With 2 people sharing 12 gig's a month, you can virtually rid yourself of cable and/or satellite TV and only use your phones/pads and AppleTV to have all of your entertainment you need. Am I missing something?
No 12gb of data would never be enough for the average family using online streaming. However what more are going too is just keeping cable internet and getting rid of cable tv/satellite and cable phone. Verizon estimates that one hour of LTE video streaming in HD would use 60GB of data in a month. I would say 12gb would be more than enough if you also had access to Wifi.
Wow, amazed mobile costs are so expensive in the USA.
I know the UK has a competitive market, but with three (I think) big players in the U.S. market you'd expect them to be fighting tooth and nail over price.
Nothing you can do about it I guess, one of the rare situations where the U.S. is more expensive than the UK.
Yes, UK has caught up a lot in recent years, If you factor in the living cost and property pricing etc, UK is properly one of the cheapest.
The only thing they are lacking is Wired connection, which they are working on it now.
You guys do realize. Those subsidies they are doing away with were essentially write offs because they can technically be construed as marketing and advertising costs by a good accountant: so they weren't directly paying them. All they are doing is shedding the subsidies so t-mobile has to find another way to poach customers.
When the carriers started moving into the no-contract models, I was very interested, but now that I've seen how they work, I think I'd rather have the "subsidy" model. Regardless of what model is used, I know I won't be saving any money with our family's device and data habits.
An iPhone retails for $700...someone has to pay Apple for that.
If you want your carrier to pick up $500 of it, and you only pay $200...they are going to find a way to recoup that cost from you. If it means charging you more for service, AKA your monthly bill, then they will (and they have). It also means they have to lock you in to at least two years of overpriced service, to ever hope to turn a profit on you.
Instead, your carrier will offer you an installment plan that allows the customer to spread out the cost of the phone over 12-20 months, and ultimately pay somewhere around $400 for the phone instead. In turn, they have lowered their device fees and service fees, so the average user is now paying the same or less than they ever did before on their total monthly bill, even with the cost of the device (GOOD!). And the cherry on top is that you're no longer locked in to a 2 year contract with no upgrade privileges....instead they know you want to upgrade your device every 12 months, and have made that possible too.
And as always, there is absolutely no consumer or carrier advantage to buying the device outright for full retail price.
Apple doesn't receive the full retail price (nor the sales tax) when some other retailer sells an iPhone. Apple only receives the wholesale price. So a carrier subsidizing an iPhone only needs to recover the wholesale price they paid for the iPhone, which is about $550. So the carrier only needs to subsidize $350.
Apple profit margin is over 50% (maybe 60% for older iPhones) for an iPhone. It's guesstimated that it cost Apple about $300 - $350 to build an iPhone. Which would put an iPhone wholesale cost at about $550. Plus, when the carrier was subsidizing the iPhone, they would often let you renew your 2 year contract for another 2 years, and get another subsidized iPhone, after 18 months. Low and behold, 18 x $20 a month in subsidies = $360. The amount the carrier needed to get from you to break even on the iPhone you got for $199. But in the mean time, they made money off you from the plan. Which is where most of their profits comes from. It's was never the intention of the carrier to make their profits by selling iPhones.
So the best thing to do if you got a subsidized iPhone, was to renew your contract after 18 months (if they offer it to you), get a new subsidized $199 iPhone, sell your old one to pay for it and pocket about $100. After 18 months, you got the iPhone at wholesale cost. You can also do this with Android phones, but you won't be pocketing an extra $100 and you may need to put in some of your own money to pay for the $199.
In the old days, paying for a subsidized phone and locking into a two year contract was the best way to go because the carrier didn't offer any plans that cost significantly less than the plan that came with a subsidized phone, if you brought your own phone into the plan. Now the carriers beginning to offer plans that are some what discounted if you bring your own phone to the plan, but it's still no where near the $20 a month discount one would expect over the plan that came with a subsidized phone.
I've moved from opposing financing to supporting it. But those data plan prices are freaking crazy. I pay $30 for unlimited data through AT&T. Right now I can't see giving it up unless I'm forced to.
rather keep the subsidized program. I like the lower cost of entry and my family doesn't need the latest and greatest devices. At the end of the day, they all do basically the same crap.
If you're financing your phone with Verizon, and then move carriers, would you then be paying Verizon monthly for the phone and the other guy monthly for the service?
rather keep the subsidized program. I like the lower cost of entry and my family doesn't need the latest and greatest devices. At the end of the day, they all do basically the same crap.
