Amazon Is in Talks To Offer Free Mobile Service To US Prime Members (bloomberg.com) 49
Amazon has been talking with wireless carriers about offering low-cost or possibly free nationwide mobile phone service to Prime subscribers, Bloomberg News reported Friday, citing people familiar with the situation. From a report: The company is negotiating with Verizon, T-Mobile US and Dish Network to get the lowest possible wholesale prices. That would let it offer Prime members wireless plans for $10 a month or possibly for free and bolster loyalty among its biggest spending customers, the people said, who requested anonymity to discuss a private matter. The talks have been going on for six to eight weeks and have also included AT&T at times, but the plan may take several more months to launch and could be scrapped, one person said.
What will the priority be? (Score:3)
If it's full-blown Verizon or AT&T, that would be good. But if it's merely just buying their excess capacity at a lower priority that native customers, meh.
Re:What will the priority be? (Score:4, Insightful)
If it's full-blown Verizon or AT&T, that would be good. But if it's merely just buying their excess capacity at a lower priority that native customers, meh.
Your cellular service, is being offered by the world's most infamous online bookstore. Who also owns Thursday night American Football. It's also the place you get your car parts from. Next to the bulk toilet paper and dildos.
Amazon already knows you don't care where products and services come from. Even performance won't matter if the price is right. Pretending otherwise? Meh.
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Probably not.. Your call records are CPNI -- which is actually regulated very strictly for mainly historic reasons (Because phone companies misusing call records became a privacy issue about 90 years ago, back when the government was actually still concerned about protecting consumers from big monopolies. See 47 CFR Part 64 Subpart U [ecfr.gov]
(b) A telecommunications carrier may not use, disclose, or permit access to CPNI to market to a customer service offerings that are within a category of service to whic
Re: What will the priority be? (Score:2)
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It says nothing about accessing the data myself. I sort of have to in order to flag suspicious international fraud calling
Oh, That's not a counterexample... providers are simply allowed to use the data to operate the network and bill for services. That does NOT mean they can legally take any of the Call records and expose the data/fail to ensure its confidentiality, or use it for general business purposes such as marketing different categories of products other than the customer subscribes to. The r
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That's all it will be. Just like Xfinity has phone service which is provided through Verizon at a lower price but has lower priority.
I like Prime but.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I like Prime because it really does make shopping easy when you don't have to consider the shipping costs / time much. I rather like Prime video generally because Amazon does have a good deal of decent content that is still "free" to access. Its also makes it easy to temporarily add other subscripts etc, without having to deal with separate payment setup and app installs etc. Its easy to turn that stuff on and off.
However I really would not want tie something like my mobile up in some bundle.. If Amazon starts doing (more) things that I oppose either socially or that ruin the value proposition of my membership I want to be able to to vote with my feet. As it stands I can easily shop somewhere else, and TV is just TV I am not going really suffer because I miss out on some Star Trek. The worse that I really lose on is some months of prime subscription costs that are already paid.
Chaining mobile providers even with number porting though would be a PITA, as 'essential' as that really is to me, I'd rather pay more for it that allow it to be conflated with other offerings such that I am stuck upending my entire commercial life all at once.
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Get a SIP line as your primary phone number and treat your cell service merely as a fungible data broker.
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Well that is true - if you don't mind everyone you call seeing 'possible spam' while you ring in. I tried something like that a few years ago, because I really want to protect my *real* number from most eyes and it was not very successful.
here's how to have privacy without spam calls (Score:2)
Well that is true - if you don't mind everyone you call seeing 'possible spam' while you ring in. I tried something like that a few years ago, because I really want to protect my *real* number from most eyes and it was not very successful.
My setup is as the GP describes. I hate giving out my cellphone number, plus in Europe I have no use for a $erious monthly plan. I prefer to treat my cellphone numbers like passwords that can be changed at will. Here's how I do it.
First acquaint yourself with nerdvittles.com. I recommend this recipe for consideration above the other listed on the website: https://nerdvittles.com/the-5-... [nerdvittles.com]. You'll need to configure your incoming/outgoing routes, and set it up with someone like Skyetel.com, who I recommend as
Re: I like Prime but.. (Score:2)
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>
Chaining mobile providers even with number porting though would be a PITA, as 'essential' as that really is to me, I'd rather pay more for it that allow it to be conflated with other offerings such that I am stuck upending my entire commercial life all at once.
Changing mobile providers is incredibly easy nowadays if you have a modern phone that supports ESIM. I did it at christmas, and it was 5-10 minutes. Total time. I went on my current providers website and got a transfer pin, went to the new provider website and signed up for service, got a text message on my phone with a link to click for autoconfiguration -done.
