Buying Phones From Operators Sucks and We Gotta Stop
For years, the only decent way to buy a phone was from a carrier. Those days are over. Now, in many cases, it is just as easy and usually better to buy a phone right away and abandon contracts permanently.
Imagine that every time you wanted to buy a laptop, you first had to go to Comcast and ask what devices it was approved for. Then you had to promise to stay with Comcast for two years just to buy this laptop. Today, no one would ever agree to such conditions. Instead, you buy your laptop and assume you can plug it into any network you like. Buying cell phones didn’t always allow this, but it is possible.
Two-year contracts were a rip-off and swapping them out isn’t much better
We still buy phones from telecom operators, in part because we are being robbed. Long-term contracts existed long before pay-as-you-go cellular. When cell phones first began to proliferate, the ability to make phone calls from anywhere far outweighed the cost of signing a contract. The operators offered to contact the operator by phone and provide services in exchange for a promise that the customer would stay with the operator for two years. Seemed like a good deal for what was little more than a glorified utility.
But that was not the case. Equipment subsidies meant customers never knew how much their phone or service actually cost. For example, today you can contact most telecom operators and see how much telephone calls, text messages and data services will cost, as well as separately see the prices for phones. Depending on which phone you want, a direct purchase can save you $ 15-30 per month. Earlier, the cost of phones was taken into account along with your services. Carriers have never determined how much money is spent on equipment, and buying a cheaper phone does not lower your bill. To make matters worse, if you paid enough to cover the cost of the phone and then didn’t upgrade, your bill won’t go down. You would just keep paying to subsidize other people’s phones.
To make matters worse, you couldn’t leave your carrier if your service ended in failure or if you moved to a new location with a bad signal. You either had to shell out a ton of money to change carriers or deal with shitty service until your contract expired. We have given up the opportunity to compare our equipment and services. Unsurprisingly, when competition kicks in, it leads to an unacceptable deal for customers.
Currently, telecom operators have begun to change their way of acting. Subsidizing phones made sense when shoppers didn’t know most phones were cheap. Phones are now expensive, and more importantly, customers want to update more often. Thus, telecom operators have created new, more sophisticated plans for buying phones . Some, like Verizon’s Funding Plans, are nothing more than monthly payment plans. Others, like AT&T Next’s early upgrade plan, are designed to hide the fact that upgrades are more expensive in the long run. Even when they don’t suck, they’re rarely worth other compromises. You can use AT&T Next to fund, for example, a phone, but you lose the ability to leave your carrier.
In most cases, however, there is no longer any reason to buy from a carrier. Manufacturers and retailers already offer many ways to fund a phone without paying interest if you need to spread the cost. Most carriers have cheaper calling plans if you don’t buy a phone through them. Plus, if you buy directly, you can shop for better hardware prices and you can leave your carrier when you need to. You can even sell your phones and update them faster without worrying about how it might change your data plan.
Telephones designed for specific telecom operators are harmful to consumers
Motorola announced a new phone with a shatterproof screen last week. It’s pretty cool. If you’ve had a cracked screen before and want a new phone that can’t be broken, you might be interested in this phone. However, if you’re not a Verizon user, you’re out of luck. This is an exclusive operator.
Carrier exclusives for phones or features aren’t as common as they used to be – remember when you could only get an iPhone on AT&T? – but they still divided the phone market. Motorola is making a phone, essentially a Moto X, but with an insanely huge battery. Again, you can only get it for Verizon . When Samsung launched its mobile payment service Samsung Pay, it initially only launched for all carriers except Verizon . Even though shatterproof screens, large batteries, and mobile payment systems have nothing to do with carriers, you can still lose sight of what kind of dumb pipe your data is transferring through.
Of course, none of this compares to the damage telecom operators do to software updates, especially for Android phones. HTC told us how their devices are being updated . Due to carrier settings, related apps, additional features, and other changes that most people likely don’t need or need, carriers can add 3-4 additional steps to an already lengthy upgrade process. In a kitchen where there are too many cooks to begin with, adding porters is like inviting a cousin who once went to a cooking class to join the team.
In some cases, this leads to the fact that the updates take many months longer than necessary. In other cases, it doesn’t update at all. In announcing plans for Android Marshmallow , Motorola has completely ditched the Moto X 2014 variants from AT&T and Verizon. On the one hand, this is a kind of garbage on the part of Motorola. On the other hand, the 2014 Pure Edition (read: carrier-agnostic version of the same damn phone) could have been activated on AT&T, so there was no reason to start with that particular carrier option. To further convince you of this, you can activate the 2015 Moto X Pure Edition on Verizon . This means that there are exactly zero reasons left to buy the version for the telecom operator, and nothing but the disadvantages for this.
Direct purchase is not always possible, but it keeps getting easier
In an ideal world, you could go to Amazon, find a phone you like, order it, and then choose a carrier. Unfortunately, we are not yet living in this world, but we are approaching. Many phones, including iPhones, Motorola flagships, the Nexus line and many others, offer devices that work on all networks. Apple’s new funding plan even allows users to pay off their phones over time without being tied to a carrier for two years.
However, there are still some obstacles. It is difficult for a consumer to understand which phones will work with which operators. You can buy an iPhone today and be confident you can activate it on any carrier in the United States. You can’t say the same thing about every phone . Sometimes there are several variants of the same phone, each with its own radio module. In other cases, one model can accommodate radios from all telecom operators. It takes some research to figure out which one, and if you’re not tech savvy, it’s easy to get confused and buy the wrong phone.
This makes it easier. We have tools like WillMyPhoneWork to figure out which phone will work on which network. There are also tools to help you find the right phone and then help you choose the model you want. Some brick-and-mortar stores may also be willing to help you find a suitable phone (although their salesperson will likely instruct you to help you negotiate carrier contracts). It’s still a bit of a hassle, but the process is working for an increasing number of phones, great phones.
Getting rid of the medium will be impossible for every person, but at least it’s time to start trying. You and everyone else would be better off if buying a phone had nothing to do with choosing a carrier. We are already seeing glimpses of how this might work. Companies like Apple, Motorola and Google sell phones directly to consumers that work with all carriers, get faster, more reliable updates, and don’t hold features hostage depending on which carrier you use. It can be so for everyone. In fact, it should be so.