HELP HELP, I’m being held hostage by my cell phone carrier!

I can remember it well. It was about 10 years ago. I was still working for Dick Blick Art Supplies (now known simply as "Blick Art Supplies"). Someone was visiting from Alltel and signing us up for cell phone contracts. I was about to visit a friend who was visiting Chicago from New York, and I had never had a cell phone. But, I'd also never been to Chicago on my own and thought this was a good time for me to finally get a cell phone for the purposes of emergenices etc. Well Alltel soon morphed into Verizon and ... well Verizon has changed a lot in the last 7 or 8 years.

I like Verizon. I like the IN NETWORK calling and the quality of the calls. There are things I don't like and things I wish were better. I won't get into those things cuz that's not with this blog is about. I'm commenting on the story linked below. Every cell phone provider has some sorta "network calling" feature in it's plans: "call people in the same network as you and the calls are free and unlimited. Yay!" Well that's fine if you're network is Verizon or Sprint or ATT, etc. Those networks are huge. The chances that more of your friends are with the same network as you are good. For those on smaller networks. Not so good is their plight. But ... I honestly cannot see myself sticking with or moving to one carrier or another because of this kind of in network feature. It just so happens that Verizon is the best deal all around in my area, but if push came to shove I would leave Verizon if better service were offered by someone else. I originaly started with Verizon in Galesburg IL, and there really isn't a better national carrier in the Peoria-Galesburg market.

So, all of that brings me to this story. Like I said, if a better over all deal came around I'd go for it. But, if everyone I knew switched to some other carrier but Verizon stayed the same best deal for me, I'd not swich. I cannot believe, honestly that people are out there who will follow each other around from carrier to carrier and choose their friendships and build their friendships on the basis of whether "friends" have the same calling networks as they do. It makes me angry, really, not at these people but at the carriers. Yeah, they have a right to make incentives available for customers, to lure them to keep them with features such as in-network calling. But they've also ensnared, possibly said customers and created a kind of mentality of "I can only use my cell phone to talk to you if you use ??? as your carrier too." Crazy. I for one will never be a hostage to my cell phone carrier.

Here's the story

Also in the news ....

I can't believe anyone would want to make this illegal. Dumb. Oh. It's the government what done it.

Ok, so when do we outlaw kids in the car and eating in the car? What about those stupid dvd players for cars? If we outlaw texting we should outlaw all of the above.

Dear Lord! If people are writing sexual stories of Harry Potter and friends ... well I think they definitely need to find something else to do. Creativity has nothing to do with it.

Well this guy has gotten his 15 minutes of fame and more so. More power to him.

And that'll be it for now, folks. I welcome comments. :) MP