Heck, why not give them one of those offshore phone scam numbers - the one where a call costs al lot per call or minute - and let the telemarketers fight it out.
On the subject of no jobs for dot.com peeps, we have 7 openings in my group (growth), and almost 30 for our department. We cant even find the right people to fill the jobs, it seems hard to find any unix/dba/network specialist or someone with a little experience who would pick it up. We hired one person who started 2 ISP's from scratch and sold them off before the boom, a very rare find. The local head hunters run out of people with any marketable skills quickly
If you can't find people, you're probably not offering enough money.
1. Each country wants to protect its incumbent carriers, which it does through tax and regulatory schemes designed to keep competitors out
This is absolutely not true. This would be illegal under EU law. Besides which, there are many multinational carriers like Vodafone (who I think own Verizon now), Deutsch Telekom, and KPN/Orange.
Look at the varying tax schemes for cell calls across Europe - the effect of that is to make it very difficult for carriers to enact flat rate pricing across Europe. Just figuring out how to price and what the usage pattern might be is enough to keep companies form doing it since they can't be sure of the potential profit and may wind up with large losses. That not only protects the incumbents, it also helps maintain the national phone company market share for international calls, since flat rates Europe wide would put pressure on them to offer similar plans or risk losing profitable long distance calls to cell providors.
And the last time I checked, just because something violates EU law or directives doesn't stop countries from doing it.
The EU's competitition office (I forget quite what it's called) recently raided several carriers in the UK and Germany to gather evidence about anti-competitive behaviour in the setting of roaming call charges.
It's not the companies, but the governments that protect companies by enacting rules.
2. Europeans are used to POTS per minute (or click) charges and companies see that as more profitable or are simply too short sighted to try something bold
In the UK at least, few calling plans have different rates for local and national calls, and generally they include some number of minutes of these. I have yet to hear of flat-rate pricing of international calls anywhere.
We have that in the US - I can get a plan that includes calls to and from Canada in my minute total w/o long distance. As a side note, given that the US and Europe are roughly the same size, my US wide flat rate calls would be the equivalent to being able to call throughout Europe at one flat rate. Ever wonder why that hasn't happened, even with one standard for phones?
I guess I'm not a proper European citizen; I require a boat, plane, or tunnel to get to the mainland. However, I know plenty of British people who think nothing of driving over to France for a day or so (usually to buy cheaper liquor), and they'll certainly take their phones with them then and when they go on a longer European holiday. Roaming is definitely common. Some people avoid the call charges by using text messages instead while roaming (which are also over-priced, but no so much).
Britain has generally considered itself a "separate" part of Europe, at least if you believe the Sun et. al.
The cheap liquor is one example of how country's tax policies help local businesses to the detriment of competitors.
My question to you is why should Europeans have to worry about roaming charges, especially since we Americans have shown that there is no real reason to charge them.
The marginal cost of providing 500 minutes vs 200 is negligible, so rather than compete on price, companies compete on the number of minutes they provide for a fixed fee.
But how come I can get 200 (off-peak) minutes a month for around £12 ($17) here when I'd be lucky to get anything for that price in the US?
Actually, you can get plans for close to that, but that's not the point. Phone companies exist t o generate revenue, and they should price to maximize total profit. Given there costs are not significantly different if the give 200 or 500 minutes, the question becomes what generates more profit, a 200 and 500 minute plan, or a higher priced 500 minute one? You have two types of 200 minute customers:
Those that won't buy a $50 plan, and those that will even if they only use 200 minutes.
If you offer a $20 200 minute plan, the customers paying $50 will migrate to the $20 plan, which means you have to pick up 2-3 additional customers for every one that moves down to keep the same profit levels. My guess is that the phone companies feel they won't get the additional customers, so they don't lower prices. An added benefit is that lessens the chance of expensive price cutting to get customers.
