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Community Council | Posts: 4,920 | Thanked: 12,867 times | Joined on May 2012 @ Southerrn Finland
#20
Originally Posted by biketool View Post
Did you think that those 'free' phone for a year or so on contract were a gift? I wonder if even 10% of people actually go out and buy the phone they want vs taking the 'gift' of a new phone from a predatory mobile network.
This varies from country to country.

In finland for example it was previously (when 2G was the hot thing) illegal to sell operator-locked devices, hence operators did not offer "free" or cheap devices but the competition between operators and independent vendors was true. People always paid the full price on a device and bought a network contract separately.

For 3G the rules were relaxed a bit, on the assumption that it would help 3G to gain faster marker penentration; it was possible to bundle a phone with a service, but operators still had to give you the same price if you wanted to buy just the device which kept the prices from diving to the bottom.

I think this system is pretty fair and makes the pricing of devices and services more transparent; the end-user benefits from competition and freedom of choice.

I am fairly surprised that some countries that are supposed to be major forerunners of freedom do allow for monopolistic practises from operators...
 

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