"Telco bootlicking" feels pretty strong for the seemingly reasonable view that a customer doesn't own a phone they haven't paid for.
There are absolutely worthwhile discussions to be had about the ethics of dealing with abusive or greedy corporations, or about whether rent-to-own contracts are predatory.
But just because the community doesn't immediately jump to say "telcos suck so stealing your phone is a moral imperative" doesn't mean commenters are groveling at the feet of T-Mobile.
this implies that the price of a phone bill is connected to the price of operating the service. The price is set by what they think they can get, not how much it costs to run.
> this implies that the price of a phone bill is connected to the price of operating the service. The price is set by what they think they can get, not how much it costs to run.
I am not denying that telecoms is an oligopoly, I'm just saying this guy is no Robinhood. I think there still is some competition for pricing among cellular providers especially if you consider MVNOs, but even if this fraud had no effect on the cost of cell service, shareholders in any of the major telecom companies, which probably include the majority of adults by virtue of their inclusion on the S&P 500, are out billions of dollars of dividends thanks to the fraud these unlocking services enable.
Right, it's not "making the rest of society's phone bills higher", it hurts the stock gains for shareholders. That's what I meant by "what about muh corporate profits"
I think in the long run if fraud rates were reduced substantially that competitive pressures among the telecoms (given that they all basically have the same coverage) would cause prices to go down. I offered the shareholders thing as another argument because most people are shareholders because of their 401K and given that there's no free lunch someone had to pay for the $25 million this guy made.