As for pre-paid services, that is a very different model, because of the ease with which consumers can switch carriers (I can get a phone for around $10 - $20 after rebates, with a bargain rate of.75 cents/minute for calls, which means the phone cost is not the major cost to use the service)
That's a bad model. Here the carriers have realised that it's lunacy to subsidise pre-paid phones. Even in the US, Cingular certainly wasn't doing this when I used their service. While working in the US I got a pre-paid SIM (not a new phone) from them which cost me $50 including only $10 of calls! Then they charged me up to 50 cents a minute to make and receive calls.
In short, they gouge you because they know you're not likely to be a long term customer.
It doesn't happen this way in the UK. I think the US cellular companies have a bad attitude towards their customers.
First of all, you really aren't a customer if you buy prepaid services, because they realize you won't hang around. In that case, it's best to get every last possible penny up front, since there is little chance of you providing any significant downstream revenue. It's like buying a phone card - you get screwed because there is no long-term relationship - its simply transactional.
As a side note, you can get extra minutes instead of a rebate - which is a good deal for the carrier because those minutes cost them a lot less than the rebate would. And they offer a rebate instead of a discount because they know many people simply never send in the rebate form.
Cingular certainly doesn't make an extra subscription charge for its GSM customers to roam overseas. However, call charges during international roaming can be very steep. Perhaps non-GSM operators make a charge because they have to make special provisions to enable such roaming whereas it's designed into GSM and can be set up on-demand.
You're right, it's not the roaming charges but the long distance call fees that kill you. In the US, I use my cell phone more than my POTS - because I know that I won't get hit with hugh long distance fees (except when I call Europe, but that's why I have an MCI calling card tied to my home phone). From what I've seen in Europe, roaming throughout europe can result in a nasty surprise when the bill comes and you get all the long distance charges. I think one of the things that has driven usage in the US, unlike other parts of the world, is flat rate pricing that makes it easy for an individual to control the cost without severely limiting usage. If soem enterprising company offered flat rate servcie EU wide, I bet they'd grab a lot of market share. My guess why that hasn't happened is:
1. Each country wants to protect its incumbent carriers, which it does through tax and regulatory schemes designed to keep competitors out;
2. Europeans are used to POTS per minute (or click) charges and companies see that as more profitable or are simply too short sighted to try something bold;
3. Europeans are not as mobile as Americans, i.e. a five hour car trip is no big deal here, but to many of my European friends that is a major road trip. I realize I'm generalizing (and not trying to start a flame war, as I have lived and traveled regularly in Europe, although in my defense my swiss friends thought me nuts when I would drive from Zurich to Genf just to have a cup of coffee and walk around the lake, and I confirmed that suspicion when I drove to Berlin for a 4 day weekend.), but my conclusion is that they are willing to put up with the occasional long distance charge since they don't regularly roam outside of their home area.
Monthly subscriptions in the US are still comparatively expensive - you can get huge numbers of minutes for about $50 a month, but if you only want say 200 minutes then you're still stuck paying around $30 a month. (These are rough figures from memory.) Pre-paid service is fairly expensive too.
That's a function of the economics of providing service. Cell phone service providers are not capacity constrained, so they don't have to build more infrastructure to handle more calls. The marginal cost of providing 500 minutes vs 200 is negligible, so rather than compete on price, companies compete on the number of minutes they provide for a fixed fee. They also know that most people probably don't use all their minutes anyway, so connection costs and roaming fees for those that travel don't increase linearly as you go from 200 to 500 minutes. This lets them stablize their revenue by not getting into costly discounting wars as well as maintain their margins. Fortunately for the carriers, most of the players have realized that it's to their benefit to play the game this way, and avoid starting the costly rate wars that we've seen with airlines.
