[1] EDIT: I changed the former word "are" to "become" for clarity. What I mean, as some readers picked up and some did not, is that I expect United States mobile phone networks to get out of the business of selling mobile handsets at a heavily subsidized price (as is current practice in the United States), and thus get out of the business of needing to lock in contracts to gain revenue to cover the up-front cost of the subsidy. When handsets are sold at near full list price, the networks can charge just their network costs to customers who are free to shop with unlocked phones. The United States market is confusing in having different technical standards for basic voice phone service on different networks, but the networks are converging on similar technical standards for their data networks, so eventually most smart phone users will be able to shop for networks here.