowhorn. How on earth did this make the front page?
Buried as inaccurate. - protogenxl, on 07/07/2009, -0/+4Japan seem to use CDMA just fine
- skintigh, on 07/07/2009, -1/+5It's a matter of 3 big companies having an oligopoly, and an unspoken agreement on the price of texts to maximize profits.
Or, as the WSJ calls it, teh competition!!1 - spriggig, on 07/07/2009, -0/+4Are the phone companies:
a) competing fairly in the market and providing their customers what they want at a fair price?
b) paying millions of dollars to lobby congress to tilt the laws in their favor?
c) conspiring to manipulate prices in the market and purposely creating and constantly changing convoluted contracts to legally trap consumers in situations where they must pay out the nose for crappy service OR pay a cancellation fee to jump ship and sign up with an equally crappy competitor? - DreKor, on 07/07/2009, -0/+3You only have 3 nationwide carriers. T-mobile is coastal and urban.
- pagno, on 07/07/2009, -0/+3The DOJ is looking into anti-trust issues, although the exclusivity deals are ***** as well.
- inactive, on 07/07/2009, -3/+6CDMA is a superior technology than GSM for the way people in the USA use their phones. GSM makes sense for areas of the world where mobility is low, but in the USA it's just not a good choice.
Oh, and your plan really isn't that sweet of a deal relative to the plans in the US. - df12, on 07/07/2009, -0/+3I dunno, I can see a case for even faster innovation if all the carriers had the iPhone. The iPhone wasn't successful because it was on AT&T. It would have sold significantly more units if it was available on all carriers. In turn that would have put much more pressure on Palm, RIM, HTC, Samsung, and etc. There would not have been *safe* markets in Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile. Those Manufacturers would have had to work much faster to counter the iPhone without AT&T exclusivity.
- solistus, on 07/07/2009, -2/+5No, they should charge competitive prices with reasonable overhead. Markup on text message services is so astronomical it's difficult to quantify. A text message costs a tiny, tiny fraction of one cent to send, and routinely costs as much a $0.10 for the consumer. Cell phone makers are required by the providers to cripple certain features consumers want so they can continue charging exorbitant rates (see: the cell phone ringtone industry). The list goes on and on... Just go to a British, Canadian, French, etc. provider's website, look at their terms and pricing and then cry at what you have available in the US.
You clearly have no idea what the ***** you are talking about, so I don't know why I'm spending so much time to reply. Being pro-consumer doesn't mean being anti-business; The Consumerist and similar publications know full well that businesses need to make a profit and praise companies that charge reasonable rates and don't find ways to screw over consumers while still turning a profit. Cell phone companies can charge us $40 a month or whatever, but it would be nice if they stopped monetising every single new feature whether it needs to cost money or not to exorbitant degrees, building ridiculous terms into their mile long service contracts you need to be a lawyer to even read, adding ridiculous penalty fees, mandating terms to their hardware providers like no other industry... As I said, you clearly have no idea what the ***** you are talking about. The WSJ is a biased rag apologist for every ridiculous industry practice. You'd have to search far and wide through the archives to find just a handful of companies they've taken to task for abusing consumers. - s73v3r, on 07/07/2009, -1/+4No, but even accounting for a decent profit margin, it doesn't cost them anywhere near that $20 for unlimited texting. In fact, it really doesn't cost them much at all, because text messages are sent on the same band as the messages used to sync the clock and initiate calls.
- SPNKrPunk, on 07/07/2009, -0/+3I rarely use corny catchphrases, but this article would really be completely true if today were opposite day.
- Sol1, on 07/07/2009, -0/+3Cricket and MetroPCS have forged a lot of this path, but there are perceived negatives to providing that type of service as well. Cricket's plans, for example, start as low as $30/mo for unlimited voice (granted, all you get is voice) and cap out around $60 I think for unlimited text, web, etc., but, along with what this article decries, they're not able to provide the same cool phones that the big guys are able to, at least not with the massive subsidies that the Verizons and AT&Ts can offer. As a result, people have to spend $150 for a marginally decent device and have to spend $300 for a phone that's got browsing ability. If you don't mind the upfront cost, it makes a lot of sense. And no contracts FTW!
- Suzilla, on 07/07/2009, -0/+3Do you suppose that this article might just be the product of Apple or AT&T marketing?
D'ya think?
Maybe? - skintigh, on 07/07/2009, -0/+2I agree with proto. The iphone was the coolest phone in America, but the rest of the world had similar phones 5 years earlier due to fierce competition on open GSM networks.
In America, you are locked in to a phone that can't leave a carrier and the carrier locks you in with 2 year plans that ***** you up the ass if you try to leave. There is virtually no competition.
In the rest of the world, phone makers have to compete directly with each other, and carriers have to compete directly with each other. If the phone sucks, you can get a better one. If the service sucks, you can leave and find better service. In America you are SOL for 2 years.
The result is the rest of the world has far superior phones, far superior pricing, far superior service, and far superior reception.
America has... half a dozen competing standards that can't share each other's hardware so none of them have enough masts to cover even a moderately sized event without refusing calls and texts. Also, texts cost far more in America than the rest of the world.
- a guy who would have bought a Pre the day it came out if it wasn't locked into Sprint (which has ***** service and reception where I live), and will probably settle for a 3GS. - jeffwmartin, on 07/07/2009, -0/+2Thought Sprint was already doing this? $99/month for unlimited calls/texts/data. I may be wrong. Of course, Spring sucks ass.
- weif, on 07/08/2009, -0/+2 Macromorgan, with the hardware issue, that's a definite problem, and has been for years.
http://www.weif.net/rants/bad-phone-products-05020 ...
These exclusive agreements do not encourage competition, they stifle it. It ties you to a carrier (which is why the carrier likes it even if (or maybe especially if) the carrier is horrible, assuming you want the good gadget. Let people buy the phones that they want, and the networks should be bending over backward to provide the best service and the support of the most devices so that people can, once they have chosen the best hardware to meet their needs, then choose the best network to meet their needs. - BalancingAct, on 07/07/2009, -0/+2Shiftybizniss
The Storm is so reliable, it was even a runner-up for a "Most reliable" phone award on April Fool's day :-D
http://www.gsmarena.com/blackdot_mobile_awards_ann ...
Have a look at some user reviews:
http://www.mobile-phones-uk.org.uk/blackberry-stor ...
http://www.yourmobilephonereviews.co.uk/blackberry ... - WorldGroove, on 07/07/2009, -0/+2And then promptly lose everything... because all the North American cellphone companies don't have their costumers on exclusively their own towers. They have to roam onto other carries towers from time to time and that is an understanding between carriers. The other carriers won't agree with anyone who tries to shake things up that much and they'd have to build their own towers or pay outrageous roaming fees - and with that is zoning laws. They wouldn't last long without some kinda other way of generating revenue other than its costumers. Maybe the customer has to agree that they'll be getting MMS messages of advertisements.
The only company that could even attempt what you're saying, is Google... and probably not too far outside of the BayArea range. - JordanTW90, on 07/07/2009, -0/+2I wish I could get Cricket in my area.
- Atario, on 07/08/2009, -0/+2"Not that I ever really favor regulation in any meaningful way"
Don't you think it's about time? - Shwaavay, on 07/07/2009, -2/+4It's supply and demand. Except that supply is virtually unlimited.... so wait, it's just demand?
- jackelopeus, on 07/07/2009, -0/+2Service beyond major metro?
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