____/ dapunka on Wednesday 22 August 2007 10:47 : \____
> On 22 Aug, 09:59, "[H]omer" <s...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>> Verily I say unto thee, that Roy Schestowitz spake thusly:
>>
>> > Customers can sue AT&T, after all
>>
>> > ,----[ Quote ]
>> > | A federal court in San Francisco has decided that AT&T's wireless
>> > | contract is "unconscionable".
>> > `----
>>
>> >http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/20/court_slames_att_wireless_con...
>>
>> This is an important victory for common sense and fairness. How the
>> American justice system tolerated these malicious "arbitration clauses"
>> to begin with is a mystery. Another win for the consumer, and hopefully
>> in due course, employees too.
>
>
> It seems to me that pretty much the whole cellphone business in the
> USA is unconscionable. In Europe, we have the GSM system, which means
> the phone "chips" - SIM cards - are interchangeable, any mobile
> provider's SIM will fit any phone. And the customer can switch SIMs
> easily, they just slide out. Sure, if you sign a 12 month contract
> with a provider, you have to honour it. But most contract phones are
> subsidised by the providers - ie the customer doesn't have to pay for
> the phone - and when the contract's up, the customer still owns the
> phone, and is free to use another provider's SIM. European law says
> that the original provider /must/ "unlock" the phone then so it'll
> accept any SIM.
>
> But I understand that GSM is rare in the USA. And the system in use
> there (CDMA?) involves in-phone chips that /can't/ be swapped around.
> So you get yourself a nice phone, but find your provider's an ass, so
> at the end of your contract you have to buy another phone to swap to a
> different provider.
>
> And then an American friend of mine told me that when he received
> calls on his cellphone, they were deducted from his inclusive minutes
> - in effect, he was paying to receive calls! What in hell is that
> about?
High exit barrier. This way, the provider can charge anything it wants. It's
kind of like Microsoft Office, whose can be as high as MSFT shareholders want.
It holds your data hostage, so the cost/worth of the data (just like the
phone) is the price of the escape route.
--
~~ Best of wishes
Roy S. Schestowitz | "Nothing to see in this sig, please move along"
http://Schestowitz.com | GNU is Not UNIX | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
http://iuron.com - proposing a non-profit search engine
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