[Cialug] OT: Best phone for the geek

[Matthew Nuzum]

On 3/4/08, Don Cady <doncady at gmail.com> wrote:
> >  I have sprint for personal use and Nextel for blackberry.  My only real wish is that plans were less expensive for whatever phone.
>  >
>  >  -Nate
>
> IMHO the phones and plans should be divorced of the subsidies. Without
>  the subsidies, many of these phones cost more than the eeePC!

Well, in a sense they are, since most carriers I've seen let you buy
the phone w/out a contract. However, I've often thought the markup is
outrageous.

They take a phone that if divorced from the plan would probably retail
for about $125 but put a list price of $299 on it. Then they give you
a $250 subsidy but they make the $250 back in the monthly fees. Plus
they profit on the monthly fees (plus the upgrades like texting,
mapping, insurance, ringtones, etc)

Someone is profiting big.

Sprint's wimax service will work the way you suggest though. They
figure, rightly so, that they can shift the burden of selling and
distributing the wimax hardware to router, nic, laptop and mid vendors
and simply provide the service. This is how it should be.

-- 
Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode