Settling for less

If you had a choice between hamburger or filet mignon, which do you choose? (If you're a vegetarian, neither, but that's not the point.) When it comes down to ordinary versus best, you should want best. Then why is it that the U.S. consumer lies down and takes substandard cellphone service, while the rest of the world has handsets that can pretty much make breakfast? And the argument that carriers come up with to keep the shackles around the ankles of the consumer are utterly weak. The system is weighted toward the carriers, with subsidzed phones that lag well behind the rest of the world. The solution in Belgium works for me: keep the phones unlocked, allow users to by a SIM card, and then leave to buy whatever phone they choose. They may not be to get a government together, but they've gotten the cellphone process right.