We are being looted by the cellphone companies .... robbed ...

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38. but the communications industry has long found ways to rip people off.

genuine competition means more than just having a limited choice of a few providers offering quite similar services with quite similar pricing structures.

genuine competition means that fly-by-night behavior quickly gets squashed out. back in the days of pay phones, there were unscrupulous vendors who would charge something like $10 a minute (surprise!) for collect or credit card charges, and this was a long-term highly profitable business. i know someone who did this for about 20 years. the telcom industry is rife with stories like this.

part of the problem is that the accepted practice is to have highly confusing billing statements and pricing plans, and often the cost incurred is not known easily until afterwards (holy crap, i went HOW MUCH over my minutes/data plan?)

part of the problem is that there's not enough strong companies out there willing and able to appropriately undercut the incumbents. there are very high barriers to entry.