contract

Contrary to what T-Mobile is promising, there are actually some strings to its new wireless service plans.

That's according to Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who ordered T-Mobile to change its alleged "deceptive advertising" that omits charges that consumers have to pay for leaving early.

"My office identified that T-Mobile was failing to disclose a critical component of their new plan to consumers, and we acted quickly to stop this practice and protect consumers across the country from harm," Ferguson said in a statement issued on Thursday.

Ferguson took issue with the component of … Read more

The calls for Verizon Wireless to drop the contract are getting louder.

The petition posted on Change.org calling for Verizon to kill off its contract model has garnered nearly 120,000 signatures, with 25,000 signatures added over the weekend alone.

The petition was created by Verizon customer Mike Beauchamp on April 7 after Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam told CNET on the sidelines of an event held earlier this month that he would consider moving to a no-contract model if consumers demanded it, and said the process to shift to no-contracts wouldn't be difficult.

The comments came shortly … Read more

T-Mobile Chief Marketing Officer Mike Sievert boasted that the carrier had "one of its biggest weekends in the history of the company" thanks to the launch of the iPhone on Friday.

T-Mobile on Friday launched the iPhone in its stores for the first time, finally catching up to its larger rivals, and even smaller regional carriers. Sievert told CNET that iPhone sales did better than he expected, although he declined to provide specific figures.

"We had really ambitious internal goals, and we beat them," he said.

The iPhone is important to T-Mobile in multiple ways. It … Read more

T-Mobile's decision to abolish contracts and cell phone subsidies has piqued the interest of consumers.

That's according to T-Mobile's senior vice president of marketing, Andrew Sherrard, and its executive vice president for corporate services, David Carey, who spoke to CNET today. Carey said traffic was up in all of the stores he visited after the carrier made its switch late last month and announced the changes during a high-profile event in New York.

"I have every reason to believe this momentum will continue and carry forward," he said, but conceded that it was too early … Read more

Virgin Mobile wants consumers to know that it's a major player in the no-contract wireless game too, and isn't afraid to spend a little money to show it.

Virgin set its sights directly on T-Mobile, offering $100 to T-Mobile customers willing to switch their number over and buy a smartphone before May 31.

Carriers will often provide incentives to switch, but rarely do they target a specific company. T-Mobile has made a lot of noise about its move to abolish contracts and subsidies, and Virgin Mobile, a business built on prepaid service and a unit of Sprint Nextel, … Read more

Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam cracked open the door to a full no-contract wireless world.

McAdam said it was "pretty easy" to change up the model to eliminate contracts, and added that he would watch the consumer response that T-Mobile gets from its recent decision to drop contracts and phone subsidies altogether. He indicated a willingness to follow suit if consumers start asking for it.

"I'm happy when I see something different tried," McAdam told reporters on the sidelines of an event to raise awareness for Verizon's "Powerful Answers" initiative today. "We … Read more

Imagine a world where you could take your mobile phone to any carrier you wanted.

You wouldn't be bound to a contract, and your phone would be free from technical constraints that make it impossible to use on other carriers' networks. And forget about that $700 price tag that left you wondering if you were buying a phone or a computer. In this new world order, pricing on smartphones would fall as quickly as the components inside them become commoditized, much like the prices of all consumer electronics. That means no need to cling to a service contract in … Read more

Oh, T-Mobile has gone no-contract? Yes, this is a big step for a major national carrier, but for me, it's whoop-de-doo. I've been no-contract for a year already. Plus, I have access to that big, juicy Verizon network that lets me make calls from the middle of the mountains in New Mexico. I'm a customer of Page Plus Cellular, a company that resells Verizon's data and talk-time network. I can quit anytime, with no fear of penalties.

Now that T-Mobile got all coy and dumped the contracts, it feels a bit to me like discovering a cool underground band and then having it hit the Billboard charts and hearing its best song on a McDonald's commercial. I can't really pull off a hipper-than-thou attitude about this, though. After all, I am making some sacrifices to ride the no-contract bandwagon. Here are the pros and cons as I see them. … Read more

T-Mobile shook up the wireless industry this week with the introduction of its new no-contract service plans. But is the service really a good value for consumers compared to what the other big guys are offering?

In this edition of Ask Maggie, I answer that very question. A reader wants to know if he should ditch Verizon's wireless service for T-Mobile. While some people seem to balk at the notion that wireless consumers will have to "pay"for their smartphones under these new T-Mobile plans, I do the math to explain why even buying a device at … Read more