In the town I live in, I have people cursing their phones and interrupting my phone conversations to ask what service I use.

CDMA is a US legacy protocol. The rest of the world is GSM. If you do any sort of international travel, you can keep using your phone. Ya, it costs more, but it is your number. If you are on a legacy CDMA system, you have to rent or otherwise obtain a GSM phone.

If Verizon or Sprint had a GSM option, they could compete with AT&T for the international market. Some competition there would be a good thing.

His brother had a Cingular phone and had nothing but aggravation.

Verizon isn’t the last(Sprint Also uses it). In fact, of the Big 3, only AT&T uses it. Verizon is also by far the largest, both in terms of coverage and market share.

Locally, in the Boston Metro area, I personally have seen better coverage from AT&T than from Verizon. Your mileage may vary.

The voice market has be come price driven, with large minute allotments more and more common. I think we are in agreement that the same will happen to data rates in time.

I think it’s basically hit saturation – and the Wireless Telcos are squeezing what they can before it turns cutthroat. All it takes is one little nudge, and they’ll start slashing their prices to gain market share. Look what happened to regular unlimited phone coverage – it was pricey, but then Skype and Vonage hit the scene.. It wasn’t even much a threat to their market share, but Verizon slashed their price almost in half – it’s now down to $35/month for nationwide long distance.. All it’s gonna take is one player, probably a minor one, to cut their rates, and then it’s gonna turn into a price war.

Until the monthly fees on those cards drop, its cheaper to have a phone.

As networks become more pervasive and ubiquitous, prices will drop and the carriers should become less prone for charging different rates for identical data packets.

The market will change in the next few years. Exactly how and when is tricky part.

What I forsee is one of the varios companies now broadcasting Wireless to realize they can break into the local Cellular market by some basic technology – Imagine Skype wireless phones that take PCMCIA Broadband access cards..

It would take an open browser on basic cell phones that would allow access to open IM and VoIP sites. I don’t expect that from Verizon anytime soon.

Somebody else is going to have to open the market up, perhaps if Google opens up their own cell carrier network as the rumors state.

Ya, it’s just a matter of time before the model changes. The current cell carriers are going to have come up with a new revenue model to deal with the change.

“The cell phone carriers are charging more for SMS text messages because kids are sending them more than crack addicts are looking for their next fix.”

Keep in mind that not all phones support email, especially the cheap ones you buy your kids, but they do support SMS text. That gives the kids the always on, non-verbal mobile communication they want, without the crackberry dad won’t buy them.

SMS is actually old technology. When I was at a carrier class VoIP company in the late 90′s – early 00′s, sales reps from Europe told it that SMS text messaging was very popular there. Not just kids, but adults as well.

The example given was that during a meeting, of VP level executives mind you, there would be a two layer conversation going on. Verbal, and texting between various members.

The cell carriers are going to milk this cash cow as long as they can. The end is already in sight, IMO. With 3G phones becoming more common, people will start to use non SMS chat programs on their phones to bypass the excess fees. (remember the part about “the ‘rents are cheap and won’t buy all the features every teen wants”). One carrier will start bundling SMS back into the data package and the others will need to follow suit.