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Why Japan Leads the Mobile World
Phurge writes "It is no wonder that companies touting m-commerce as the next big web thing tell us Japan is the future blueprint. The Guardian takes a look at the cutting edge and everyday life of cell phone users in Japan. 'By offering the Japanese a multiplicity of services — and, very importantly, some very cool handsets to use them on — the operators have created what every western mobile service provider is dreaming of: a mobile lifestyle culture that keeps millions reaching for the mobile rather than the fixed internet ... What they are less keen on is video calling: in Japan, as in the UK, 90% say "no thanks, never". And as for using the mobile as a modem - to link to the internet - that's very expensive in Japan.'"
Please do not propagate this bold-faced lie of the North American telecom oligopolies.
If this were true, the major cities of the US and Canada, which have (in some areas) large numbers of relatively affluent individuals congregated in densities to rival Japan, would enjoy similiar levels of service in those areas, while the poor service would be restricted to the outlying areas. This of course is not the case because the true reason for the abysmal state of affairs in North America is the lack of any sort of meaningful competition between entrenched pigopolies, who instead of being prosecuted by local governmental officials on anti-trust crusades, are backed by government, complete with handouts for "Fiber to every home!" initiatives (in 1990's) to the tune of many billions of dollars, for which no one seems to be able to account today. This, naturally, being due to the larger problem of wholesale corruption of government by large business in our corner of the world.
What really gets my goat is that these con-artists have so little respect for their "customers" ("marks" is more like it) and the general public that they would even try such an audacious lie, which requires the victim to have near zero of even most rudamentary analytical skills or even most basic knowledge of geography.
Sure. That is why I pointed out that there are significant areas where the population density, wealth of the populace and the demand are very comparable to Japan, and yet the supply is nearly non existant and prices exorbitant. Similar (if not stronger, due to market being ill served) demand forming conditions, very different market results. So factors other then "populatiobn density" are at work in an overriding role. I (and just about anyone who spent 5 minutes looking into this) know exactly what these other factors are: lack of competition.
Huh?! In anything resembling a "free" market existed -- free of kleptocratic oligopolies that is -- there would be dozens of small, specialist communication vendors catering to dense population areas but not the rural ones, and vice versa, cooperating with each other via sane public standards set and enforced with an iron fist by regulatory bodies, thus ensuring that a downtown customer of a vendor in a large city has no trouble communicating with a farm-dweller in a rural area served by a completely different, local company. Different markets require different vendors to serve them. A "well organized giant ass telecom" is not a solution to any of these problems. In fact its size and the incestous intermingling of its portfolio of greed, arrogance, archaic, proprietary, incompatible technologies with protective, corrupted governmental bureaucracies, which the "telecoms" usualy represent, is the very core of the problem.
See above. You got it backwards. It is because that is an (apparently effecive) boldfaced lie, the useless corporate pigs automatically use it.