Least Significant Bits

As many know, I have a very low opinion of cellular phones. I've tried to summarize some of the reasoning below:

10. A phone is as much a fashion statement as a contemporary gadget, and phones become obsolete faster than computer equipment. If the technology behind a phone isn't replaced in a year, count on it going out of style.
9. To maintain the balance of flashy new phones, and support of the American culture of purchasing on credit, service providers use shell games to subsidize and conceal the cost of new phones, and service contracts as enforcement. Their accounting is their own business, but this makes them seem less like champions of inexpensive luxuries and more like deceitful price discriminators.
8. When a phone is purchased through a provider subsidy, the phone is typically "locked" and made to work only with the subsidizing provider. An industry has sprung up around the (uncommon) need to remove the protection on these "locked" phones. This industry is arguably illegitimate in that the protection should not exist in the first place, should be freely removable, or should only be removable by the manufacturer or the provider that set it. "Business opportunities" for third parties make absolutely no sense.
7. If the last three points aren't enough of a deterrant to switching providers without buying a new phone, incompatible standards may be. While the rest of the world has standardized on GSM, the U.S. providers Sprint and Verizon insist on CDMA. No GSM phone can be used with these providers, and no CDMA phone can be used with Cingular or T-Mobile.
6. Service providers pad their revenues with a substantial amount of nickel-and-diming. This practice I find reprehensible. Features that providers charge extra recurring fees for, such as instant messaging, tend to have profit margins on the order of 90%. Service providers also have the balls to charge people $3 for a lousy ring tone, and almost everybody goes along with it! It's no wonder those bastards refuse to cooperate with Apple on an iPod phone. A number of media companies and even Motorola also engage in nickel-and-dime practices for mobile adaptations of services that are otherwise free on the Web.
5. For some reason, cellular phone owners feel the need to talk on the phone while driving. Research suggests that a 20-year-old driver talking on the phone has the reaction time of a 70-year-old, and can behave as if more impaired than a legally drunk driver.
4. Service providers build their voice service from a conglomeration of low-bandwidth data services, in a very restrictive and inflexible way. The stack of services that they sell seems entrenched, and irreflective of more modern methods, such as layered internet service and VOIP service. Mobile internet service is inherently more valuable than mobile voice service. I hope something like WiMax destroys them all.
3. Depending on how you add it up, U.S. providers are sales and marketing machines, not the technology powerhouses they might have you believe. As a good example, take Verizon. According to their 2004 SEC filing, their wireless division received $24.4B in monthly service revenues. During the same period, they spent $7.74B on "Cost of services and sales," including expansion and maintenance of their infrastructure, their FCC licenses, and their long distance operations. However, they spent a whopping $9.59B on "Selling, general and administrative" expenses, including sales, marketing, billing, and customer service. That's 39.3% of their monthly revenues. The other U.S. providers have similar figures between 25-40%. Perhaps this sector needs some federal regulation.
2. Service providers seem to have little regard for their customers' privacy, given the apparent ease of obtaining calling records.
1. Having a cellular phone has become a social requirement in most circles, and the combination of the phone and its adornments has become part of the impression one makes. Compare this to the near requirement of having a car in southern California.

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