Robert Taylor wrote: > Which part of "a portion of the contract pays for you phone ... phone > ISN'T FREE, YOU ARE FINANCING THE PURCHASE OF THE PHONE VIA THE > CONTRACT" is hard to understand? > > Why do americans have such a hard time grasping this?
Your statement makes perfect sense, Robert. But the carriers in America, in my experience (and I currently use a phone on each of Verizon, AT&T and TMobile), simply don't discount their monthly plan rates for using an unlocked phone on their network. Whatever portion of your monthly plan isn't otherwise going towards a subsidy is pure profit for them. They're not about to give us a 10% or 20% break on our monthly bill, or whatever percentage pays for the subsidy of a locked phone (like the iPhone), otherwise the 'subsidy' no longer appears as a subsidy to the end user who *does* buy a locked phone, the user sees it exactly as you stated it -- they're financing their phone. And AT&T is going to want that to appear as 'transparent' as possible to the consumer. That's my thought on it, anyway. -id _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
