The End of ‘It Depends’
Techcrunch has a profile of a cool new startup called BillShrink. BillShrink initially will tell you if you are on the right cellphone plan by crawling and analyzing your account information.
Cellphones are perhaps a weird vertical to start with because of the long contract times and the inability to monetize a change of plans within the same carrier (not sure if carriers would credit an affiliate with an existing customer) but it’s a great service for consumers nonetheless.
There are whole research companies built on top of that same idea. So perhaps the aggregate data can be used to make money.
What I find most exciting is that it is the end of the ‘it depends’ or ‘get quotes from a trusted salesperson’.
in the UK they’re starting to push 30 day mobile contracts, a bit like broadband did a year ago - so maybe it will be a matter of switching often like you now do with electricity companies, dvd rental, credit cards