I don't think $400 per cell phone is necessarily high. A huge portion of cell phone payments go to pay commissions to various people up and down the line. I hav

I don't think $400 per cell phone is necessarily high. A huge portion of cell phone payments go to pay commissions to various people up and down the line. I have no hard data about this, but I sold cell phones at Radioshack for a while, and the generally accepted wisdom was that it took 12 months of a 2 year contract to pay off all of the various commissions.