4 ms·

From some years ago, in pre-smart phone days, stories from Europe would be somewhat transfixing. 'When I became unhappy with my current provider / traveled to

From some years ago, in pre-smart phone days, stories from Europe would be somewhat transfixing. 'When I became unhappy with my current provider / traveled to another country / didn't want a monthly plan and fixed fee, I simply bought a different SIM and popped it in.' You mean, you changed your cell service by changing the 'memory card'? You didn't have to pay $40/month (or equivalent) for 90 minutes of phone calls? You're not locked into a 2 year contract? You don't get caught and screwed over with roaming fees (remember those)? (Different SIM card for the different country.) THEY DON'T $0.10, $0.20, WHATEVER PER TEXT MESSAGE? I'm probably forgetting many of the other "astonishing" differences. All you needed to do was have an "average" U.S. person talk for 2 minutes with an "average" European about cell phone use, and the American was ready for a change. P.S. I realize this is sarcastic, but I suppose this change will end up getting someone charged with a felony for "hacking", at the DOJ's or other law enforcement organization's convenience.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
StavrosK 14y ago
Why some years ago? That's what we do even today. I don't think our iPhones are locked, Androids definitely aren't (Greece).
- pasbesoin 14y ago
  I've been cut off in my hermit cave. Also, alternatives have been starting to catch on, here. Such as pre-paid plans that offer significant discounts. Also FaceTime, Skype, and whatever else (although these eat into often stingy data quotas). Many in the U.S. still have little or no clue. But I don't think it's quite as bad as before; also, someone "technically" "gaming" the system isn't as astonishing as it used to be. Or so it seems, from my cave. Mostly, I'm just more familiar with reactions back at that time.
  - graeme 14y ago
    You can buy unlocked iPhones at apple stores in Canada. I get unlimited minutes and text with chatr. That comes with free long distance, call display, voicemail etc. everything except picture messaging or data. Chatr doesn't sell microsims. So at the mall, there is a kiosk that will legally cut the chatr sim for $10. Chatr encourages this. This plan works even if I travel to another city, as long as its a major center. No contract. They're actually illegal in Quebec. Instead, companies offer the same agreements to consumers, and conscmersd just have to pay back part of the phone price if they leave early. If you have a discounted agreement that doesnt include a subsidy, you can leave anytime you want.
    - rapind 14y ago
      FYI Chatr is a Rogers subsidiary. They created it specifically to compete[1] with the other cheap services like Wind and Mobilicity. This is why your iPhone works, because it's on the same Rogers network. [1] Some argue that the only reason they created Chatr was to drive the smaller guys out of the market.
      - graeme 14y ago
        Yeah, I expect that's why they did it. Or at least to keep people in the Rogers ecosystem. A lot of the smaller guys didn't work in my area, or on my iPhone. I just wanted to highlight that a big company encourages you to unlock your phone and deface their sim cards. Chatr reps directed me to the sim cutter.
    - Ntrails 14y ago
      It's funny how different the implementations are, I could never understand on my trips to Canada how a mobile phone could have an area code. Now, we have our own peccadilloes in the UK. "Free-phone" numbers are expensive from a mobile. Special cheap 'local rate' phone numbers for businesses cost a fortune. But yeah, that seemed just nuts.
- LilValleyBigEgo 14y ago
  So, I've worked in the cell phone industry on and off for about twelve years. In the begining, it started like this. You had to buy a phone then you had to pay for your service. Well, most consumers (in contrast to business users) who bought phones bought them as status symbols. That is to say, they'd buy a car phone and have it installed, then they'd just never pay the bill. The phone was still in their car, it still made them look rich, they just never bothered to use it. The same thing happened when mobile handsets came out. Those big brick phones. People would actually buy them, let the service lapse, then walk around pretending to talk on them because it made them look affluent. Since the carriers didn't have any way to make the service more appealing, they decided to make it look more affordable. They came up with this plan where they would just GIVE you the phone but make you pay for it in profits over time. They would advertise it as a free phone. Who wouldn't want a free phone? It was a device that could cost up to a thousand dollars and you were getting it for free! So they advertised it as a free phone with no mention of the actual cost of the service and no notification about the contract requirement. Often carriers would offer the free phones and never even tell the consumer they were being signed up for a contract, and US citizens usually don't bother to read the contracts they are signing. Many years later the court battles started. Class action lawsuits meant that carriers eventually had to tell people they were signing a contractual agreement to pay for service over a predetermined term. So the carriers started advertising the phones as FREE with a tiny asterisk next to the word FREE in gigantic title font, then at the bottom of the ad or on a different page in the same publication in tiny, tiny print with letters that were taller than they were wide so that people would naturally gloss over them they put the contract terms. The same practice continues today. It's an ongoing battle between consumers saying "listen if this isn't free don't fucking call it free" and "listen if it's not umlimited bandwidth don't fucking call it unlimited bandwidth." But the fact of the matter is that it's perfectly legal to LIE in an ad as long as there's some print somewhere that is marginally accessible to the reader that completely disclaims what the ad says, even if the fine print says the exact opposite of what the ad print says. The ad print could say BUY TODAY AND YOU CAN FUCK MY WIFE as long as it said in tiny print on a dusty card in a filing cabinet in the basement behind a door with a sign reading Beware of the Leopard, I DON'T ACTUALLY HAVE A WIFE.
derda 14y ago
Random Story: Back in the days (I think somewhere in the 90s) GSM service in Germany was still relatively expensive, I remember my cousin brought back a SIM-Card from Finland and used it for over a year back home. Even including roaming prices it was still cheaper.
- hef19898 14y ago
  Austrian mobile contracts are still cheaper in Germany than German ones. But the Austrian market is special case.
jimmaswell 14y ago
Wait, that's seriously true? All of it?

