This guide addresses cellular carriers' roles and marketing strategies and comments on Sprint's content distribution strategy. Is anyone else bothered by Sprint/Nextel's monthly service fees for content? While, I mainly comment on GSM providers in my reviews and guides. Periodically, I check out Verizon and Sprint to evaluate CDMA providers. Of late, it's Sprint and its "Power Vision" EVDO network marketing of third-party content providers. Not only does Sprint want its customers to shell out a goodly sum for monthly voice minutes. The carrier wants an additional $15 to $25 per month--more than my BlackBerry data plan with T-Mobile--for "access" to its EVDO broadband network. While I'm impressed with EVDO broadband performance, access to basic content--local weather, national and international news--is accessible via Cingular or T-Mobile on multiple websites at no additional charge if you have a data plan. With Sprint, you must pay extra monthly service fees ranging from $1.99 on up. If a Sprint customer opted in for even a smathering of Sprint's offerings, your cellular bill would exceed the sum of cable/satellite TV plus your gas, water and utility bills. Sprint probably justifies this cellular gouging as a reasonable attempt to offer streaming video, audio and web content. But there's no end in site to the madness. Sprint marketing materials read like a cable or satellite providers's channel line-up. "Visit channel 32 for streaming videos from Austrailia." What has happened to Sprint as a cellular PROVIDER--a company that offers connectivity to Internet sites and their content? Does Sprint truly believe that its customers will contribute to Sprint/Nextel's profitability by offering full-length TV shows or movies streamed to your 2" X 2" small screen? It's bad enough to attempt reading 3 point type from a website compressed on a small screen. But if you're like me, I'd rather watch a movie or TV show on my HD television screen--not getting reading glasses to view short snippets of Web content. Truly, Sprint has become a distributor of mobile content through its content partners. Unlike Google or Yahoo, however, that deliver extensive content paid through its advertisers, Sprint would rather charge content providers to access its customers, then charge subscribers (pardon me, "users) as well. Is this double-dipping? I think so. In all fairness, Verizon, Cingular and T-Mobile take a similar approach; it's only a matter of overkill with Sprint. The latest offering from Sprint is "free email delivery" with true PUSH technology. What a novel idea. Sprint fails to tell us early on, however about the required text messaging package you need to push emails to your phone (yes, that's ONE instant message for each email). Sprint offers a $0 cost service that Flurry.com initiated some time ago (see www.flurry.com for details). Sprint's contribution to our "mobile experience" is acting as a content aggregator--similar to RSS feeds on many websites. Sprint's message is: "Let us bring you mobile content that's easy to find and use and we'll only charge you $3.95 a month." Well, if it was only $3.95 per month, I'd applaud Sprint for its innovation. But it's $2.95 for the Weather Channel and $4.95 for something else. Or...get this...$2 a month to keep your contact listngs in sync on its web server in case you drop your Power Vision phone in the toilet. Sorry, but this cellular user rejects Sprint's nickel-and-dime strategy. I'll stick wtih responsible mobile providers delivering a strong signal with great voice quality, few network distruptions and a decently priced data plan delivering useful and fairly priced content.