Monopoly Scrutiny (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Monopoly Scrutiny (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh no! What will happen to them? Will they . . . have to face a committee? Get a slap on the wrist fine with a big fancy write-up? Be talked to sternly by people they'll share steak and lobster with while sipping champagne?
The FTC will do what it always does with these matters now. Talk a big game, strut around like a pre-teen that just had his first kiss, and act like they're really givin' 'em what for, then do nothing once the bribe check clears.
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I don't even think it would get that far. They would start their investigation, which would suddenly be delayed while the 2024 election is gearing up, because the FTC doesn't want to piss off their possibly new boss. If Biden is re-elected, then we may see what you said in 2025. If he is not, then we'll see nothing at all (unless it's Trump, in which case we'll see fire and brimstone because of his vendetta with Jeff Bezos even though Bezos isn't in charge any more).
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FTC is toothless for at least another 4 years.
Re: Monopoly Scrutiny (Score:2)
I should hope so. The more you bundle the less leverage you have when they stop behaving well. I dropped Prime because they stopped being reliable in delivering my packages.. I like Prime Video a little too much so I dawdled in cancelling, which cost me a refund.
Fuck bundling. It's not a cost savings, it's submission but at least you get a perk.
Service Quality is key (Score:3)
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No one is going to make you use this. It is called competition. You, as a consumer, get to pick the offering that best meets your needs. Competition is good. The more competitors there are in a market, the lower pricing will be for everyone. You should be supporting this because it will put downward price pressure on your existing carrier even if you don't switch.
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Mobile plans are $10 in the rest of the world, why are they $30-40/mth in the USA? We have the highest cellular prices in the world for a major country. Telecommunications is subject to Moore's Law and prices should be dropping. Personal services and the computer industry are not subject to the same economic forces. On the other hand, I am not convinced the transition to 5G was a good move. It is not clear to me if the capital spent on 5G is going to have a decent payoff.
If you can figure out a way to get
Re: Service Quality is key (Score:2)
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I remember having a $10 cell plan, 30 minutes calling/receiving, 30 cents extra per SMS message. Now I'm really happy to have a $25 plan (pay as you go) with unlimited calling and SMS and even 512 MB of data at 3G speeds, 2Mb/s IIRC. Prices are Canadian., phones cost extra too
Is that really cheaper then what you can get in America? Or do you actually get perhaps 10 GB of data for that price.
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you have to ask yourself how much can they lump into prime until they can abuse you and you just take the abuse because too many eggs are in their basket to go rocking it.
This is a real concern. When I sold online, Amazon was 60+% of our business, eBay 25%, and the remaining ~15% was other online channels including direct sales. They were nearly 100% of our international sales. When Amazon altered the deal, we prayed they did not alter it further. They did, repeatedly. Eventually we closed because we could not profitably sell with the amount of fees Amazon charged for access to their customers -and they had all of the customers.
I am still a prime member. There is far to
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Shit, if they manage to create an MVNO that uses the two towers closest to my house (Verizon, but not apparently included in other VZ MVNOs) then I'd switch in a moment. But I'm not going to pay Verizon's ransom for their "tier-1" network - the only difference is if I need to step onto my driveway in order to get a connection when my internet or power is out.
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Best deal would be a MVNO unifying all three -- Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. GoogleFi for the masses.
All for this (Score:2)
What I'd like to see... First it needs to deal with families. What about a family with five lines? Id like to see up to five or six lines with free voice/text but no data. For data then each line could pay $20 for unlimited, or have a per GB fee that caps at $25/mth. If it is one line per Prime account, this isn't going to work. Almost all Prime accounts are used by multiple people. Initially all international access would be paid.
I have been advocating that Amazon should have done this years ago. Then it
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I don't think you need to suggest $20 a month for data. It used to be that data add on with T-mobile was $10 and they did just fine.
Remember, this is Amazon. If they get to see your data as it goes past, they could probably do it for free, zero rating.
Let's see what it really looks like.
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What I'd like to see... First it needs to deal with families. What about a family with five lines?
I need exactly the opposite. The big-three have all gone balls-deep on the family plan, multi-line shit, to the point of single-line customers getting left out of promos and offers. I finally said screw it and switched to the PAYG offshoots - same shitty service and lack of any perks, but 20-30% cheaper.
If they pull this off, and it's not a shitty priority-9 clusterfuck, it might be worth staying with Prime when my subscription comes up to renewal.
