10 Reasons To Hate Cellphone Carriers

A turd by any other name is still a turd, but there's no harm in counting the ways.

• They stifle progress

Cellular giants know they've hit on a winner and they don't want the landscape moving underfoot. Any change not under their own control is dangerous. To witness Sprint's $5bn investment in WiMax is to witness a future planned so far in advance no-one should be comfortable with it.

Such futures can't be relied upon if innovation is permitted, so the carriers will do anything to crush it. Verizon went as far as to sue the government to prevent it from auctioning the rights to radio spectra that aren't (yet) under carrier control. Though that effort gutterballed, it's a useful reminder of how these companies think the world should work.

• They're a cartel

Policies, practices and, of course, prices, are startlingly uniform across the board. By owning the framework of wireless telecommunications, the major carriers can deny market access to potential competitors, and few laws exist to effectively limit collaboration and trust.

A manufacturer of cellular technology told us recently that the carriers effectively control their access to the market: it's as simple as that. If you're in the business of making phones, you develop what the carriers — not the customers — want.

Google's big idea is, allegedly, to use its own software platform as a wedge to loosen carrier control of their own mobile networks. Ads, ads and more ads will pay for everything, and the big G will rule the world.

If you think at least one of the bullet points in that implied sequence of events seems to be followed by "??????," you wouldn't be alone.

• They're going to make you pay for Tetris

To paraphrase Slate's Justin Peters, "Why give you free Tetris when they can sell you $7 Tetris?" Seriously, screw those guys!

• They just can't behave themselves

The telecommunications industry has always loved the smell of fraud in the morning. Why change the habit of a century? T-Mobile can't even sponsor a damned cycling team without it being riven by corruption.

When California enacted its Telecommunications Bill of Rights, the industry fought tooth and nail to be allowed to apply at-whim contract changes, to add services without asking the customer, and to not have to tell customers about price increases. It's not that they're up to no good that's so frustrating, it's the fact they clearly don't care if you know it: they consider themselves absolutely untouchable.

It's relentless: AT&T would very much like to censor criticism of it, while Verizon would very much like to censor everything. The U.S. is markedly behind international rivals — socialists as they often are — even though our local heroes say similar regulation will kill enterprise.

In 2004, the Better Business Bureau identified billing errors, refusing to fix problems and lying as the three things which killed carriers' reputations. Nearly four years later, not a lot has changed.

• They illegally spy on you

O.K., so just one of them got caught. But it the biggest of them. AT&T is set up to route everything its customers write and say directly to the spooks, and is desperate for congress to retroactively legalize its behavior now that it's been caught. Given the secretive nature of such programs, who knows what the others might be up to?

AT&T even went as far as to develop a programming language to more efficiently sift through recorded conversations. This isn't case of doing what it's told to: this is the unbridled relish of enthusiastic fellow-travelers.

Irony time: when you call them with customer complains, the carriers typically warn you that you're being recorded, but agents will hang up on you if you do the same. Any company with a standing policy of refusing to speak to its customers, unless it's the only one with a record of it, is obviously up to no good.

• They have annoying commercials

First, we have Verizon's creepy, intense "Can you hear me now?" spokesman and the Giant instruction manual for his clone army. The best line? "Test Man will come across folks from various ethnicities in order to evoke VZWs sense of and respect for diversity."

Then there's Sprint's lineup of sneering suits who love to make a show of sitting down next to people to show off their ultra-fast EVDO cards.

Finally, we have Alltel's smug boy-next-door,"Chad," contrasted against the ugly troglodytes with which the firm represents its competitors. Why do we need to see someone pleasuring himself with a vibrating phone, Alltel? Why do you think that sells phones? It doesn't.

• They hate you

If it isn't clear from everything else here, the carriers loathe their own customers. This is a completely reasonable out-flowering of their business model. By subsidizing handsets and locking customers into lengthy contracts, cellular providers are, in effect, offering a kind of loan. Their relationship with you is the same as that of a payday shark or drug dealer: after the initial transaction, the only thing that matters is the fact that you owe something to them, a debt backed by obligation. Does a debt collector give you tech support? Of course not. So why should a company that gave you an expensive gadget at a huge discount?

