[kbenson]

The last few years I've not been offered a contract, but the ability to finance the phone. An inversion of the prior contract model, it's more what you expect. There are separate fees for the service, and for the monthly payment for the phone. After X number of months (choosable on purchase, affects per-month phone payment), the phone is paid off and is no longer part of the bill. It's much more straightforward and easy to reason about, and you don't have to immediately try to upgrade when your contract is up so you don't feel like you're paying for more than you're getting.

[pjmlp]

That is the old model we had with pre-paid in Portugal back when mobile phones were introduced, however they were locked to the provider and it was a fight to get them unlocked at the end of the leasing time.

Eventually our version of FCC got around making it easy to complain if an operator would make someone's life hard regarding unlocking.