Prices Skyrocketing As Early as Next Year?????

[crazychef]

found this today.. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10173072-94.html ...

basically its about the begining of a propasl Obama is working on, where he wants to raise the fees for sprectrum license holders.. itll cost em 50million for 2009 and jump to a whopping 200+ million for 2010.. and continue to increase to 550million over the next 10 years....feel free to read at the link.. again this was loosely outlined today.. please lets keep this about the comments im about to make and ur comments about this relating to us and the networks, not about some kinda of political thing... thanks all

ok so, here my take on this.. cell companies, should this go through, will have an unexpected increase in fees imposed on them of 150 million dollars, basically instantly im sure theyll(carriers) consider it... how do u think carriers r going to respond? hopefully they fight tooth and nail to not allow this to happen... my guess is rates will go through the roof...

were already gonna feel the crunch with asurions rise, well alot of us anyways... but that our own fault as it is anyways... but carriers wont just start shelling out that kinda money without finding a way to incur some, most, or maybe even all of that new added expense on US... i think we all know some sort of ridiculous rate hike wouldnt be above our lovely(yeah right) corprate carriers moral standards...

if this goes through, which i hope it doesnt, one would think a cricket,metro, and these smaller companies wouldnt be able to afford such an increase in fees and would hence go under due to it..

i would definitely expect a huge rate increase if this makes it through... follow this one closely...

what do you guys think??

[lawmangrant]

If something like this were to happen, you could bet your bottom on the fact that the entire cost, plus a "convience fee" would be pased right along to us.

Don't want to get political on this board, so I will stop there.

[gadgetfreak]

Get used to it. These kind of things are going to effect all industries eventually. We are going to be paying a lot more for service.

[schettj]

The total number of cell phone users in the U.S. grew 14 percent year-on-year to 207.9 million as of the end of 2005, a figure representing 69 percent of the U.S. population, the group said in a survey studying the U.S. mobile phone market.

So if the fee is 500 million total, and we evenly divide the .2 billion people across all 4 carriers, that would work out to about $10/year per person. Round up, call it $1/mo.

The sky is NOT falling.

[meatgel]

This is just one more "backdoor" tax. You put the word fee on it, pass it to a corporation then the corp passes it to the customer.

There will be more of this to come, I'm sure.

[demonlordoftheround]

Well at this point it is only a proposal.

[Noir]

something verizon has been doing a lot (tax tax tax)
so I'm used to it from them...problem is are you paying a tax for excellent service? Verizon has been subpar for me lately so...yeah

[chris06]

I could see our monthly rates going up anywhere from $8-$11 a year which is less than a $1/month. Its kinda like those "charges" and "fees" you see on your bill... then if u think of all the carriers in the country besides (att, t-mo, sprint, and vzw) like metropcs, cricket, and all of the other smaller carriers in the u.s that offer service, the fees shouldnt be anything to worry about

[neodorian]

Originally Posted by chris06

I could see our monthly rates going up anywhere from $8-$11 a year which is less than a $1/month. Its kinda like those "charges" and "fees" you see on your bill... then if u think of all the carriers in the country besides (att, t-mo, sprint, and vzw) like metropcs, cricket, and all of the other smaller carriers in the u.s that offer service, the fees shouldnt be anything to worry about

Thank you. Taxes always suck to pay but (not to get too political) as long as we have wars, schools, roads, bridges, cops, agencies, etc. to pay for, there will be taxes. A lot of this tax money is going to infrastructure improvements that will benefit the country as a whole when they spur development of better information and energy infrastructure. Sucks but it's true. Some things can only be done collectively with any success and the way we do that is by everyone sharing the cost.

When I get annoyed with my taxes, I try to remember that paying them is like paying dues to be a member of a great country club. Someone has to pay for that pool and that waitstaff and those groundskeepers, etc. If everyone had to individually pay for these things, the cost would be much greater.

[schettj]

Originally Posted by meatgel

There will be more of this to come, I'm sure.

Well, we were going to have to pay for those two wars some day. Just because you don't disclose the cost doesn't make 'em free.

And yes, we are in a deep hole. Much money will need to be poured back in. Unlikely those that took the money out are the ones that will put it back.

Isn't democracy fun?