Not quite. You have bought your phone effectively with a loan. It's not rented, it's bought with a loan and you're paying that loan back in monthly fees. You ca

Not quite. You have bought your phone effectively with a loan. It's not rented, it's bought with a loan and you're paying that loan back in monthly fees. You can't give the phone back and receive the part of the loan you paid, so it must be your phone. Leasing is just a special kind of loaning money, where you're loaned money for the sole purpose of purchasing a given product by the same merchant that sells you that product. If the telecom expects that you will use the phone only on their network, they can trivially add a "minimum monthly charge" so they'll cover the cost of the phone regardless. In fact, I believe all of them already do it. As a country with an economy built around loans (i.e. credit cards and so on), making things bought on credit not really yours seems insane.