Consider buying an unlocked smartphone online

Wireless carriers have glommed onto a marketing scheme that offers several options for buying a mobile phone: Pay for it up front; make no down payment and pay off the device in monthly installments; or get the phone for a low price in return for committing to a two-year contract. Why? Because they can’t charge you twice for the phone. When you make a down payment, the remaining price of the phone is spread over the life of the contract — which means it’s in your monthly bill. Besides price, the big advantage of buying a Blu or Huawei phone online is that it will come unlocked, which means it won’t tie you to a particular carrier. Most Huawei phones will work on any U.S. network, while Blu will work on AT&T and T-Mobile, the two U.S. carriers that use the GSM wireless protocol. [...] it won’t even recognize the content on the hard drive. Each TV service provider uses its own proprietary file format to record video, and those videos can be played only on DVRs from the provider. IMHO (Internet-speak for “in my humble opinion”), the government should regulate the TV industry better and force providers to use standardized technology (just as wireless carriers should be forced to sell unlocked phones, which I mention as a carryover from my opening-item rant).