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Why Everyone Should Hate Cellphone Carriers
The Byelorrusian Spamtrap writes "Wired Magazine's made its position clear on the state of play in America's cellular industry, delivering a long, satisfying screed on why all of us should stop complaining and do something about it. 'They own politicians - Sure, it's just phones. In a world where worse things happen all the time amid the muck and despair of human existence, having to pay for premium text is hardly worth worrying about, is it? You can (and should) opt out, and not sign on the dotted line to begin with. But today's cell towers might be tomorrow's Pony Express: they're TV stations, internet access, emergency 911 and news networks all rolled into one. WWAN could well end up supplanting copper sooner than anyone expects: do you want these companies in charge of it?'"
Yeah, I think cell phone companies in America suck. What am I supposed to do about it? The author suggests not owning a phone at all. Well, I guess I would do that if I could get a land line. But wait, those are owned by the same companies. The only alternative is phone service through a cable/satellite company, but those companies are just as corrupt and dreadful as the cell phone companies (and in a lot of cases worse). Hell, the state of broadband in America is 100x worse than the state of cell phones, and there is literally nothing we can do about that. Cutting yourself off from the phone companies (a lesser evil) just bolsters cable/satellite companies (a greater evil). The only real solution is some sort of uprising. First senator that gets the ball rolling on fixing broadband (making it comparable to the rest of the world) gets my write-in vote for president.
To answer myself: according to the Wikipedia entry "The Pony Express had grossed $90,000 and lost $200,000" and they lasted a year and a few months. And the owners were able to sell the assets to Wells Fargo mainly on the name recognition, so it wasn't a complete bust.
Yeah, the cellular providers all totally suck ass, I must agree. However, what can we possibly do about it? Nothing, because the alternatives are worse than putting up with it.
Many/most of us require telephone communication. I for one can't simply go without telephone service, if I want to have a decent relationship with my wife and relatives, and if I want to be able to function in society and business and my job. When I finally ditched the landline back around 2002, I was paying about as much for a crappy landline from Qwest with no features as I did for a cellphone. Somehow I doubt this has changed much. I might be able to save a little money by getting a landline from Cox cable (since I already have internet service from them, after all), but then I'd miss out on the versatility that I and so many others have grown accustommed to with cellphones; it'd be a real pain to be out of contact while driving or shopping, in the lab where I work, etc. The few extra dollars per month for cell service is worth it to me.
Am I jealous that people in other countries get far better and freer cellular service than me, for much less money? Sure! But there just aren't any alternatives here.
Until something else comes along that offers a real alternative, I don't see the point in saying "we should do something about it", because we can't. Cellular service isn't like writing open-source software: it requires not just phones, but a network consisting of central offices, antenna towers, fiber-optic lines, and billions of dollars worth of equipment and infrastructure. The cellular providers are just following the Golden Rule: "he who has the gold makes the rules", and our stupid government isn't bothering to regulate them to prevent them from acting so poorly.
Maybe eventually some brilliant quantum physicist will come up with a way for us to all communicate using "subspace" or whatever, so with the proper equipment we can just establish point-to-point communications with whomever we please, with no need for any infrastructure or middle-man like these cellular providers, and no worries about having to share limited spectrum. But until then, or until some other alternative is found, or until our government steps in and regulates them (yeah right), we're stuck.
I fully expect that these companies will wind up "in charge" of it by fiat if nothing else. It's only a matter of time. Like the article said, these companies own Congress. Well, Congress makes laws that govern "interstate commerce" (which the courts have interpreted as shorthand for, basically, any damned thing they please), so Congress can, and will, do the equivalent of declaring them as being the sole carriers for this stuff if the competition keeps them from taking that role otherwise.
Didn't you get the memo about what fascism is really all about?
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Some of the reasons that people hate cell phone companies have to do with the abusive service contracts which are difficult or impossible to get out of. One way to avoid this is to buy a GSM cell phone with a US SIM chip. This has a side advantage that you can easily use the phone overseas by buying a SIM chip for the country you're visiting. You buy prepaid cards for these phones. Calling is a little more expensive, but you don't have a contract to deal with. There is also much less information about you as a cell phone user, since the only way to track you back to your phone is through the company you bought it from.
In theory if more people used GSM phones and phone cards, there would be more competition since the cell providers can't lock you in to a contract. This is, by the way, the situation in Europe where GSM is the standard.
