[saden1]

The early termination fee is a device designed to lock you up and take away a consumers ability to walk away from poor service. I think doing away with it would be good for competition and I would assume companies would compete for customers more aggressively since consumers will be able to move at will...as is the pool of customers one can attract is limited at any given time but if you do away with early termination fees you're looking at a pool of 100% of your competition's customer base.

As for their argument that hardware prices will increase, so what? These guys have done the math and I guarantee you that the two year contract is more profitable for them than a full priced phone.