Correspondingly, as your contract comes close to expiration, "upgrade" discount offers will be sent your way, as if the renewal option was some kind of gift. The possibility of freedom is the only thing that attracts the affections of a cellular operator.

And if you don't want an upgrade? Sometimes, they'll try and charge you extra to continue using an "old" phone on its network, on pain of having your service quality ruined. Talk about true love.

• Their contracts are nonsense

Even if you consider issues such as technological innovation and openness to be pointy-headed blather, it's hard to downplay the lunacy of the one-sided "agreements" customers must sign to play ball in the status quo. These are several pages long, packed with legal vagaries, and unilaterally editable at will (but not, of course, by you). It's this legal legerdemain that matters for most victims, and it's imperative that it be outlawed. And if the Cell Phone Consumer Empowerment Act act, sponsored by Amy Klobuchar (Democrat-Minnesota) and Jay Rockefeller (Democrat-West Virginia) passes, it will be.

The likes of Ted "series of tubes" Stevens (Republican—Alaska), a bought-and-paid-for shit if ever there was one, will be fighting it tooth and claw: it has little chance of becoming law. But this is where you, the ultimate lobbyists, come in. Tell your congresspersons to support it.

And what about the practices this regulation seeks to end? Moving swiftly on...

• They charge crazy fees (for services you didn't ask for)

Accurate coverage maps, a 30-day test period for service and the right to unlock phones are among the demands present in Klobuchar's legislation, but the hottest issues regard fees.

They're serious about that "you owe us" mindset: all of the major carriers except Verizon assess un-prorated early termination fees if you leave at any point before the end of the agreement. Verizon pledged a few weeks ago to start pro-rating ETFs.

And that's just the obvious target. PC World reported last year on undisclosed add-ons like "roadside assistance" services and "upgrade fees" charged for renewing contracts. Such acts of deception make cellular carriers the most hated service industry in America, with the Better Business Bureau confirming them as the most complained-about firms on their rolls.

In Canada, the carriers even charge a recurring fee to allow you to access your own phone.

• They lock handsets

There's no need to expand on this one: just ask an iPhone owner who upgraded to 1.1.1 after unlocking his handset. He'll tell you all about the evils of SIM locking. It is now legal to unlock your phone, of course, but not illegal to make that a technological nightmare to accomplish.

• They cripple their products

When we covered the release of the RAZR 2, we had to run a story explaining the differences between each carrier's "version" of Motorola's new machine. The internet is littered with forums where people complain about deliberately damaged handsets and hunt for unauthorized hacks to repair them.

This is an industry in which even Apple had to comply with another company's demands: a compromise that certainly involved hardware and service features. If Apple "bending" (AT&T's own gloating terminology) doesn't shock you, nothing will.

• They charge double for data

You'll notice that while your smartphone can access the internet just fine, if you want to hook up that access with your laptop or home computer, you'll have to pay extra for the privilege. This is often sold as a modem plan or broadband access plan. Even though the data is "already there" and there is no technical overhead — clever users can often figure out how to trick phones into providing it without further ado — the carriers are happy to eat their cake and have it too.

In essence, it's another arbitrary and artificial limitation of a capability inherent to modern, digital phone service. It is a limitation enacted solely to get you to pay extra to lift it.

• They own politicians

Sure, it's just phones. In a world where worse things happen all the time amid the muck and despair of human existence, having to pay for premium text is hardly worth worrying about, is it? You can (and should) opt out, and not sign on the dotted line to begin with. But today's cell towers might be tomorrow's Pony Express: they're TV stations, internet access, emergency 911 and news networks all rolled into one. WWAN could well end up supplanting copper sooner than anyone expects: do you want these companies in charge of it?

Nothing so close to government, and yet so far from the people, should be suffered to live.

• Their products suck

Yeah, you heard me. All of them. Even that one. Steve Jobs played Beck's "Cellphone's Dead" when demonstrating the iPod Touch, and you know what? He was damn right.

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