I see a lot of comments here about price. If price was all that mattered, then why is Sprint sinking like a stone? The fact is, you get what you pay for. Alltel was doing good in their rural markets, but roaming agreements for them would have just gotten more expensive. Then when AT&T and VZW both pushed LTE, Alltel would have had to spend the cash to keep up if they wanted to offer their customers any type of roaming. All of that would have hit the customer in terms of fees.
And pricing competively to build a customer base is great, but eventually, when you have expenditures to maintain that base as it grows, your costs have to increase somewhat.
Yes, VZW is a little on the high side. But they are not alone in what they do. Someone is always first to raise text rates, pro-rate ETF, put a 5GB on data (Can the sprint fanboys please shut up now?).
Everyone wants everything...international roaming, no data cap, free this, unlimited that, etc. How many companies do you think can afford to give the farm and still invest in improvements? Will they raise prices when it's only two...probably. who the hell knows. But AT&T and VZW are already in the drivers seat and would have eventually squeezed the little guys out anyway on 4G alone.
Measuring anything based on what a lot of Americans do is usually another way of measuring how stupid people in the US are.
Verizon has NO ADVANTAGE for even one of their customers. CDMA phones are easily well behind their GSM counterparts, you can't argue this, it's a fact. Well, that is unless you can find me a CDMA phones with a 5MP camera and a Xenon flash and a screen resolution higher than 320x200. Plus VZW has their awful UI and go ahead and lock your phone down by disabling features like BT file transfer.
Sprint is pretty much the same, but 25% cheaper unless you're on SERO and no awful UI or gimped phones.
AT&T and T-Mo allow you to use unlocked GSM phones. T-Mo is a better company but AT&T has 3G.
So, there you have it. You have to be pretty clueless to use VZW.
Count down for a ton of VZW customers to jump in and defend their Juke or whatever horrible phone they have (yes, including the Venus, Voyager, Env2 and whatever locked dumbphone you think is nice).
@Hold McGroin - I'm guessing you're pretty young if you're using the 'Verizon phones suck compared to the suuwweeettt GSM phones out there' argument. Most people don't really want all that crap. And if you do want all the bells in whistles, you get a smart phone.
What most people do want though is good service, and as long as GSM depends on TDMA (everything < 3G), you are never going to match the quality of service a CDMA system can bring. So until there actually is 3G GSM coverage in the US, all the bells and whistles you can throw on a GSM phone isn't going to change the fact that you'll have more dropped calls, poorer reception, and slower data traffic.
sure verizon is more expensive for if you look at it based on the number or minutes and how you have to pay for everything, but it makes sense for some people.
i live in new england and everyone, and i mean everyone, has verizon, so everyone i know is IN. i spend probably 500 mins on my own talking to my girlfriend, friends, and family. Plus my mom uses 300 mins on her own calling friends and family plus we use it for long distance, which is probably 100 mins a month. Thats 900 mins easily, of which probably 700 is IN. The cheapest family plan with Verizon costs us $70 + $10 texting for me - $15 discount. Even without the discount thats $80 a month.
Here are the prices of the plan I would need to get with each carrier to have the same convenience: Sprint - 1400 mins - $90 ATT - 1400 mins - $90 T-Mobile - 1000 mins - $70
The only that makes sense price-wise is T-Mobile, and its still the same price. So am I getting less "anytime" minutes? Yes. But with the number of minutes I need, I would still have pay the same amount.
And even if I switched, I would have to worry about going over on busy months b/c im not IN. For example, my dad was in the hospital for heart surgery in December. I was off at school and my dads family lives across the country. We easily used 2000 mins that month calling family and friends with updates. Assuming $0.25 per minute extra, thats $150 for the 1400 min plans or $250 for T-Mobile. Because all of our family and friends are in, no extra cost because we only used 500 mins that month of our 700.
Finally, even if i did get enough mins to cover my cell usage, I leave my friends and family in the dirt because now I am using up their minutes too because I am not in. There is no way I could talk to my girlfriend as often as I do if I wasnt IN because she doesnt have that many minutes.
And as far as the crappy UI and having to pay for everything: as someone said, just flash your phone. I flashed my RAZR V3m to the alltel firmware and never had any problems. I make my own ringtones and backgrounds and transfer them to my phone from the computer using BitPim. A group of people as techy as you all claim to be should be able to handle that sort of thing. try howardforums.
haha sorry for the rant :-P but its something that people dont take into consideration in these discussion boards. if there was a cheaper alternative, trust me I would be all over it. anyway just my $0.02
"a screen resolution higher than 320x200. Plus VZW has their awful UI and go ahead and lock your phone down by disabling features like BT file transfer."
