This is sort of a personal observation, but I was talking with a local cell phone sales company and commented on the fact that I tend to keep a phone for 5 years or more. She said I was the exception, since most people apparently change phones every 14 months. Anyone know if this is true? And if it is, won't that negatively affect any positive changes that we've been pushing for in the cellular industry, or would something like that actually improve it?

Cellphone turnover correlates with attention-spans.

Cell Phone turnover correlates with cell phone suck. Seriously the only cell phone I have ever REALLY liked was the n-gage qd, and that was only because I didn't really use the net that much, and I played a lot of games, and Pathway to Glory was awesome. Since then, EVERY single cell phone I've owned, including the iPhone, has been total ****.

I think our cell phone rates won't improve because the CEO's at the top of these companies are money grubbing idiots. When a CEO doesn't have a passion for their business, their business tends to suck. When businesses suck, they tend to go bankrupt, UNLESS they are an exceptionally large business in which case the government passes all sorts of laws that allow them to stay in business by being anticompetitive.

To be fair, the whole "telecommunications" industry is in a state of disarray right now, because the line between phone and television is blurring, as they should.

When companies discover they can simply take all these devices, whether they are TVs, modems, computers, or cell phones, and just network them all via an IP network and provide all their services via IP, then the transition will be complete and real pricing change may occur. Until then, the CEOs of these companies, who are clearly outclassed and don't understand what they are facing because they are all idiots with no vision, are going to be doing the only thing they know how to do: raise prices and crack down on innovation.

As long as we keep kicking and screaming and fighting and cheating the system even to the point of music/movie piracy (which I really don't support, but sometimes the only way to beat someone is to be uncivilized and unethical and declare war) then eventually we WILL win.

There is nothing that pisses me off more than idiots. Just my luck that most of the world is ******ed.

Lol... TV over IP... that's a joke right? Even VoIP is a joke. There will be a singularity at one point where all of this will merge but even then it will be short lived.

IP is not the be-all end-all protocol. Though watching something on the size(and encoded for let's say doubl that size) of a phone screen would certainly look great compared to watching it on a huge screen(and encoded for the huge screen).

I'll keep my copper for TV thank you very much

I'm daydreaming about junking my cell phone and just using email from my Kindle. Or maybe going back to a Tracfone; that costs about $100 a year. I don't see why cell phones are so important; they are critical only when your car breaks down or when you are trying to find a house or store.

I bet that an analysis of people's cell phone usage shows that they pay for much more than they actually use.

I think that's a positive indicator, actually.

If the average customer upgrades their phone every 14 months, that means they will have a fairly recent model with (increasing) number of features that depends on good IP service. This clearly indicates the direction of demand and telco companies will be making appropriate investments to support this customer behavior (bigger bandwidth in the near future) that should alleviate technical bottlenecks and lower the telco's costs, which in turn makes it possible for them to offer better service to the customers.

As with any other products (pc, phones, shoes, etc), usually the price stays about the same, but the features\material\capacity increases. So things become 'cheaper' (per unit) in that sense.

Well I think you mean you get 'more' for the same cost. The thing we need to remember that with every new 'feature' the network has another opportunity to sell additional services ontop of that hardware.

It would be interesting to see some stats on how the price per minute/per kb/per sms/per mms etc. has changed in different markets over time. that is a good way to understand what is happening.

My guess that we will see that voice-minutes are being commoditized and less "valuable" to the network provider.

Lower unit prices = $9.99 today may get you 3.5Mbps service with 2GB monthly quota, and maybe in a year or two it'll get you 7Mbps service with 5GB monthly quota.

Just divide what you're paying with what you're getting, you'll end up with the unit prices.

I have several friends -- all female, all college graduates, in fact all smart in their (non-techy) way -- that seemed not to know the "problem" with their cellphones was that its battery needed to be replaced. I think they didn't even know it could be. They had inexpensive telco-subsidised phones. I think people like that change phones a lot.

If you add to that the number of people who "change" phones because they lose them, I bet you go a long way toward accounting for that "every 14 months."

My guess is that pricey smartphones aren't replaced as often.

In Switzerland, some carriers have started to offer reduced monthly rates if you don't need a new phone.