Ten Things Wrong with US Wireless Services (Part III)

This is the last of a three part article on what is wrong with the wireless telecommunication industry in the United States today.

5. Longer lock-in – From a one year lock-in period between you and your provider to a two year contract, providers realized that the longer they have you in their sights, the better. A longer lock-in period creates an illusion of lower monthly fees by dividing the cost of the phone unit into 24 months instead of 12 months. If you want to opt out, the carrier is more than willing to receive your higher early-termination fee.

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Ten things wrong with US wireless service (Part II)

We discussed the top 10 reasons why wireless service in the United States is not among the world’s best. Let us discuss the 4th reason which is all about the huge and effortless sums of money wireless service providers make.

Money for nothing-Have you ever heard of the helpful computerized female voice when voice-mailing someone? All 4 providers play similar sounding prompts saying something like “Record your message after the beep. You may hang up when you have finished recording” The voice prompt is about 15 seconds long.

A major provider like Verizon, who has about 70 million customers, is estimated to earn at least $620 million a year extending your minutes just by playing those 15 second long instructions. Not only is this practice tiring, it is such a waste of time. Fortunately there is a way to cut short the helpful voice prompt but the catch is, it differs among the 4 major service providers.

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Ten Things Wrong with US Wireless Services (Part I)

The internet was invented in the United States and the world’s trendiest phone is sold by an American computer maker. A lot of technological innovations were made by Americans. Still, wireless services in the US are terrible. Here in 3 parts are 10 things that make wireless access in the US so backward compared to the rest of the developed world.

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