Jack Hamilton <jfh@acm.org> wrote in
news:lrm8o3hge1tfcnvqjv4s8n33bigpbvsfqh@4ax.com:

> "Thomas T. Veldhouse" <veldy71@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>In alt.cellular.t-mobile Grant Edwards <grante@visi.com> wrote:
>>> On 2008-01-07, LHA <nobody@nobody1.com1> wrote:
>>>
>>>> If the cellular companies provided the service and support
>>>> that their customers desire and deserve, they would NOT need
>>>> to lock us in with long, expensive contracts.
>>>
>>> As long as they're giving you a $200-$300 phone for free,
>>> they're going to require that you guarantee future purchases in
>>> order to cover the cost of that phone.
>>>
>>
>>But they don't. They give you a $150 phone for free.
>
> That's like saying "I charged it, so it was free." They have signed
> to a contract that guarantees them a future revenue stream, and that
> future revenue stream has a present value.
>
>>They give you a $300
>>phone for $150 ...
>
> Assuming that it really cost them $300, which I doubt. Probably some
> phones are sold for close to the carriers's retail price, but almost
> certainly not all of them. If they weren't making money on the
> process, they'd stop doing it.
>
>

Except that it gives them a healthy loss to write off every quarter for
equipment subsudies.And I'll gurantee that neither the IRS or SEC woudl
allow them to either make up or artificially inflate that number.