T-Mobile, just this year, revamped their plans and pricing models to eliminate contracts. Customers pay “full price” for the phone with a small down payment and then monthly installment payments thereafter. If you want to leave T-Mobile at any time, you’re free to go (of course you have to pay the phone off). This approach is less intimidating to customers and embraces a wonderfully newer way of thinking, as well as the speed at which the wireless industry (and related technology) is changing. If you want the latest and greatest phone, great. If you break the one you’ve got and need a replacement, no problem. If you get a new job and your employer provides you a phone, you can cancel with no penalty. If you move to an area where T-Mobile doesn’t have coverage (or overseas, even), that’s not a problem either. Under this model, you’re paying full MSRP for your device, so your carrier has no vested interest in making back that subsidy (discounted phone price they gave you up front) over the span of your contract. If anything, they’re even more incentivized to continue maintaining and improving the quality of their network to keep you as a customer, instead of relying on the fact that you’re tied into a multi-year contract which forces you to stay.