I don't see why you would. If you get the phone financed, you have the same lower cost of entry. The only difference is that you're not locked into a two-year contract for the service, and once you've paid the phone off, your monthly price goes down.
For me, the 2 year contract with a subsidized phone has always worked VERY WELL! Every other year I sell the old phone for a good price because it is, of course, contract-free. This has substantially defrayed the cost of the subsidized new phone. Last September I switched to Verizon after many years with Cingular/AT&T to get unlimited calling and 2GB data for $60/mo. Net cost of the 64GB iPhone 6 was $125. 2 year contract = good deal for me. Sadly, it looks like I will not be able to afford an "iPhone 7" next year.
So, if I am understanding you correctly, they're charging consumers at least an extra $15 per month ($40 – $25) -- i.e., at least $360 over the life of the contract -- for letting them pay a lower handset fee up front?
What I am trying to understand in all the news reports, including this one is, how's this a 'subsidy' for the handset?
Not really, they used to charge $40 no matter if you were on a contract or not. It is only a subsidy in the sense you were going to get charged whether or not you upgraded.
What's missing, or maybe I'm missing it, is where's the voice and text plan? Is that part of the $20 smartphone access fee? Does it come out of the 1GB data? Or does that have to be added to the $50 it's going to cost you for a smartphone with 1GB of data?
$50 a month (plus fees, lots of fees) for a smartphone with 1GB data plan don't sound to bad for some one that don't use a lot of data, providing it includes a decent amount of voice and text minutes. Or even if the voice and text minutes uses the 1GB data, but so little of it every month that it's like having unlimited voice and text minutes with plenty MB's left over for data.
But if you have to add another $15 (or so) a month for an unlimited voice and text plan, then that brings the cost up to $65 a month (plus fees). (Or if the voice is part of the data and you have to get the 3GB data plan so you have enough data for unlimited voice and text minutes.) If I remember last, the minimum cost of a plan with a subsidized iPhone (from ATT) was about $70 a month (plus fees). Which includes more that 3GB of data. Back then, the basic phone plan with an unlimited voice plan was $50 and you had to include the minimum data plan for a smartphone. Which was $20. (Text and SMS were also extra back then.)
Wow, amazed mobile costs are so expensive in the USA.
I know the UK has a competitive market, but with three (I think) big players in the U.S. market you'd expect them to be fighting tooth and nail over price.
Nothing you can do about it I guess, one of the rare situations where the U.S. is more expensive than the UK.
The other thing to keep in mind is that many of us get 20-25% discounts from list price from our employers or other associations. Add back the taxes and "fees," and you get roughly back to the advertised price.
What's missing, or maybe I'm missing it, is where's the voice and text plan? Is that part of the $20 smartphone access fee? Does it come out of the 1GB data? Or does that have to be added to the $50 it's going to cost you for a smartphone with 1GB of data?
$50 a month (plus fees, lots of fees) for a smartphone with 1GB data plan don't sound to bad for some one that don't use a lot of data, providing it includes a decent amount of voice and text minutes. Or even if the voice and text minutes uses the 1GB data, but so little of it every month that it's like having unlimited voice and text minutes with plenty MB's left over for data.
But if you have to add another $15 (or so) a month for an unlimited voice and text plan, then that brings the cost up to $65 a month (plus fees). (Or if the voice is part of the data and you have to get the 3GB data plan so you have enough data for unlimited voice and text minutes.) If I remember last, the minimum cost of a plan with a subsidized iPhone (from ATT) was about $70 a month (plus fees). Which includes more that 3GB of data. Back then, the basic phone plan with an unlimited voice plan was $50 and you had to include the minimum data plan for a smartphone. Which was $20. (Text and SMS were also extra back then.)
It is $20+what ever data plan($$) your choice. $20 include unlimited talk & text.
Verizon already removed per minutes charge plan couple of years ago.
If you are concern about fee & tax then only solution is prepaid.
Other problem is most current smart phones are not support by 3rd party prepaid.
AT&T, if you are on their 2 years contract phone contract then monthly charge is $40 per smart phone + data plan of your choice.
If you are on Next or full paid then monthly smart phone charge is lower by data plan size.
From 6GB to lower than 10 GB then monthly charge will be $25.
From 10GB or more $15 per month.
