The customer would receive a phone for well less than its full retail value in exchange for committing to the carrier for a certain period of time . Some, if not all, of the cost of the phone would be rolled into the monthly fees the customer paid, but he or she got a new device on the cheap and the company locked the user into Now, however, the day of subsidies may be coming to an end, as all the major phone carriers are offering cheaper service plans for customers willing to finance their phone or pay for it outright up front.