RTDriver.com

Thought you knew all there was to know about Verizon cell phones? Well, think again, because Apple’s in da house and its iPhone is changing the catalog in more ways than one!

This is no advertisement, mind you, nor any attempt at marketing but an honest take on what’s happening in this business from someone who is so disinterested a casual observer that he barely owns a cell phone, actually. It isn’t that I have some Verizon cell phones myself, for instance. Indeed, I haven’t a cellular telephone of my own. Not really, unless you count the one belonging to my live-in girlfriend of two and a half years. (Which is how I make contact with the outside world!)

But I used to be really big on hi-tech, and it’s amusing for me to casually regard – and disregard – all the developments in cellular communications since the 1990s, when I personally first became aware of such devices. Back then, the market was quite different…and in some respects still remarkably similar. How does it go, the old French saying? “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Yes, changes: the inventory of Verizon cell phones is greater than ever, and individual makes and models offer all kinds of cool handy features like never before. But what’s remained the same are subscription plans that try to tie you down with all sorts of penalties for leaving early – and these plans want at least a year from you, if not more, still.

That’s where the iPhone figures into all this. It could be something of a catalyst, a game-changer. Whereas it was once offered exclusively for use over AT&T’s network, it’s now come to roost just as comfortably across Verizon’s own nationwide network.

Meaning, more competition.

That should mean better terms and conditions.

That’s the theory, anyway. So far, nothing much has changed. Whether it’s from Verizon or AT&T, consumer can expect about the same policies as well as prices. The iPhone isn’t available, for example, on a prepaid basis; only with a old-fashioned years-long contract plan.

So how’s that “rockin’ the industry?”

Well, again, there’s the theory, and then there’s practice. Right now, though the industry is generally a fast-changing one with product cycles in the months if not in the weeks, market forces are still such that the carriers control most of how things work, what policies consumers get. But that can still change, as well it should – and there are those who claim that it’s actually begun to already.

Tags: Uncategorized by
No Comments »

Verizon wireless phones come from one of the largest cellular service providers in the Western Hemisphere with certain of their subscription plans. With Apple’s recent foray into the Verizon catalog of handsets, however, customers of the wireless communications giant now have more chatting choices than ever before!

On the other hand, these devices are just commodities now and people don’t really talk about Verizon wireless phones no matter what the roster of available brands are. The situation is now akin to that of laundry detergent, with hardly a significant difference across brands. The market is vastly different from what it used to be just five years ago, never mind ten or even twenty, when such handsets were status symbols! Nowadays such electronics is affordable to one and all and it’s the not having one that would seem unusual.

And so this is why folks don’t specifically speak of Verizon wireless phones – they just want something that allows them to talk, first and foremost, carrier be damned! In response to consumer apathy companies have simply “locked” up their phones instead of coming up with an unbeatable offer that will not only attract but also keep the customer, long-term. Correct: the phone is rendered inoperable when customers switch service providers! You would imagine that since the phone is bought and paid for, it belongs to you, and you can determine which service provider to use it with.

Wrong! Cellular network companies argue that since they subsidize part of the cost of the phone, making it cheaper when purchased as part of a subscription plan compared to being bought separately, they have the right to lock their phones – yes, “their” phones. Curiously, there has been no class-action lawsuit against such a potentially anti-competitive policy, one that’s long been adopted by all the carriers in the industry. It must be the presence of massive and/or numerous legal loopholes, though it’s still a little puzzling how tobacco companies can be defeated but not cellular carriers who disable people’s phones!

Luckily, there’s a way around such a restriction: “jail-breaking” or unlocking the phone. In many cases, a phone can be unlocked by just entering a certain code into it!

Tags: Uncategorized by
No Comments »