AT&T Tightens Stranglehold on North American Wireless Market

I owe Sprint $200. I canceled my monthly contract with them based on poor cellular service, poor customer service and the fact that they have a tear in their corporate colon that's leaking money all over the place. In fact, in their first quarter alone, Sprint posted losses of $505 million and 1 million monthly-contracted customers.

If I was good at math, I'd make a really cool, applicable comparison like, "That's three billion Big Mac value meals!" But I'm not, so I won't.

Meanwhile, both AT&T and Verizon—the big dogs of this lead-fisted battle to implant tumors in our busybody minds—gained at least 1 million customers each.

Not enough? Yesterday's announcement of the Blackberry Bold 9000 (which sounds like a Terminator) as an exclusive offering for AT&T subscribers should definitely strike fear in the hearts of those who don't have that whirlygig blue sliced-up world on their monthly bills.

Now the battle between iPhones and Blackberries has dissipated into the question: when, exactly, are you joining AT&T?

And all that boils down to: when, exactly, is somebody gonna get all "anti-trust" and "unfair competition" on AT&T's ass?

It sounds a bit idiotic coming from someone who just admitted he switched carriers, but I have a festering problem with AT&T's stranglehold on all the tech goodies I hold dear. In fact, I have a problem with the basic principle of releasing heavily-marketed drool-inducing hardware to a singular (pun intended) company and thereby squashing the hopes of dreams of people who, unlike me, aren't willing to brazenly toss aside 200 smackers for the opportunity to blog on the go (oh, and make phone calls, I guess).

Now let me put this to you, Bionic Homotronic Commandos: are you skipping out on your previous carrier so you can dry-hump the Bold or the iPhone? Or are you (possibly) foolishly holding onto the pipe dream that our Congress will step in, slap the shit out of AT&T's wrist and once again open the markets?