How can mobile phone operators afford to give away free handsets on upgrades?
They recoop the cost of the phone (which is only a few dollars less than what you see as the retail price) usually after about 6 months of service on phones and 10 months on data devices. Some companies do put in fees to help reccop the cost. As for it is free to use cell minutes this is not true. Think about it the company has to pay for the service people and worker to contruct and maintain the towers plus any soft ware upgrades to keep the service up to date. Add to that if you are pulling off another companies tower then your provider has to pay the other company for the minutes used on thier tower. This is usually why you may not see your roaming charges right away because the other provider has up to 60 days to present the bill to your provider. This is why they use contracts and have disconnection fees because if they didn’t then you would have to pay the retail price for the phones. Due to the fact they wouldn’t be able to recoop the loss of giving the discount on the phone.
