So Long Fat Cell-Phone Subsidies?
It's always been pretty standard that if you buy your mobile phone from a carrier (as almost everyone does) you're getting it at a huge discount, and the carrier makes up the difference. Now, however, with the carriers struggling, Business Week is suggesting that carriers may start ditching the subsidy and making people pay full price. Of course, the fact that they're planning to do this during a down economy, while trying to get more people to buy fancy new phones for their overhyped new service (that most people don't understand) doesn't bode well. The carriers are still trying to make sure they get a piece of the action at every turn and that means charging for everything. I can certainly understand carriers saying that subsidies only go to those with long term contracts, but they need to be careful or customers are going to wonder why they should pay four times as much for a phone that has a color screen.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
