The amount of abuse that the American consumer takes from telecos - Incoming SMS charges, incoming call charges, ridiculous post-paid rates, the colour of your

The amount of abuse that the American consumer takes from telecos - Incoming SMS charges, incoming call charges, ridiculous post-paid rates, the colour of your iPhone tied to your carrier contract - beggars belief. You guys are still living under the delusion that the invisible hand of the free market will protect you, but what you don't realize is that the invisible hand is too busy in the pants of AT&T and Verizon to care about you. There are a lot of things wrong with India but the telecom industry here(at least up to around 2010) should be a showcase for regulation done right. Dirt cheap sms rates(around .001 usd), 3G rates, fixed monthly subscription charge for roaming, tower-sharing (multiple mobile operators share a cellular tower), number-porting, second-pulse billing,and around 10-11 operators to choose from. Sure, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India probably squeezed a little to hard and the 2G and 3G corruption scandals that followed reversed some of those trends to an extent; But the situation is still much better than in the US.