Phone subsidies have completely disappeared in the United States. Phone companies will finance your phone over 24-30 months but you can cancel the contract (and the interest free financing) at any time.
It's sort of interesting that, if you had told people 5+ years ago that phone subsidies were going away, a lot of them would have predicted a lot of doom and gloom for Apple and other smartphone makers. In fact, I bet if you looked around, you could probably find articles and reports to that effect.