Some reply said their unlimited plan is better but they will ended up pay full price phone(or buy used phone) order to keep their unlimited plan.
Which service provider does not loose much unless you tethering phone with other internet devices.
I think they might not allow you to use LTE. Even you have LTE smart phone.
Since their contract started from 3G service level, unless contract was guaranteed higher speed service when it available they can get away with it.
Well, no matter how you calculate the formula, you will paid lots of money per year to service provider.
It will ended up either you want latest smart phone with latest service speed or not.
I've moved from opposing financing to supporting it. But those data plan prices are freaking crazy. I pay $30 for unlimited data through AT&T. Right now I can't see giving it up unless I'm forced to.
There are a number of residential neighborhoods in California where AT&T has really crappy service, especially if you're inside a building. Verizon works most places. I think that's how they get away with it.
I use T-Mobile with a phone I brought. Older iPhones cost around $100.
T-Mobile is $10 per additional family line. So my cost is around $20 per month all-in, free music streaming, free GSM roaming in many countries (as T-Mobile is not an American company).
People who are paying thousands per year for a phone or two are just stupid. Or they are richer than I am.
Until all phone subsidies end, we will continue to see overpriced phones. Apple and Samsung and everyone else can keep saying the phones cost $700+, and that is fine as long as most aren't paying that price. Ending subsidies will be the game changer for US consumers.
It should be standard practice to buy your phone outright, like you do anything else, and then shop around amongst carriers for the best rate plan. As long as a vast majority of phones are subsidized and we only have a few major carriers to choose from, they have no reason to REALLY compete and get creative. Verizon and AT&T pretend to innovate, but just find a way to keep offering new plans that are the same as the old ones but structured slightly different. Look anywhere else in the world and you see better rates for comparable service because they have true competition. I don't mind allowing monopolies or oligopolies as long as the companies are giving us a better service. In this case the consumers are getting raked over the coals, and the FCC is enabling them.
@radarthekat I must be missing something here. I bought an IP6 when they first came out. My $30 cell phone had just died and I tried an $100 Andoid, which was horrible, so I returned it and got my money back.
Anyway, the $30 phone was on ATT GoPhone pay as you go for $50/mo. As the competition heated up and prices began to drop, ATT offered a $45 plan with $5 rebate if you did autobilling to a credit card.
Now ATT offers a flat $40/mo for the autobilling plan. That includes unlimited text, data, and phone with some throttling. (I believe they were sued recently for the throttling.) I use the phone and service for business and personal, GPS travel, hotspot when the office network is down (actually faster up/down).
Unless you watch movies all day, I don%u2019t know what else you could want for $40.
Comments
With 2 people sharing 12 gig's a month, you can virtually rid yourself of cable and/or satellite TV and only use your phones/pads and AppleTV to have all of your entertainment you need. Am I missing something?
No 12gb of data would never be enough for the average family using online streaming. However what more are going too is just keeping cable internet and getting rid of cable tv/satellite and cable phone. Verizon estimates that one hour of LTE video streaming in HD would use 60GB of data in a month. I would say 12gb would be more than enough if you also had access to Wifi.
Wow, amazed mobile costs are so expensive in the USA.
I know the UK has a competitive market, but with three (I think) big players in the U.S. market you'd expect them to be fighting tooth and nail over price.
Nothing you can do about it I guess, one of the rare situations where the U.S. is more expensive than the UK.
Yes, UK has caught up a lot in recent years, If you factor in the living cost and property pricing etc, UK is properly one of the cheapest.
The only thing they are lacking is Wired connection, which they are working on it now.
Regardless of what model is used, I know I won't be saving any money with our family's device and data habits.
I'll be bummed when they finally get rid of my Unlimited data. I'm frankly surprised they haven't done a long time ago, honestly.
An iPhone retails for $700...someone has to pay Apple for that.
If you want your carrier to pick up $500 of it, and you only pay $200...they are going to find a way to recoup that cost from you. If it means charging you more for service, AKA your monthly bill, then they will (and they have). It also means they have to lock you in to at least two years of overpriced service, to ever hope to turn a profit on you.
Instead, your carrier will offer you an installment plan that allows the customer to spread out the cost of the phone over 12-20 months, and ultimately pay somewhere around $400 for the phone instead. In turn, they have lowered their device fees and service fees, so the average user is now paying the same or less than they ever did before on their total monthly bill, even with the cost of the device (GOOD!). And the cherry on top is that you're no longer locked in to a 2 year contract with no upgrade privileges....instead they know you want to upgrade your device every 12 months, and have made that possible too.
