The killer here is that no other carrier appears to have followed Verizon into this swamp. While the company has answered a first round of FCC questions, many more remain. Verizon needs to strip its "other costs" out of its ETF and be willing to accept mere cost-recovery on the hardware it gives customers.

Charging the $350 ETF, seems like merely a way to make extra money on those who leave early and exert a powerful financial force on all Verizon Wireless customers to remain full-term.

David Coursey has been writing about technology products and companies for more than 25 years. He tweets as and may be via his Web site.