re: Phone Companies Are Colluding To Keep Service Plans High

Where do you get your info on cheap airline tickets? I live in TN and would like to review weekly or monthly cheap airfares out of BNA(Nashville)

No one should be paying $100+ per line unless you are using a ridiculous amount of data. I have a data share plan and have my wife, mom, and brother on the plan. We share 15 GBs per month. We each pay $40 total per line per month. That's a damn good deal IMO

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A free market is a market economy system in which the prices for goods and services are set freely by consent between vendors and consumers, in which the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government, price-setting monopoly, or other authority.

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The problem is that in the US the wireless market is not a true free market. Major carriers control everything because they have all the money to buy up the premium available wireless spectrum the government through the FCC controls and licenses out on the market for commercial use.

The US Government has tried to open spectrum licenses to the little guys, but lobbying efforts by the major carriers usually limits any of that from truly opening up the market on premium spectrum.

The little guys are usually buying up space on the major carriers spectrum (because the Feds require the major carriers to do it) or using less than ideal frequencies, but that extra cost or less than ideal spectrum generally results in limited service or higher costs.

AT&T have had a monopoly on the business forever,if you are a cell provider you will have to go through their system at some point

The collusion is in the bottom threshold that the majors agree to in the 'big boy' meetings. Someone at the very top (or several) are in communication with others who are in equal very high up positions in their organization. Meetings are not documented and are not public record. Guidelines and verbal agreements for the industry are set forth in these meetings.

I have worked in upper management in two sizeable industries and knew of these 'pricing agreement' meetings due to my close relations with the people from my company who attended. Executives from my group and executives from several other competitors would coincidentally have fishing trips booked in Costa Rica over the same week. Upon return , our pricing 'understanding' for the quarter was communicated. There was always a low price threshold.

Gas stations are typically independently owned and the dynamic of lowering to stay competitive with the guy across the street is much different than what takes place between large corporations competing in the same industry. A better example would be the deals made by the refinery executives who sell the gas to the owners. The end user (consumer) is impacted to a far greater degree by their agreements than the .10 price per gallon cuts that station owners use to get you to come into their store to buy a coke and a candy bar.