And as always, there is absolutely no consumer or carrier advantage to buying the device outright for full retail price.
Apple doesn't receive the full retail price (nor the sales tax) when some other retailer sells an iPhone. Apple only receives the wholesale price. So a carrier subsidizing an iPhone only needs to recover the wholesale price they paid for the iPhone, which is about $550. So the carrier only needs to subsidize $350.
Apple profit margin is over 50% (maybe 60% for older iPhones) for an iPhone. It's guesstimated that it cost Apple about $300 - $350 to build an iPhone. Which would put an iPhone wholesale cost at about $550. Plus, when the carrier was subsidizing the iPhone, they would often let you renew your 2 year contract for another 2 years, and get another subsidized iPhone, after 18 months. Low and behold, 18 x $20 a month in subsidies = $360. The amount the carrier needed to get from you to break even on the iPhone you got for $199. But in the mean time, they made money off you from the plan. Which is where most of their profits comes from. It's was never the intention of the carrier to make their profits by selling iPhones.
So the best thing to do if you got a subsidized iPhone, was to renew your contract after 18 months (if they offer it to you), get a new subsidized $199 iPhone, sell your old one to pay for it and pocket about $100. After 18 months, you got the iPhone at wholesale cost. You can also do this with Android phones, but you won't be pocketing an extra $100 and you may need to put in some of your own money to pay for the $199.
In the old days, paying for a subsidized phone and locking into a two year contract was the best way to go because the carrier didn't offer any plans that cost significantly less than the plan that came with a subsidized phone, if you brought your own phone into the plan. Now the carriers beginning to offer plans that are some what discounted if you bring your own phone to the plan, but it's still no where near the $20 a month discount one would expect over the plan that came with a subsidized phone.
rather keep the subsidized program. I like the lower cost of entry and my family doesn't need the latest and greatest devices. At the end of the day, they all do basically the same crap.
Actually new Verizon price little cheaper than AT&T when you paid in full price phone.
AT&T 10GB plan is $100. Verizon new plan is 12GB for $80.
Until AT&T adjust their plan price, Verizon is winner here.
This full price phone does not work for single line contract.
If you don't care about new phone then I guess prepaid 3rd party service will be much cheaper for single line contract.
This plan will be good for the family plan.
AT&T discounts the full paid phone connect per monthly for 10GB is $15. Verizon is $20.
If you have 4 members in the plan then AT&T 10GB plan is same price as Version 12GB plan as cost of monthly payment.
So, if I am understanding you correctly, they're charging consumers at least an extra $15 per month ($40 – $25) -- i.e., at least $360 over the life of the contract -- for letting them pay a lower handset fee up front?
What I am trying to understand in all the news reports, including this one is, how's this a 'subsidy' for the handset?
Not really, they used to charge $40 no matter if you were on a contract or not. It is only a subsidy in the sense you were going to get charged whether or not you upgraded.
What's missing, or maybe I'm missing it, is where's the voice and text plan? Is that part of the $20 smartphone access fee? Does it come out of the 1GB data? Or does that have to be added to the $50 it's going to cost you for a smartphone with 1GB of data?
$50 a month (plus fees, lots of fees) for a smartphone with 1GB data plan don't sound to bad for some one that don't use a lot of data, providing it includes a decent amount of voice and text minutes. Or even if the voice and text minutes uses the 1GB data, but so little of it every month that it's like having unlimited voice and text minutes with plenty MB's left over for data.
But if you have to add another $15 (or so) a month for an unlimited voice and text plan, then that brings the cost up to $65 a month (plus fees). (Or if the voice is part of the data and you have to get the 3GB data plan so you have enough data for unlimited voice and text minutes.) If I remember last, the minimum cost of a plan with a subsidized iPhone (from ATT) was about $70 a month (plus fees). Which includes more that 3GB of data. Back then, the basic phone plan with an unlimited voice plan was $50 and you had to include the minimum data plan for a smartphone. Which was $20. (Text and SMS were also extra back then.)
Wow, amazed mobile costs are so expensive in the USA.
I know the UK has a competitive market, but with three (I think) big players in the U.S. market you'd expect them to be fighting tooth and nail over price.
Nothing you can do about it I guess, one of the rare situations where the U.S. is more expensive than the UK.
