I think a lot of it had to do with being locked into your carrier. It was expensive to leave because you had to pay that early cancellation fee and two of the c

I think a lot of it had to do with being locked into your carrier. It was expensive to leave because you had to pay that early cancellation fee and two of the carriers are CDMA, two are GSM so you potentially had to get another phone. With the plan thing going away, there's more mobility in the phone market. The cost of good enough phones has gone down, providers can't lock their phones to their service anymore and there aren't so many coverage hold-outs where you HAD to get Verizon because Sprint didn't operate in your location. The barriers to entry for a new telco are staggering, not as much as landline operators of course, but it's certainly not nominal. T-Mobile has historically been a phone of the urban population because that's where they get the most bang for their buck so it was difficult to become a household name. Americans use their phones differently and I guess I'm in the minority by tethering often. I think if there was more diversity in the phone market, I wouldn't have to play these privacy tracking games, deal with tethering locked-down, misc phone crippling etc. It's getting better, but slowly. If you don't use your phone like 90% of Americans use their phone, there might not be an American telco that serves your interests.