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Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist
Ffs. The point of government intervention is to protect the consumer NOT to make things cheaper.
Increase competition? Sure makes sense (not that they did a good job of it). Remove sneaky contracts that prey on uniformed consumers? Maybe.
How does cheaper prices protect the consumer? The carriers Should be able to offer different prices for merchandise based on financial contracts, etc.
It seems as though many people would like to see the government force companies to change business models to provide the cheapest communications charges. Sorry, but that is most certainly NOT the role of the government imo
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The mobile phone market is an oligopoly. A small number of players and very high barriers to entry. As such it doesn't provide the benefits that capitalism normally provides. In these cases governments need to intervene to ensure the consumer is protected.
One of these protections is a fair price. Normally capitalism produces the lowest possible price at acceptable quality at a price that allows profit. Anti-monopoly measures also tend to prevent the forced bundling of services.
A good example is real estate, for quite a while in order access MLS you were required to purchase a full service realator. You couldn't just purchase the MLS service. This is the same as the current phone companies, you don't save money if you don't buy a device. The government needs to step in and mandate that the device be de-coupled from the plan.
The benefit to the consumer is that now companies have to compete on both the cost of the device, and on the cost of the plan. This is more transparent and allows consumers choice.