At least they were up front about the fact you were renting it. If it broke they replaced/repaired it.

So many folks don't seem to have remember this. IBM was also the same with the giant mainframes. Even now, if you have a power system, it's pretty much mandatory to pay an ongoing "service agreement" or very quickly you'll discover you have major issues.

I hate that the system has it where you don't own anything and you are supposed to be happy with it. But from a market perspective what else can they do? They need to make a regular income to pay for the development and such, but they also need to deal with the fact that a competitor who offers a freemium or product at a loss but where they can at some point in the future hide future costs will just naturally win.

Also, you didnt use to own your mobile phone number.

In the US, at least, it literally took an act of Congress for customers to be allowed to port their numbers between wireless providers.

Nobody would willingly give up their moat.

See California and the Colorado River.

> In the before times there were phones owned by AT&T attached to landlines in every home and business. Attaching your own phone and repairing the phone company's were not allowed.

The difference is, culturally that didn't go too well with people so hating in MaBell was a thing. Enough so that it forced politicians to enforce anti-trust laws and break it up, eliminating all these restrictions.

I fear there is no political backbone today to do anything to the monopolists that own the hardware we "buy" from them.