Not quite. You have bought your phone effectively with a loan. It's not rented, it's bought with a loan and you're paying that loan back in monthly fees. You can't give the phone back and receive the part of the loan you paid, so it must be your phone. Leasing is just a special kind of loaning money, where you're loaned money for the sole purpose of purchasing a given product by the same merchant that sells you that product. If the telecom expects that you will use the phone only on their network, they can trivially add a "minimum monthly charge" so they'll cover the cost of the phone regardless. In fact, I believe all of them already do it.

As a country with an economy built around loans (i.e. credit cards and so on), making things bought on credit not really yours seems insane.

No, the carrier does not "own your phone"--they're taking a risk that you'll abide by the contract.

Even if you get out of your contract early, you have to pay a termination fee, which is effectively the remaining part of your carrier subsidy. AT&T is going to get their money one way or another.

Also, going to Europe for 2 weeks doesn't mean you stopped paying your AT&T bill for those weeks, either. It's perfectly reasonable to expect your phone to not be carrier locked.

I wasn't clear. I didn't mean the carrier literally owns your phone. I prefixed with "I believe" intending to convey how it seems to work, not the technical fact. I should have written, "It's as though the carrier owns your phone".

But the technical fact is all that matters. What you "believe" is irrelevant.

I believe Jason's point is that you're still paying off the phone subsidy. Nothing's changed, as far as that's concerned.

You may be avoiding exorbitant surcharges, such as roaming fees.

Well... why are those surcharges so exorbitant?

Pay through the arse. Or toss another disposable phone into a landfill. People are starting to think that "some law" doesn't necessarily make it "right".