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Unless you work for a wireless carrier, it’s difficult to not support the practice of unlocking phones. It means that the phone you purchased is truly yours. You can take it to a compatible carrier of your choice, without having to pay the new carrier for yet another handset. There are just a couple of problems. First, it’s not always easy to unlock handsets — and newer phones are further complicating the issue. Second, there are only two GSM carriers in the U.S. and one in Canada. While there are a select few GSM MVNOs, options are still limited. In any case, there’s a new device on the market, called SIMable, a chip that attaches to your SIM card, rendering it unlocked.

Posted in Consumer Issues on April 29th, 2008
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This AP article talks about Americans cutting back on any expense they can in order to make ends meet as financial times get tougher and tougher. Just because we’ve been talking about it lately: “And, she’s considering cutting off their cell phone service or moving to a prepaid plan, to reduce expenses.” I suspect a lot of people will opt to go this route. It’s unfortunate that things have come to this, but at least we do have prepaid cell options so we don’t have to go completely without a phone.

Posted in Consumer Issues on April 25th, 2008
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Apparently, throwing away your cellphone isn’t just environmentally hazardous, it’s downright wasteful. ReCellular, an electronics stability firm, is working on a going green campaign (who isn’t nowadays?) in anticipation of Earth Day. They lead with a killer stat: We discard 40,000 cellphone a day, meaning 150 million per year. I was under the impression that as a whole, we’re not really dropping cellphones into landfills too often — that most people held onto their old phones as backups (I know I do).

Posted in Consumer Issues on April 21st, 2008
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Since we were on the topic of talking while driving earlier this week, I figured this would be of some interest. Via the Wirefly blog, a list of cell phone driving laws in every state. This can be particularly useful if you’re planning an interstate trip. The last thing you want to be is someone with out of state plates violating the local cell phone laws. Think you’ll get banged with the maximum ticket? Damn straight you will.

Posted in Consumer Issues on April 18th, 2008
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Two topics we’ve long spoken of from the consumer standpoint are the practices of subsidizing and locking phones. There are various reasons given for each practice, but both come down to the carrier maintaining some amount of control over what is used on their network. Virgin Mobile CEO Dan Schulman recently spoke with Fierce Wireless, and this topic came up.

Posted in Consumer Issues on April 16th, 2008
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It might seem obvious, but a new study shows that children are distracted while on their phones, and therefore are at a far greater risk of being struck by a vehicle when crossing a street. This covers children aged 10 to 12, who were put to task through a virtual simulation. This was repeated six times with a cell phone, and six without. And, unsurprisingly, the children couldn’t walk and chew gum talk on their cell phones.

Posted in Consumer Issues on April 15th, 2008
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We’ve seen a number of states adopt stricter talking-while-driving laws lately. In my state, it has been classified as a Type A offense. That is, if an officer sees you on your phone, he can pull you over for just that. Previously, it was a secondary offense — where they could pull you over for a bum taillight and issue you a second ticket for talking on your phone. This doesn’t seem to deter many people. I see people with their handsets to their ears all the time. Clearly, the new legislation isn’t working. But what if insurance companies stepped in?

Posted in Consumer Issues on April 15th, 2008
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So it appears the economy isn’t doing too hot. Without getting into the specifics, we’re seeing a meltdown of the subprime mortgage lending practice. This has led to all sorts of messes, including the recent buyout of investment bank Bear Stearns. Virgin Mobile actually cited the country’s economic downturn when it reported its less than stellar fourth quarter sales. Not only that, but they predicted that these economic conditions would continue to hamper their efforts in 2008.

Posted in Consumer Issues on March 18th, 2008
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Caught this story over on Consumerist, and I thought I’d bring it up, since it is clearly an issue in the prepaid realm. When you buy a phone, as when you buy any product, there is a certain window in which you can return said phone. However, since it is an electronic device and the carrier stands to lose money from a return, these periods are usually rather short — 14 days most of the time. Watch out, though, for simple tricks the carriers might play during that period. They might seem generous, but it could hurt you in the long run.

Posted in Consumer Issues on March 14th, 2008
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Over last summer, I used to look for cell phone consumer issues every Friday. Yeah, we go over them throughout the course of the week, but those are usually larger issues. This is a smaller one — $5 small, but hey, 5 dollars is 5 dollars. In any case, it appears that AT&T is testing a program starting on Tuesday whereby customers who pay their bills over the phone are charged a $5 fee. This actually isn’t uncommon — I know many credit card companies that charge you to call them and pay your bill. However, just because everyone else is doing it doesn’t make it right.

Posted in Consumer Issues on March 7th, 2008
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