With Edge, Verizon announced their own early upgrades scheme


Here's how it works: Choose the phone you want and sign up for a month-to-month service plan, it's as easy as that. The full retail price of the phone will be divided over 24 months and you'll pay the first month at the time of purchase. If you want to upgrade after 6 months, just pay off 50% of the full retail price of the phone and you can choose a new phone and start all over again.

There are no long-term service contracts, finance charges or upgrade fees with Verizon Edge. Every six months, as long as 50 percent of the cost of the phone has been paid, you can upgrade to the newest basic or smartphone available.

The good news here is now all three major US carriers are offering greater flexibility. The bad news is this may not be a good deal for everyone.

The rub is the whole subsidy-contract thing is kind of screw job to begin with. Carriers entice customers with expensive devices for cheap, and then lock them in service contracts. Until consumers are willing to pay full retail for devices, things are going to be hinky and at least slightly tilted in favor of the carriers. Any system they design is guaranteed to make them profits, otherwise someone is going to get fired. Until then, consumers will want their cake and eat it too. That is, cheap devices with early upgrade and no big fees -- all that will just be built into monthly plans and trade-ins.

As a side note, is AT&T's crappiest mobile data system the best branding here?