November 17, 2009
Posted by Josh Levy

This weekend, the New York Times’ Saul Hansell wrote a piece that could have been written by AT&T’s PR department.

Combine some quotes from wireless industry execs and analysts with a couple of “gee whiz!” quotes from an economist and what do you get? An article that does its darndest to convince us that the wireless companies are giving us a good deal.

Yeah, right.

Hansell tells us that while Americans have higher wireless bills than consumers in any other country, it’s because we talk and text more!

Hansell then goes on to sell us on the deal we’re supposedly getting:

For people who want to surf the Web on their phones, wireless companies are willing to sell them iPhones, BlackBerrys and other sleek gadgets for hundreds of dollars less than they cost. The catch, of course, is that customers need to pay $30 or so extra each month for Internet access.

Actually, we have no idea what these smartphones cost, because the carriers never disclose that information — they’re just selling them for hundreds less than the artificially inflated retail price (according to Consumers Union, the average phone subsidy for consumers is a mere $14.33).

There are other catches, too, including two-year contracts and $350 early-termination fees that extract more from the customer than the subsidy is actually worth. But Hansell would have us overlook these pesky details.

So how exactly are we getting a good deal when wireless companies are finding more and more ways to make us pay through the nose? Hansell doesn’t know. In his struggle to find any semblance of balance in an article written from the carriers’ perspective, he just keeps pointing out how confusing these contracts are.

Hansell’s arguments only make sense in the upside-down world where the public’s voice is oddly absent. As Boing Boing’s Rob Beschizza put it, “Hansell’s repeated evocation of ‘confusion’ is reminiscent of when characters in novels continually ask what’s going on, or when they wake up in white rooms: it’s because the writer himself doesn’t know.” Not to worry, Hansell, you’re not the only one who’s confused; we all walked away scratching our heads after reading this one.

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