how to get out of cell phone contract

New York Times has something useful for a change (instead of the usual voice of sophisticated skeptical squinty-eyed oh-really *snarky mode*)– Getting Out of a 2-Year Cellphone Contract Alive:

All of the companies allow a contract to be signed over to someone else. So a number of entrepreneurs have created a new online business in trading those contracts. The best known are Celltradeusa.com and Cellswapper.com. For a fee, $20 at Celltradeusa and $15 at Cellswapper, these companies will match a contract holder to a buyer. The contract buyers pay no fee, providing them a way to save on a phone and on activation fees.

In most of the rest of the world, the competitive free market economy thrives just fine, without locked phones and without 2-year contracts charging you a stiff penalty to cancel. In the midst of globalization, you’d think American companies would embrace free market competition that itself supposedly invented.