Yet another cell phone ripoff.

[NickD 202]

You get your point faster just by talking. Whereas, if you text message, it takes more time to write down your thought. It's a slower communication. Why would someone want that?

Sending a street address may be okay, but trying to condense 11,000 pages of IRS regulations into 150 characters could be a problem. But you have to pay extra for text messaging, at lot extra.

My cell has a camera, just once I tried to send a photo of an object she wanted me to buy for her, learned I had to sign up for easy edge to do that, even more money per month.

Internet bandwidth problems are dealt with extremely limited service, played with one for an hour on a demo, was next to worthless and certainly not worth an extra 40-50 bucks per month.

Feel psychologists can make extra money by dealing with cell phone addiction, see a lot of addicted people walking around, even have a daughter in college with that problem. If anything happens to her cell, it's the end of the world for her. If her old one breaks down, have to have it surgically removed, it has grown into her hand.

[Heracles 417]

I don't know about Nokia being the best, but they are good. It's true that American cell phone companies are ripping people off. They just have gotten people used to cheap cell phones. No one wants to pay full sticker price for a good cell phone.

Nokia is the best selling manufacturer around the world. Yet in the US they barely make the list. Nokia sells much more advanced phones overseas. I still have nokia phones from 8 years ago that power up, are small, and do not miss a beat.

Look at these for example:

http://threestore.three.co.uk/handsets.aspx

On the plan side, no one offers a usage only or sim only plan. The irony is that you pay for incoming calls here, which means a usage only / sim only plan is ideal for the US market. The other issues is that we have a country of 303 million yet only 4 major carriers. A country with this population base should at least have 5 to 7 independent major carriers.

Look at these for example: [Anything incoming is free of course]

http://threestore.three.co.uk/sim/

This lack of adequate government intervention has really screwed it for the consumer.

Edited October 2, 2009 by Booyah!

[NickD 202]

Ha, reminds me of a true story about a trucking company that issued cell phones to their drivers. One guy made a whole bunch of 800 calls thinking they were free. Ran up a 2,500 buck phone bill at the end of the month.