An excellent editorial from +Nilay Patel about the broken mobile phone market.
The mobile carriers are just like every other industry that has been obsoleted and wants to maintain a business model. We're already seeing more people move to prepaid plans where they forego the subsidy for a contract free experience.
Hopefully once http://ting.com/ starts offering some LTE phones we'll start to see some more uptake on their approach of selling voice, messages and data by the bucket and only charging for what you use.
Reshared post from +The Verge
Is the iPhone's success blinding us to a broken market?
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Five years after the iPhone, carriers are the biggest threat to innovation
Five years ago, the iPhone revolutionized the mobile business and kicked off a seismic shift in the technology industry that continues today. But the massive success of Apple's phone has overshadowed….
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Hopefully once Ting gets some more users they'll be able to bring their prices down. Right now I think they're only really suitable for people who would barely use their phones, otherwise the costs add up far too fast. For example, +T-Mobile offers a prepaid off contract deal that includes 100 minutes and 5 GB of up to 4G data (unthrottled) for $30/mo. That's the best deal I've seen anywhere by a LONG shot.
Compared to +Verizon Wireless new shared everything plans, Ting would actually cut my bill by nearly half for the same usage. The main reason I haven't switched is the very limited selection of +Sprint WIMAX phones currently available. They have promised a bunch of new phone options once Sprint switches the LTE network on and then I'll take another look.