Want an iphone to use on At&t without data plan

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@Wild Banchi wrote:

I suspect this is very accurate, especially with today's youth. I can hear it now - "mommy, can I have an iPhone for my birthday? All the other kids at school have one..."

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True for a lot of adults too.

Wing... AT&T pays a PITTANCE for their use of public resources in relation to the obscene profits they reap. Their executives and management are excessively enriched by the use of public resources and an Oligopopy position. AT&T regulary makes 3- to 15 BILLION/qtr in NET PROFIT.

There is no moral defense for them to require an off contract phone, which in effect the customer typically pays $600-$700 over a 2 year contract for AT&T to recover it's subsidy, and then require them to pay for a data plan they don't want or need. If they can detect a phone ID as being a smartphone then they sure as heck can block celluar data to it.

For a few of you shills that say "if a family can afford a smartphone they should afford a data plan" etc etc You are totally asenine. If a customer has accumulated phones over years, especially paying a premium for, then they should be able to pass those phones on to someone else for whatever use they want them for and pay for the services they use, not forced to buy a dumb phone ( that is jacked up in price) with old technology so as to not be charged for unwanted services. They are gouging the people that already paid too much for the privledge of being taken advantage of in the first place.

I could see it being an issue if voice bandwidth were scarce, but it is not, if anything it is more and more plentiful. AT&T spent the past 5 years convincing everyone there was a crisis of bandwidth limit, yet they in conjunction with their industry cohorts, have been flipping the model from voice minute based pland and giving data away to vice versa and pushing limited data on people to try to feed the addiction and hit overages so they can continue fleecing the public to the tune of 18Billion in NET PROFIT just last quarter alone. That's after ALL expenses, even executives and management. On the backbone of governement allocated public resources.

Just the top 5 executives alone, over the last 5 years, pocketed over 300MIL and that's just what they reported. So there is NO JUSTIFICATION to tell someone who paid $600 for a smartphone that they can't use it as JUST A PHONE.  Yes you can justify it as a it's a T&C requirement but that doesnt make it not morally bankrupt.  

In the AT&T world you're basically saying I have to buy one of 5 mediocre bicycles for around $1,000-$5000 so my teenager can get to college. I'd prefer to give him my old Mercedes, that has not been used for years and whose original $3,000/mo Onstar contract was fulfilled, but cant be used or I will have to unnecessarily pay for the luxury of Onstar at $3,000/mo which I cant afford on top of the costs I'm already paying on my current premium cars only because of some immoral T&C 

Common sense true capitallistic market says I give my used car to my kid and not have to pay the $17-$70/mo to onstar and not have to buy one of many hundreds of $75-$300 bikes

Thats exactly to teh word what my 10yo daughter said to me last week. I said your iPod 5 is just as good and she said as long as it's an iPhone even without data, effectively making it an iPod, thats all she wanted as long as it looked like she had an Iphone... Sheesh. My issue is my elderly parents want voice service and instead of being able to give them my unlocked off contract GS3 and setting up with only the dialer on the homescreen, so they wont get confused. They have to buy a crap dumbphone for way too much money then that would add only $10 a month for them to use my piled up voice minutes instead of $40 for them to use the minutes. Asensine....

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@bruceo2 wrote:

AT&T pays a PITTANCE for their use of public resources in relation to the obscene profits they reap. Their executives and management are excessively enriched by the use of public resources and an Oligopopy position. AT&T regulary makes 3- to 15 BILLION/qtr in NET PROFIT.

 

[...]

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 Thanks for the rant.

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@bruceo2 wrote:

My issue is my elderly parents want voice service and instead of being able to give them my unlocked off contract GS3

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GoPhone? T-Mobile? Consumer Cellular?

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@bruceo2 wrote:

Wing... AT&T pays a PITTANCE for their use of public resources in relation to the obscene profits they reap. Their executives and management are excessively enriched by the use of public resources and an Oligopopy position. AT&T regulary makes 3- to 15 BILLION/qtr in NET PROFIT.

 

There is no moral defense for them to require an off contract phone, which in effect the customer typically pays $600-$700 over a 2 year contract for AT&T to recover it's subsidy, and then require them to pay for a data plan they don't want or need. If they can detect a phone ID as being a smartphone then they sure as heck can block celluar data to it.

For a few of you shills that say "if a family can afford a smartphone they should afford a data plan" etc etc You are totally asenine. If a customer has accumulated phones over years, especially paying a premium for, then they should be able to pass those phones on to someone else for whatever use they want them for and pay for the services they use, not forced to buy a dumb phone ( that is jacked up in price) with old technology so as to not be charged for unwanted services. They are gouging the people that already paid too much for the privledge of being taken advantage of in the first place.

I could see it being an issue if voice bandwidth were scarce, but it is not, if anything it is more and more plentiful. AT&T spent the past 5 years convincing everyone there was a crisis of bandwidth limit, yet they in conjunction with their industry cohorts, have been flipping the model from voice minute based pland and giving data away to vice versa and pushing limited data on people to try to feed the addiction and hit overages so they can continue fleecing the public to the tune of 18Billion in NET PROFIT just last quarter alone. That's after ALL expenses, even executives and management. On the backbone of governement allocated public resources.

 

Just the top 5 executives alone, over the last 5 years, pocketed over 300MIL and that's just what they reported. So there is NO JUSTIFICATION to tell someone who paid $600 for a smartphone that they can't use it as JUST A PHONE.  Yes you can justify it as a it's a T&C requirement but that doesnt make it not morally bankrupt.  

 

In the AT&T world you're basically saying I have to buy one of 5 mediocre bicycles for around $1,000-$5000 so my teenager can get to college. I'd prefer to give him my old Mercedes, that has not been used for years and whose original $3,000/mo Onstar contract was fulfilled, but cant be used or I will have to unnecessarily pay for the luxury of Onstar at $3,000/mo which I cant afford on top of the costs I'm already paying on my current premium cars only because of some immoral T&C 

 

Common sense true capitallistic market says I give my used car to my kid and not have to pay the $17-$70/mo to onstar and not have to buy one of many hundreds of $75-$300 bikes

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ATT is one provider of service and others do the same.  YOU can choose who to do business with and ATT chooses which services they wish to provide.  You as a consumer are in control because you do not have to use their services.  That is the free market system we have.

ATT is just saying that if you want to use their network, here are the rules.  Others have their own rules and some are better suited for different types of users.  When their rules do not meet yours or your parents needs, switch! Just as other will switch to ATT when their needs change and ATT's services better meet their needs.  A free market is not one where the consumer says this is what I want now give it to me. It is a mutual agreement that may not work for everyone.