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

StavrosK 14y ago

Why some years ago? That's what we do even today. I don't think our iPhones are locked, Androids definitely aren't (Greece).

pasbesoin 14y ago
I've been cut off in my hermit cave. Also, alternatives have been starting to catch on, here. Such as pre-paid plans that offer significant discounts. Also FaceTime, Skype, and whatever else (although these eat into often stingy data quotas). Many in the U.S. still have little or no clue. But I don't think it's quite as bad as before; also, someone "technically" "gaming" the system isn't as astonishing as it used to be. Or so it seems, from my cave. Mostly, I'm just more familiar with reactions back at that time.
- graeme 14y ago
  You can buy unlocked iPhones at apple stores in Canada. I get unlimited minutes and text with chatr. That comes with free long distance, call display, voicemail etc. everything except picture messaging or data. Chatr doesn't sell microsims. So at the mall, there is a kiosk that will legally cut the chatr sim for $10. Chatr encourages this. This plan works even if I travel to another city, as long as its a major center. No contract. They're actually illegal in Quebec. Instead, companies offer the same agreements to consumers, and conscmersd just have to pay back part of the phone price if they leave early. If you have a discounted agreement that doesnt include a subsidy, you can leave anytime you want.
  - rapind 14y ago
    FYI Chatr is a Rogers subsidiary. They created it specifically to compete[1] with the other cheap services like Wind and Mobilicity. This is why your iPhone works, because it's on the same Rogers network. [1] Some argue that the only reason they created Chatr was to drive the smaller guys out of the market.
    - graeme 14y ago
      Yeah, I expect that's why they did it. Or at least to keep people in the Rogers ecosystem. A lot of the smaller guys didn't work in my area, or on my iPhone. I just wanted to highlight that a big company encourages you to unlock your phone and deface their sim cards. Chatr reps directed me to the sim cutter.
  - Ntrails 14y ago
    It's funny how different the implementations are, I could never understand on my trips to Canada how a mobile phone could have an area code. Now, we have our own peccadilloes in the UK. "Free-phone" numbers are expensive from a mobile. Special cheap 'local rate' phone numbers for businesses cost a fortune. But yeah, that seemed just nuts.
LilValleyBigEgo 14y ago
So, I've worked in the cell phone industry on and off for about twelve years. In the begining, it started like this. You had to buy a phone then you had to pay for your service. Well, most consumers (in contrast to business users) who bought phones bought them as status symbols. That is to say, they'd buy a car phone and have it installed, then they'd just never pay the bill. The phone was still in their car, it still made them look rich, they just never bothered to use it. The same thing happened when mobile handsets came out. Those big brick phones. People would actually buy them, let the service lapse, then walk around pretending to talk on them because it made them look affluent. Since the carriers didn't have any way to make the service more appealing, they decided to make it look more affordable. They came up with this plan where they would just GIVE you the phone but make you pay for it in profits over time. They would advertise it as a free phone. Who wouldn't want a free phone? It was a device that could cost up to a thousand dollars and you were getting it for free! So they advertised it as a free phone with no mention of the actual cost of the service and no notification about the contract requirement. Often carriers would offer the free phones and never even tell the consumer they were being signed up for a contract, and US citizens usually don't bother to read the contracts they are signing. Many years later the court battles started. Class action lawsuits meant that carriers eventually had to tell people they were signing a contractual agreement to pay for service over a predetermined term. So the carriers started advertising the phones as FREE with a tiny asterisk next to the word FREE in gigantic title font, then at the bottom of the ad or on a different page in the same publication in tiny, tiny print with letters that were taller than they were wide so that people would naturally gloss over them they put the contract terms. The same practice continues today. It's an ongoing battle between consumers saying "listen if this isn't free don't fucking call it free" and "listen if it's not umlimited bandwidth don't fucking call it unlimited bandwidth." But the fact of the matter is that it's perfectly legal to LIE in an ad as long as there's some print somewhere that is marginally accessible to the reader that completely disclaims what the ad says, even if the fine print says the exact opposite of what the ad print says. The ad print could say BUY TODAY AND YOU CAN FUCK MY WIFE as long as it said in tiny print on a dusty card in a filing cabinet in the basement behind a door with a sign reading Beware of the Leopard, I DON'T ACTUALLY HAVE A WIFE.

derda 14y ago

Random Story: Back in the days (I think somewhere in the 90s) GSM service in Germany was still relatively expensive, I remember my cousin brought back a SIM-Card from Finland and used it for over a year back home. Even including roaming prices it was still cheaper.

hef19898 14y ago
Austrian mobile contracts are still cheaper in Germany than German ones. But the Austrian market is special case.

jimmaswell 14y ago

Wait, that's seriously true? All of it?