WSJ: Americans' Phone Bills Are Going Up 273
There's been some positive news in the last year (and the last few) for American cellphone customers: certainly there's more visible competition for their business among the largest players in the market. Nonetheless, the Wall Street Journal reports that while more competition may translate into some more attractive service bundles, flexibility in phone options, or smoother customer service, it doesn't actually mean that the customers are on average reaping one of the benefits that competition might be expected to provide: lower price. Instead, the bills for customers on the major wireless providers have actually gone up, if not dramatically, in recent months — which means U.S. cell service remains much more expensive than it is in many other countries. The article could stand a sidebar on MVNOs and other low-cost options, though -- I switched to one of these from AT&T, and now pay just under $40 for one version of the new normal of unlimited talk and text, plus quite limited (1GB) data, but still using AT&T towers. Has your own cost to talk gone up or down?
And (Score:5, Informative)
Landline sound quality in 1975 was better than any mobile phone sound quality in 2014.
"Hi, I'd like to get directions on how to mmmRAWWWWW BOAWWWAAHH URRRBBEE URBEEE BUMPH RAWWWWLLLL at the corner of Park Street. Hello? I said, I want to get dir--fwwwwzzzzEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE URPP *crackle* ffffffFAZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ EEEP Park street."
The telecom companies raise prices, pocket the money and let their service rot, and the customers just keep shoveling cash at them.
Re:False advertising. (Score:5, Informative)
I don't understand how businesses are allowed to tack on fees to bills without disclosing these fees in their prices. Somehow they can't quote these fees when you are booking the service, but they can calculate them when billing for the services.
That's right, this should definitely be illegal. Airlines played those games for years and years ($50 ticket fee, but with taxes it works out to $100 or maybe even $300). A rather recent regulation had ended that crap [nytimes.com]
Republic Wireless, but there are other options (Score:5, Informative)
There are options from most of the carriers. I'm doing the Republic Wireless $10 unlimited talk and text, [republicwireless.com] but with no data. Having a 4G phone with no data sucks, but the price is compelling, and I should be able to add a prorated data plan for the times when I expect I do need it. Having WiFi calls when I'm at a place with no cell reception is also nice. However, counting the phone, my bill is higher than if I had been able to keep my dumbphone on somebody's T-mobile family plan.
Ting [ting.com] is a great choice for Sprint, Airvoice [airvoicewireless.com] is a great choice for AT&T, PagePlus [pagepluscellular.com] is decent for Verizon.
One interesting option is FreedomPop, [freedompop.com] but they seem to be in beta. Earlier versions of FreedomPop phones had poor performance and very poor voice quality, but they're supposedly improving. It would be interesting to see if they go anywhere with that.
Re:Ting (Score:4, Informative)
You can configure your Nexus 5, and specific apps and services on it, to not use mobile data in the background. In Settings -> Data Usage scroll down and you will see apps. Select the app, scroll down again and you will see the setting "restrict background data". Check this box and it will stop using mobile data while the app is in the background. This is especially critical for things like Google+, where if you take one HD video it will try to sync it in the background and kill your monthly quota. My kids were making videos with my phone while I slept...
Ting looks like a nice deal, and enthusiastic support. I was very frustrated dealing with Sprint to acquire a SIM for my Nexus 5. They were abhorrent in person at three stores and in online chat as well. That kind of put me off. I did finally manage to get SIMs from Ting real easy like. But the experience put me off even of using Sprint towers.
Besides, T-mobile has been really nice to me. That's worth a few extra bucks.
Stay away from Microsoft Skype on your Nexus 5. It has a known issue that kills the battery. Imagine that.
Re:Canada... (Score:5, Informative)
Tell me about it.
I live in Saskatchewan. We have Sasktel, Bell, Telus, Rogers and the "spinoffs" (Fido, Koodo, 7-11's SpeakOut).
My current plan is with Telus. $60/mo for unlimited nationwide talk (unlimited to anywhere in Canada, from anywhere in Canada), unlimited sms/mms, with 5GB of sharable Data. My wife also has the exact same plan, so we have a total of 10GB of usable data between the two of us. After 911 fee's and taxes, we are paying $133.24 total. As it stands this is about as good as it gets for my needs.
I was with Sasktel for many years until last July/2014. We were locked into a 3 year contract, and paying $60/mo each for 300 local daytime minutes, unlimited local calling in the evenings ,unlimited SMS (but not MMS, those were $1.00 each), and "unlimited" data. One gotcha they didn't tell you, is they also charged an $7-$8 "system access fee" on top of your plan, plus 911 fee's and taxes. In total we were paying ~$155/month. This does not account for overage or long distance fee's we would end up paying most months.
Re:False advertising. (Score:5, Informative)
AT&T got absorbed by Southwestern Bell Corporation (SBC) in 2005. Which is pretty much the worst of the baby bells split off from the original Bell System. They adopted the AT&T name, in part because theirs has a rather bad reputation, but the underlying company is SBC along with the bits of AT&T that they kept. So it is really SBC that is buying up everything not the company formerly known as AT&T.
My recollection of the old Ma Bell isn't as rosy as yours. You used to have to rent the telephone from them. You were not allowed to work on the phone wiring in your own home. I can remember being charged a non-trivial amount to have a phone line in my parents home repaired. Because it wasn't allowed for me to do it and unless you bought their in home wiring insurance policy you had to pay Ma Bell to come do it. Before the break up I can remember it costing something like $2 a minute to call my grandmother in Illinois from Virginia. My dad used to stand there while we talked and time the call because he could only afford so much time per month. Before the break up my father wanted a new phone Ma Bell quoted him over $200. We didn't get it because it was so costly. A couple of years later after the break up that exact phone was sold under the AT&T brand name for $19.99.
The break up may have allowed many questionable practices but it also brought costs for the average person way down. The worst practices seem to be more related to the industry consolidating than to the initial breakup.