My Moto Q has a resolution of 320x240 and BT file transfer and it's nearly 2 years old. 5 MP camera phones are a joke, the lens is the most important thing about a camera, and unless thats good you're quality is going to be no better than 2MP, regardless of file size. Not to mention the fact that Verizon is opening their network to outside devices soon, which will allow pretty much any device from another network, with untouched UI's to be used, you're points are lost.
Did i mention my wireless broadband is faster than yours?
First off for all of you bitching about the fact that there is no competition or that you can't get service in an area- blame the FCC!! If any of you knew how the wireless industry is regulated, you would know that any provider cannot simply just throw up towers in any one area because it wants to. It has to either a) purchase the license for the airwaves from the government or b) purchase the people that hold the license. This creates what is known as a barrier to entry into the marketplace which stymies competition. The government doesn't need to do more, it needs to do less! And I'm sorry to say, to provide NATIONWIDE service it takes a BIG company! Everyone bitches about prices but I can remember when it used to cost .45 cents a minute to use a cell phone that only worked 10% of the time; now look at all the options that are available. M&A's don't necessarily mean that prices will go up; actually they can go down because now the merged company can provide service at a lower cost (think of how much Verizon and Alltell now save from roaming charges and how much they will bring in from Sprint- that money goes in some form or fashion to the customer).
Everyone on here can complain all they want about handset lineups, but let's face it- the average familiy of 4 going in to buy cellphones is not concerned with spending thousands of dollars on equipment or really cares whether their UI is "crippled". They simply want their phone to work when and where they want and need it to. One must also realize that every carrier shows you the graph of total available service, not its LICENSED service areas. ATT, Verizon, T-Mobile cannot service equipment or improve coverage that is on their roaming network (ref. FCC above).
You can complain all you want about prices, but the simplest rule of economics is the something is worth exactly what someone is willing to pay for it. If Microsoft chose price Windows at $1000 per license, do you not think that the market would produce someone offering something cheaper? And you can always find something cheaper, but markets work on perfect subsitutes- Verizon may cost more, but is T-Mobile's network a perfect substitute for the one Verizon offers?
There is my little lesson for you all on how the marketplace functions.
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I see a lot of comments here about price. If price was all that mattered, then why is Sprint sinking like a stone? The fact is, you get what you pay for. Alltel was doing good in their rural markets, but roaming agreements for them would have just gotten more expensive. Then when AT&T and VZW both pushed LTE, Alltel would have had to spend the cash to keep up if they wanted to offer their customers any type of roaming. All of that would have hit the customer in terms of fees.
And pricing competively to build a customer base is great, but eventually, when you have expenditures to maintain that base as it grows, your costs have to increase somewhat.
Yes, VZW is a little on the high side. But they are not alone in what they do. Someone is always first to raise text rates, pro-rate ETF, put a 5GB on data (Can the sprint fanboys please shut up now?).
Everyone wants everything...international roaming, no data cap, free this, unlimited that, etc. How many companies do you think can afford to give the farm and still invest in improvements? Will they raise prices when it's only two...probably. who the hell knows. But AT&T and VZW are already in the drivers seat and would have eventually squeezed the little guys out anyway on 4G alone.
* sigh * Tin cans anyone?
Work for Verizon much? You little shill you.
Measuring anything based on what a lot of Americans do is usually another way of measuring how stupid people in the US are.
Verizon has NO ADVANTAGE for even one of their customers. CDMA phones are easily well behind their GSM counterparts, you can't argue this, it's a fact. Well, that is unless you can find me a CDMA phones with a 5MP camera and a Xenon flash and a screen resolution higher than 320x200. Plus VZW has their awful UI and go ahead and lock your phone down by disabling features like BT file transfer.
Sprint is pretty much the same, but 25% cheaper unless you're on SERO and no awful UI or gimped phones.
AT&T and T-Mo allow you to use unlocked GSM phones. T-Mo is a better company but AT&T has 3G.
So, there you have it. You have to be pretty clueless to use VZW.
Count down for a ton of VZW customers to jump in and defend their Juke or whatever horrible phone they have (yes, including the Venus, Voyager, Env2 and whatever locked dumbphone you think is nice).
@Hold McGroin - I'm guessing you're pretty young if you're using the 'Verizon phones suck compared to the suuwweeettt GSM phones out there' argument. Most people don't really want all that crap. And if you do want all the bells in whistles, you get a smart phone.