Microsoft tried that (Score:2)
They offered a web browser for free with their OS to kill the leading for-pay web browser of the time, Netscape Navigator. And Microsoft almost got their ass Sherman'ed into several pieces over that, because that was a pure monopolistic move on their part. The only thing that saved them was the new republican administration, that got them to make silly promises they never kept.
I really hope Amazon tries to offer free mobile services: it's high time they got broken up, and maybe this will prompt the US antit
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They offered a web browser for free with their OS to kill the leading for-pay web browser of the time, Netscape Navigator. And Microsoft almost got their ass Sherman'ed into several pieces over that, because that was a pure monopolistic move on their part. The only thing that saved them was the new republican administration, that got them to make silly promises they never kept.
What are you talking about? They totally followed through on handing free computers to several school districts thus indoctrinating a new generation to their OS and equating "computer" to "Windows" for those young folks.
I really hope Amazon tries to offer free mobile services: it's high time they got broken up, and maybe this will prompt the US antitrust legislator to act at last.
You should take that act on the road. That's hilarious. Broken up. Ha!
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One of the funny things that happened as a result of Explorer was when Netscape released their "internet in a box" dev. kits to ISP's so they could distribute CD's with installers, one of the first "Fine Print" details said something like, "this product is free for now. but if Microsoft stops offering a free browser, we'll start charging for it."
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Another thing that saved MS was Steve Jobs's return to Apple and the deal he struck. $100,000,000 purchase of (non-voting) stock for X years and the continued development of Microsoft Office on Mac OS.
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You comment makes no sense. Amazon does not have a monopoly on retail. It isn't even the largest retailed in the USA, that's Walmart.
They aren't the largest retailer, and they won't be the largest phone network -- so how could it be anti-trust?
Paywall... (Score:1)
Why the hell would you link to a paywalled source? I mean, I know nobody actually reads the articles, but it would be nice to at least have the option...
"Running Late" (Score:5, Funny)
"We're sorry that your call has been delayed. It is now expected June 3, or June 4. If you do not receive it by June 4, you may request a complete refund."
That's what was missing from the fire phone (Score:2)
Just imagine a fire phone coupled with this, and perhaps a sprinkle of google Fi (being able to dynasmically choose the best between two carriers).
But hindsight is 20/20 ... so
Plot of Kingsman - Samuel L. Bezos (Score:2)
Wasn't free phone service from a tech billionaire the plot of Kingsman: The Secret Service? Is Samuel L. Bezos perhaps trying to solve the problem of climate change via a worldwide killing spree.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2... [imdb.com]
beware the future (Score:2)
How will this work? If it means that my Prime membership will give me a discount on my existing Verizon service, that would be great.
If it means I now have to buy my cell service from Amazon, that would be bad. Two bad things can happen:
1. Amazon says "we are discontinuing this service." Now you have a problem much like your landlord saying "Sorry, I'm selling the house you live in."
2. I might decide that paying $200 a year for Prime is a bridge too far. Then I have to start with all the nonsense of f
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Amazon says "we are discontinuing this service." Now you have a problem much like your landlord saying "Sorry, I'm selling the house you live in."
Except switching phone providers might take a total of an hour, if you spend a lot of time researching your options. The difficulty involved is nothing like the difficulty involved in moving to a new home.
I might decide that paying $200 a year for Prime is a bridge too far.
Prime is $140 a year, not $200. $180 if you insist on paying monthly (but then why are you quoting a yearly price?)
Right now I only pay about $25/month per phone from Verizon. Hard to see how this would benefit me.
Probably it wouldn't. I'm not very interested in it either.
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Prime membership cost:
2005: $79
2014: $99 (+$20 after 9 years)
2018: $119 (+$20 after 4 years)
2022: $139 (+$20 after 4 years)
Not unreasonable to think that if you buy the theoretical MVNO service this year, Prime could hit $200 by the end of the decade. Sub growth in the U.S. has probably plateaued (I canceled mine last year with the price increase and devaluation of Prime Music) so the only option going forward is price hikes. Have to pay for that Thursday Night Football and cell service somehow...
No such thing as "free" (Score:2)
This is just another, perhaps shinier instance of the shell game represented by things like "loyalty cards". The bottom line is that all such programs cost the companies money.
The companies will ALWAYS recover those expenses - through higher prices across the board, higher prices for the people who don't cave in and subscribe, increased "membership" prices, and/or possibly a dozen other ways.
There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Corporations do their best to keep us fighting amongst ourselves for these
Data collection (Score:2)