Cell phone bills fell 50% in last ten years

The big get bigger. A new report on the cell phone industry from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) opens with the line, "The biggest changes in the wireless industry since 2000 have been consolidation among wireless carriers and increased use of wireless services by consumers." Both parts of that sentence are significant; though only four players dominate 90 percent of the US wireless market, consumers have seen serious benefits over the last decade. Even as the industry consolidated, making it "more difficult for small and regional carriers to be competitive," prices dropped and coverage rose. It might not feel like that when you pay your wireless bill, but the GAO concludes that (when inflation is factored into the equation) 2008 prices were only half of what they had been in 1999.