How is cricket cell phone company able to provide unlimited minutes to the users?
Because they’re charging you a minimum of $45 a month. (Wow!) The truth is, phone systems cost very little to operate. Because they have share. All communications companies are required by US federal law to allow all the others access to their transmission systems. This is because at one time the company that eventually became AT&T had a total monopoly on telephones. Even though it was more tightly controlled by the government than other companies, as you can imagine, eventually service became quite expensive. Not only did you have to pay for the service, you also had to ‘rent’ the phone itself from AT&T, and they could ‘nickel and dime you’ for every little thing. There was some outcry over the dangerousness of this, (Imagine living in a poor rural area where even your neighbors can’t call 911.) but real change came with technology. Companies that invented car phones, fax machines, and dial-up modems began sueing AT&T to allow them access to the lines that transmited signals. In 1996,
