Nah, thats just because you rent your smartphones over there instead of just buying them.
Not sure what this means. I own my phone, don't have a contract. All the phones my company owns, they own. It's the carrier that charges (on average) $30 a month to activate wireless hotspot functionality over their networks. There used to be apps/hacks to get around this (and it was free, before they realized they could start charging), but carriers have tightened down on it the past couple years. Might still be do-able with jailbroken devices or pirate roms, etc., dunno.
