Ryan Daniels | Dialing back

Picture this: It’s been almost two years since you got your last cellphone, and you’re dying to get a new one.

It feels like all your friends have a newer version than you do, and their small modifications really seem to matter. On top of this, your phone is definitely not running as quickly as it used to — you just know it! You’re beginning to feel outdated, maybe a little uncool.

But, despair not! Your cellular plan is about to expire, meaning you’ll be awarded an uplifting upgrade. And the timing couldn’t be better: The next “point-o” just came out, and it has everything you didn’t know you needed.

This might seem a little exaggerated to the less tech-crazed (read: more reasonable) readers, but the average American gets a new phone every 22 months. Isn’t that a little crazy?

It’s not totally our fault as buyers — the big guys seem to be the bad guys here. All the major cellphone carriers and manufacturers have timed their contract expirations and product releases perfectly.

The way contracts are structured leads to us spending way more than we realize. And it’s up to us — the disenfranchised enfranchisers — to do something about it.

I’m not on a wireless witch-hunt, but there’s some serious unfairness here. Let’s break this down starting with the carriers.

Last spring, annoyed at AT&T’s and Verizon’s Goliath-sized market share, T-Mobile loaded its slingshot with a radical move. It introduced new deals that illustrated the sneaky way major carriers sell us cells — a scheme that would bolster their profits while incentivizing frequent phone replacement.

It turns out that carriers heavily subsidize our new phones and make these subsidies back by stealthily sticking stiff fees into our monthly bills. It’s almost like buying a new car, where you provide a down payment and then gradually repay the dealership in installments.

It’s why you’d pay $650 upfront for an iPhone without a contract, but only $200 for an iPhone with one. Most people sort of realized this, and it was no big deal.

However, we didn’t realize that once you’ve paid back the carrier in full for the cost of the subsidy, which is after about 14 months, they continue to hide these fees in your monthly bill.

And it’s pretty serendipitous that these subsidy-backed upgrades — usually ripening every two years — overlap with the announcements of new products. Even though groundbreaking innovations have slowed recently, contractual incentives have probably propped up the stubbornly high demand for new releases.

In fact, AT&T and Verizon recently announced programs that give users a new cellphone every year, which basically entails you renting a phone. They hit you with gargantuan monthly charges that end up costing as much as buying the phone outright.

On top of all this is the conspiracy of planned obsolescence: the deliberate attempt to limit the life of a product so that consumers will need to replace it. A lot of evidence seems to show that even the most intelligent smartphones aren’t built to last. After — you guessed it — two years, batteries stop holding charges and processors grind to a maddening halt.

These various puzzle pieces align perfectly to ensure that we pay tons to swap out our phones at a ridiculous rate. But even more ridiculous is our willingness to go along with it.

This is a system where the carriers and manufacturers enjoy concentrated benefits at the diffuse cost of the public. While normally the remedy is governmental regulation, heightened awareness in our obsessive consumption could also do the trick.

If we parsed precisely over how much a new phone would truly cost us, we’d demand better, more resilient devices and increased innovation. We would spend more time enjoying one phone, and only dole out large sums of cash for real improvements, not just a snappy new camera.

Our demand for phones would look more like our demand for, say, computers. Carriers and firms alike would be forced to stop scheming, remove hidden fees and produce more worthwhile devices.

As much as we’re obsessed with getting a shiny new phone, do we really need to buy a new one so frequently? Let’s read the fine print a little better and clutch our wallets a little tighter.

Ryan Daniels is a College senior from Philadelphia. Email him at ryanjdaniels1@gmail.com. “Daniels, Straight Up” appears every Wednesday.

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