The other thing to keep in mind is that many of us get 20-25% discounts from list price from our employers or other associations. Add back the taxes and "fees," and you get roughly back to the advertised price.
What's missing, or maybe I'm missing it, is where's the voice and text plan? Is that part of the $20 smartphone access fee? Does it come out of the 1GB data? Or does that have to be added to the $50 it's going to cost you for a smartphone with 1GB of data?
$50 a month (plus fees, lots of fees) for a smartphone with 1GB data plan don't sound to bad for some one that don't use a lot of data, providing it includes a decent amount of voice and text minutes. Or even if the voice and text minutes uses the 1GB data, but so little of it every month that it's like having unlimited voice and text minutes with plenty MB's left over for data.
But if you have to add another $15 (or so) a month for an unlimited voice and text plan, then that brings the cost up to $65 a month (plus fees). (Or if the voice is part of the data and you have to get the 3GB data plan so you have enough data for unlimited voice and text minutes.) If I remember last, the minimum cost of a plan with a subsidized iPhone (from ATT) was about $70 a month (plus fees). Which includes more that 3GB of data. Back then, the basic phone plan with an unlimited voice plan was $50 and you had to include the minimum data plan for a smartphone. Which was $20. (Text and SMS were also extra back then.)
It is $20+what ever data plan($$) your choice. $20 include unlimited talk & text.
Verizon already removed per minutes charge plan couple of years ago.
If you are concern about fee & tax then only solution is prepaid.
Other problem is most current smart phones are not support by 3rd party prepaid.
AT&T, if you are on their 2 years contract phone contract then monthly charge is $40 per smart phone + data plan of your choice.
If you are on Next or full paid then monthly smart phone charge is lower by data plan size.
From 6GB to lower than 10 GB then monthly charge will be $25.
From 10GB or more $15 per month.
Some reply said their unlimited plan is better but they will ended up pay full price phone(or buy used phone) order to keep their unlimited plan.
Which service provider does not loose much unless you tethering phone with other internet devices.
I think they might not allow you to use LTE. Even you have LTE smart phone.
Since their contract started from 3G service level, unless contract was guaranteed higher speed service when it available they can get away with it.
Well, no matter how you calculate the formula, you will paid lots of money per year to service provider.
It will ended up either you want latest smart phone with latest service speed or not.
I've moved from opposing financing to supporting it. But those data plan prices are freaking crazy. I pay $30 for unlimited data through AT&T. Right now I can't see giving it up unless I'm forced to.
There are a number of residential neighborhoods in California where AT&T has really crappy service, especially if you're inside a building. Verizon works most places. I think that's how they get away with it.
These prices are rapacious and insane.
I use T-Mobile with a phone I brought. Older iPhones cost around $100.
T-Mobile is $10 per additional family line. So my cost is around $20 per month all-in, free music streaming, free GSM roaming in many countries (as T-Mobile is not an American company).
People who are paying thousands per year for a phone or two are just stupid. Or they are richer than I am.
Until all phone subsidies end, we will continue to see overpriced phones. Apple and Samsung and everyone else can keep saying the phones cost $700+, and that is fine as long as most aren't paying that price. Ending subsidies will be the game changer for US consumers.
It should be standard practice to buy your phone outright, like you do anything else, and then shop around amongst carriers for the best rate plan. As long as a vast majority of phones are subsidized and we only have a few major carriers to choose from, they have no reason to REALLY compete and get creative. Verizon and AT&T pretend to innovate, but just find a way to keep offering new plans that are the same as the old ones but structured slightly different. Look anywhere else in the world and you see better rates for comparable service because they have true competition. I don't mind allowing monopolies or oligopolies as long as the companies are giving us a better service. In this case the consumers are getting raked over the coals, and the FCC is enabling them.
I must be missing something here. I bought an IP6 when they first came out. My $30 cell phone had just died and I tried an $100 Andoid, which was horrible, so I returned it and got my money back.
Anyway, the $30 phone was on ATT GoPhone pay as you go for $50/mo. As the competition heated up and prices began to drop, ATT offered a $45 plan with $5 rebate if you did autobilling to a credit card.
Now ATT offers a flat $40/mo for the autobilling plan. That includes unlimited text, data, and phone with some throttling. (I believe they were sued recently for the throttling.) I use the phone and service for business and personal, GPS travel, hotspot when the office network is down (actually faster up/down).
Unless you watch movies all day, I don%u2019t know what else you could want for $40.