Here we go again with the invisible ink and the fine print. The wireless industry simply refuses to play it straight with the people paying the bills. Nearly 36,000 Verizon wireline and retail workers went on strike this week after contract negotiations broke down. As confirmed by customer service documentation, Verizon has pulled wireless store employees and management to cover network maintenance. This severe labor disruption threatens to degrade customer service quality and delay critical backend infrastructure upgrades indefinitely.
Stepping back to analyze the broader market context, 2016 is proving to be an absolutely defining year for telecom infrastructure. The looming, capital-intensive shadow of 5G deployment is forcing all major carriers to aggressively hoard cash, which inevitably trickles down to impact consumer pricing models. They need billions of dollars for the next-generation hardware rollout, and the absolute easiest place to find that capital is by slightly tweaking the profit margins on current, widely-adopted LTE plans.
I genuinely despise the phrase 'up to' in wireless advertising. It gives them a blank, legally binding check to underdeliver on their promises. When they tell you that you are getting 'up to' prioritized high-speed data, what they actually mean is they reserve the absolute right to slow your connection to an unusable crawl the second the local cell tower gets a little crowded during rush hour.
Another massive factor at play here is the aggressive consolidation of the global media landscape. As traditional cable television continues to hemorrhage lucrative subscribers to the cord-cutting movement, AT&T and Verizon are desperately attempting to acquire content delivery platforms. By merging basic wireless access with exclusive video content, they are deliberately building walled gardens highly reminiscent of the early AOL days.
Let’s strip away the corporate jargon for a second. The wireless industry relies heavily on consumer exhaustion. They intentionally make these promotional structures so mathematically dense and confusing that you eventually just give up and sign the digital tablet in the retail store just to make the process stop. They know exactly what they are doing.
So, what does this mean for your bottom line? Call the retention department immediately. If you have been with your provider for more than two years, you hold the leverage. Tell them you are porting your number out to a competitor offering a better rate, and watch what unadvertised loyalty plans magically appear on their screen.
At the end of the day, your single best defense against industry nonsense is a genuine willingness to walk away and port your phone number somewhere else.