Wednesday 24 June 2009

Mobile phone exclusive deals are bad for consumers

The United States FCC is investigating mobile phone exclusivity deals where one carrier is the only one to get a particular handset. AT&T, in response, claims that exclusive deals benefit their customers by providing "innovation, lower cost and more choice".

Innovation seems less likely to me when you have one company looking at one product on one type of plan, because they don't have any incentive to do anything different. As for lower costs, monopolies have historically been shown to increase prices, not lower them. And finally, how are you getting more choice when your only option to get an iPhone (for example) is to go with AT&T?

In short, AT&T's response is demonstrably false on all counts. Therefore they are either deluded or they want to maintain their own exclusive deal because they don't have to spend money innovating or providing better deals to consumers.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I think it's the latter, in this case.
PPS - Nobody could really believe their arguments if they are examined in any depth.

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