What most people do want though is good service, and as long as GSM depends on TDMA (everything < 3G), you are never going to match the quality of service a CDMA system can bring. So until there actually is 3G GSM coverage in the US, all the bells and whistles you can throw on a GSM phone isn't going to change the fact that you'll have more dropped calls, poorer reception, and slower data traffic.
sure verizon is more expensive for if you look at it based on the number or minutes and how you have to pay for everything, but it makes sense for some people.
i live in new england and everyone, and i mean everyone, has verizon, so everyone i know is IN. i spend probably 500 mins on my own talking to my girlfriend, friends, and family. Plus my mom uses 300 mins on her own calling friends and family plus we use it for long distance, which is probably 100 mins a month. Thats 900 mins easily, of which probably 700 is IN. The cheapest family plan with Verizon costs us $70 + $10 texting for me - $15 discount. Even without the discount thats $80 a month.
Here are the prices of the plan I would need to get with each carrier to have the same convenience:
Sprint - 1400 mins - $90
ATT - 1400 mins - $90
T-Mobile - 1000 mins - $70
The only that makes sense price-wise is T-Mobile, and its still the same price. So am I getting less "anytime" minutes? Yes. But with the number of minutes I need, I would still have pay the same amount.
And even if I switched, I would have to worry about going over on busy months b/c im not IN. For example, my dad was in the hospital for heart surgery in December. I was off at school and my dads family lives across the country. We easily used 2000 mins that month calling family and friends with updates. Assuming $0.25 per minute extra, thats $150 for the 1400 min plans or $250 for T-Mobile. Because all of our family and friends are in, no extra cost because we only used 500 mins that month of our 700.
Finally, even if i did get enough mins to cover my cell usage, I leave my friends and family in the dirt because now I am using up their minutes too because I am not in. There is no way I could talk to my girlfriend as often as I do if I wasnt IN because she doesnt have that many minutes.
And as far as the crappy UI and having to pay for everything: as someone said, just flash your phone. I flashed my RAZR V3m to the alltel firmware and never had any problems. I make my own ringtones and backgrounds and transfer them to my phone from the computer using BitPim. A group of people as techy as you all claim to be should be able to handle that sort of thing. try howardforums.
haha sorry for the rant :-P but its something that people dont take into consideration in these discussion boards. if there was a cheaper alternative, trust me I would be all over it. anyway just my $0.02
@ Hold McGroin
"a screen resolution higher than 320x200. Plus VZW has their awful UI and go ahead and lock your phone down by disabling features like BT file transfer."
My Moto Q has a resolution of 320x240 and BT file transfer and it's nearly 2 years old. 5 MP camera phones are a joke, the lens is the most important thing about a camera, and unless thats good you're quality is going to be no better than 2MP, regardless of file size. Not to mention the fact that Verizon is opening their network to outside devices soon, which will allow pretty much any device from another network, with untouched UI's to be used, you're points are lost.
Did i mention my wireless broadband is faster than yours?
@HoldMcGroin
First off for all of you bitching about the fact that there is no competition or that you can't get service in an area- blame the FCC!! If any of you knew how the wireless industry is regulated, you would know that any provider cannot simply just throw up towers in any one area because it wants to. It has to either a) purchase the license for the airwaves from the government or b) purchase the people that hold the license. This creates what is known as a barrier to entry into the marketplace which stymies competition. The government doesn't need to do more, it needs to do less! And I'm sorry to say, to provide NATIONWIDE service it takes a BIG company! Everyone bitches about prices but I can remember when it used to cost .45 cents a minute to use a cell phone that only worked 10% of the time; now look at all the options that are available. M&A's don't necessarily mean that prices will go up; actually they can go down because now the merged company can provide service at a lower cost (think of how much Verizon and Alltell now save from roaming charges and how much they will bring in from Sprint- that money goes in some form or fashion to the customer).
Everyone on here can complain all they want about handset lineups, but let's face it- the average familiy of 4 going in to buy cellphones is not concerned with spending thousands of dollars on equipment or really cares whether their UI is "crippled". They simply want their phone to work when and where they want and need it to. One must also realize that every carrier shows you the graph of total available service, not its LICENSED service areas. ATT, Verizon, T-Mobile cannot service equipment or improve coverage that is on their roaming network (ref. FCC above).
You can complain all you want about prices, but the simplest rule of economics is the something is worth exactly what someone is willing to pay for it. If Microsoft chose price Windows at $1000 per license, do you not think that the market would produce someone offering something cheaper? And you can always find something cheaper, but markets work on perfect subsitutes- Verizon may cost more, but is T-Mobile's network a perfect substitute for the one Verizon offers?
There is my little lesson for you all on how the marketplace functions.