The REAL question we should be asking is why are none of the companies willing to step up and offer better, cheaper plans? In a free market, we would have the same plans (if not better) as the Europeans do. Businesses undercut each other in a free market in order to steal customers. So why are no cell phone companies doing this? Don't we have laws that are supposed to prevent companies from banding together to screw the consumer? I was under the assumption that price-fixing was against the law (and is clearly what's going on; the cell phone companies have agreed to offer minimal features for similar prices, so everyone gets part of the pie without any real competition)
You say that as if there is any other kind of corporation. Seriously, if you were to opt out of the services of every corporation that has politicians in it's pocket you would be so alienated from society as to be unable to affect any change with-in society. To put it in concrete terms, how are you going to have a house without a bank account? How are you going to have a job without any telephone number? How are you going to vote when you are an unemployed homeless person?
Corruption is one of the prices we pay for having such a large society. Even if all corporations and government entities had wonderful transparency there would be an unfeasible amount of oversight needed to prevent corruption. Here is an excerpt from an article that explains "Why big things fail":
So preventing corruption in our international mega-corps and our global military and our world police government is about as likely as finding a Humpback Whale with no barnacles. It's never going to happen because we are too big to find and reach all of the parasites.
Our best chance at lowering corruption and improving the average citizen's voice in government would be to break up our behemoth government by transferring most of the budget and power to the individual States. But with that transition we would be sacrificing our superpower status and the Federal level players wil never willingly let that happen.
We are all just people.
Bah, I've been an advocate of "sharing the love" for a long time.
Buy a Broadband connection, then put a WIFI router on your main router's DMZ and let the folks know that service might be intermittent, but they can hit that router for (or negotiate a group rate with friends and neighbors, you maintain the power bill and the hardware and keep the big public WIFI router on a DMZ, etc.)
If every neighbor in the area with broadband provides a WIFI network (I even put up a SQUID cache server in the old days) you can actually provide "municipal" wifi without needing the government to get involved.
If you get to KNOW your neighbors before letting them have the WIFI WPA access key, then you can truly "secure" your network by knowing, A, who's logged in, and B, whom it is that you're sharing your data with.
And technically, you can do whatever you damn please with the connection, especially if you run a cache server to keep things clear. Discussing other features (such as data retention policy or lack thereof, etc, will help keep things honest...) I have known of NO endeavors ever done by big corporations (child of government) or the government itself that has EVER been honest, whether here in North America, or anywhere else.
To believe that gov'co ever does ANYTHING without having ulterior motives, is to be starkly and childishly naive.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
I wish i had a mod point for you. I have this view as well, I wish we limited terms as well but that'd be a much more active stance on the issue. This may not work anyways if the party leadership was too powerful - or should I have said "since the party leadership is too powerful."
"but money is the God of Algiers & Mahomet their prophet." - Rich. O'Bryen June 8th 1786
The main problem is that empires are backed by industrial power. Waging war requires a lot of goods. While the United States economy still produces a lot of military equipment (bullets & bombs, cruise missiles, airplanes & helicopters, etc), production of other goods required to support the economy has shifted over the past 30+ years to other countries: Japan, Mexico, Taiwan, China, etc. The trade deficit has risen concurrently with the shift to offshore production. Trade is fine, as long as it's a two-way street. As it is, the U.S. has been freeloading for a generation, and the piper always gets his due.
This was fine as long as Japan/et al could use their surplus dollars to buy Crude Oil. But now more and more oil-producing countries are accepting (and preferring) Euros/Yen/etc for their product, and are divesting themselves of their dollar holdings. See Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hitman on how the Feral Government enlisted the Saudi royal family's help in establishing the Petro-Dollar, to help finance their push for Empire. (Saudis bought U.S. Treasuries with all the excess dollars they had).
There was a recession from March-November of 2001. It was caused by Bill Clinton's dismantling of the economy via NAFTA, and the dot-com bubble. Instead of having an orderly restructuring of the economy, GWB, Alan Greenspan and the U.S. Congress worked together to blow an even bigger bubble in the nation's housing markets.
Anyways, the housing market has now 'popped', and it's all downhill for the Empire from here on out. This is a good thing, as the Feral Government's Perpetual War sucks money from the middle class and redistributes it to Wall Street and the Military-Industrial Complex.
Not to imply that the Neoconvicts aren't still a loose cannon. I guess Darth Cheney is gaga over nuking Iran - see Esquire's recent piece, The Secret History of the Impending War with Iran That the White House Doesn't Want You to Know. If Cheney/et al are successful in turning their 'wet dream' into reality, it'll just be that much more Karma that We The People will have to meet, and the depression will be that much worse ('cause China/Russia are fully capable of bitchslapping our now-hollow economy).
Save America: Help Ron Paul, he's our only hope. As the economy tanks over the course of the coming year, Ron Paul's support will continue to grow, while the rest of the Republicrat candidates will have to buy their support one vote at a time.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
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