This is just wild massing guessing on my part, but without vendor/hardware lock-in, wouldn't competition (and therefore service) be much better? As of now, there's several prohibitive costs to switching services due to having contract cancellation fees, requiring a new phone, not necessarily being able to transfer your data, etc. With an unlocked phone, you'd still have those contract cancellation fees, but it would be a much smoother process to switch. If it was easy enough to change to another carrier, carriers would most likely focus more on being more attractive than their competitors to try to entice customers to them. As it stands, it seems to me like few people would actually bother switching unless they were grossly unhappy with their service.
However, I'll freely admit that I don't necessarily have data or experience to back this up. Am I on the right track here, or babbling aimlessly?
It seems that the elements are in place for some real competition in Canada:
- all the major carriers support the iPhone
- Apple is selling unlocked phones
- you can get a voice/data plan without a contract if you have an unlocked phone
- phone number portability works well
I think it's possible to get unlocked Blackberry and Android phones too, but not sure. It's too early to tell if this will lead to lower prices and better service, but I'm optimistic.
Comments
This is just wild massing guessing on my part, but without vendor/hardware lock-in, wouldn't competition (and therefore service) be much better? As of now, there's several prohibitive costs to switching services due to having contract cancellation fees, requiring a new phone, not necessarily being able to transfer your data, etc. With an unlocked phone, you'd still have those contract cancellation fees, but it would be a much smoother process to switch. If it was easy enough to change to another carrier, carriers would most likely focus more on being more attractive than their competitors to try to entice customers to them. As it stands, it seems to me like few people would actually bother switching unless they were grossly unhappy with their service.
However, I'll freely admit that I don't necessarily have data or experience to back this up. Am I on the right track here, or babbling aimlessly?
It seems that the elements are in place for some real competition in Canada:
I think it's possible to get unlocked Blackberry and Android phones too, but not sure. It's too early to tell if this will lead to lower prices and better service, but I'm optimistic.