American cell phone service is overpriced

Not such a free market after all

Living in a foreign country can give you a lot of perspective on how much things should cost and what you’re missing out on. Being in Singapore with its tiny domestic market makes me miss the cheap products Amazon.com can deliver at scale. Its really hard to find electronics at less than 50% markup. Craft beers have to be imported. But cell phone service is cheap. You can get a plan with 2GB of data starting around S$40 (US$32). From my brief stint in Vietnam, it was less than US$10. And it’s quite fast too. There are also lots of prepaid options for the minute sipping consumer.

This article today suggests that 4G networks should be letting carriers deliver more bandwidth at less cost, yet they still charge more. Of course, there are fixed costs to build out the new network they have to recoup, but comparative evidence with other countries suggests we’re still getting milked.

Along with Sprint trying to buy T-Mobile*, and all the Comcast net neutrality hoopla, we see constant efforts by large corporations to maximize profits by increasing market share. We need to remind ourselves that that’s just what corporations do. They’re like forces of nature that flow in one direction. You can’t expect them to hold back just for the public good or civic duty. The mention will get a quick laugh in the boardroom, and then it will be back to business as usual.

It’s only purposeful chanelling by an outside force that gets businesses to direct their efforts towards the overall good of society and not just capturing profits. We need aggressive regulation of concentrated markets. It’s something that was apparent in the early 1900s with Standard Oil and apparent in the 1970s when AT&T was broken up, but every generation or so we have to remind ourselves of the importance of government playing a proactive role in ensuring a level, competitive playing field. I know people are starting to say this more now, but I’d like to add my drop to that ocean. Democracy is a conversation you have to keep going, and I’d like to write to get more people engaged in it. This is my first post on Medium but definitely not the last!