Verizon's FioS Deployment Enters A New Chapter > Can Congress Mandate this?

reply to OwlSaver

Re: Can Congress Mandate this?

I am not recommending price controls. It is more like rational pricing. It seems to me that the pricing mechanism for cell phones (buy a chunk of minutes and pay a hefty fee if you go over) is not rational. It is a way to guarantee profits. It gets people to buy more minutes than they really need just to ensure that they do not go over. So, everyone's price per minute is actually variable.

In a purely competitive environment (like corn), the minutes would have an individual quoted price. There could be discounts for buying in volume but not extra charges.

In the US, Cell Service is dominated by two providers, Verizon and AT&T. So, the market operates like a duopoly. The remaining vendors try to compete using rational pricing, but they cannot offer the service that Verizon and AT&T do.

I would like to have just enough government and no more. Since there are some things that do not work on a market basis, we need the government to step in. I think my idea above was a minimal approach that was intended to make a market act rationally. But, I am open to alternatives that are less intrusive.