As for pre-paid services, that is a very different model, because of the ease with which consumers can switch carriers (I can get a phone for around $10 - $20 after rebates, with a bargain rate of.75 cents/minute for calls, which means the phone cost is not the major cost to use the service). Unlike the typical one year contract, they don't have a known income stream, unlike contract services where they have you for a year and know that many people won't switch later simply because of the hassle of letting everyone know your new number. Users probably are either people, such as parents that want to control cell phone costs but still ensure their kids have a phone in an emergency or to call home from college, or those that can't qualify for a contract plan. By offering low card costs, even at high per minute rates, they make it cheap to get into a phone (the high tech version of the 10$ down, 10$ a month for the next ten years to rent to buy a $200 TV) and get aas much money as possible in as hort of a time as possible, since the costs for you to switch are low. In short, they gouge you because they know you're not likely to be a long term customer.
We don't - in the US I can go into Canada and call from my cell phone quite nicely - as well as from anywhere in the US (except for the odd location without any signal), all for one low rate. My coverage is about the same in terms of area as Europe - and I don't have to worry about roaming fees.
Personally, I doubt there is that big of a market for universal, global cell phone service. You can, after all, mimic that today with 2 phones - and if you want one number, ATT offers their Worldphone plan. If universla servcie was that important, Nokia/Samsung/Ericson et. al. would offer a multi-mode phone, similar to the tri-bands in the US today.
Cell phone use in the US took off as companies offered more airtime for the same price, and removed roaming fees. As was pointed out, in Europe, POTS is sometimes as expensive (especially with per minute charges)and/or hard to get as new service. Unless a carrier offers universal service as a no cost add-on (i.e. I only pay for minutes when I use them, not a fee to be able to call from anywhere wether I do or not), I'd guess most peopel would opt not to have the option - which means tehre si little incentive to build a network in the US design to allow universal access.
Well, for starters, companies don't get personal and dependent deductions. If a family of four gets to tax deduct their first $35K of income, are they really going to care that they don't have a separate deduction for their health insurance and mortgage? Like I said, with the Flat Tax, there's no social engineering. And it ends the massive tax discrimination against renters.
Actually, there's still social engineering, you've just changed the goals. For example, you now shift much of the tax burden to individuals directly, rather than hiding it in higher costs of goods. You also now value corporate spending more than individual, because you give them deductions you deny individuals. Companies get expenses and capital deductions, which individuals do not. In fact, they lose the biggest capital deduction they have - the home mortgage. You've created a two tier system that now discriminates greatly against individuals.
Companies are just tax collectors, btw. Their customers pay their taxes. It's just easier for politicians to tax an abstract accounting construct than a flesh-and-blood individual. All the same, having the same 17% rate for individuals and corporations minimizes the risks of accounting trickery.
Sure, but I decide by my purchasing power which taxes to pay. All a flat tax will do is change the accounting trickery to accomplish the same thing we do today - minimize our tax burden. As an individual, I'd be looking at ways to create a corporate shell to hide revenue and maximize expenses. And if you don't think companies will get special provisons that create new types of 'expenses" and "capital expenditures" passed by Congress, I'd ask why do you think 200+ years of political chicanery will disappear overnight? More importantly, why do you think anyone in Congress would support it if they didn't think they could still serve "their" special interests?
All it does is shift deductions to corporations (who still get itemized expense deductions)from the individual (who'll now see medical benefits, parking, etc as taxable income). For example, Why should a car be deductable to a company if it buys it to move peopel and generate income, but not to an individual who uses it to generate income as well (to commute)?
All teh falt tax will do is cause people to dream up new ways to reclassify income as an expense (such as incorporating and being a firm of one, perhaps. Why should a company get expense carry forward, but an individual gets one flat deduction, and if his/her income is less, no carry forward.
All a flat tax is is a new way for "Big Brother" to decide who benefits from the tax code.
2) Surviving on little to no income while the company gets off the ground. Even without dependents, just paying for housing is a bitch, and geeks tend to congregate in territories with the looniest real estate valuations. (In the Midwest, that means my home city of Ann Arbor, Michigan, home of the University of Michigan, with housing valuations second only to Chicago.) The reason valuations are so high is that the Federal Mortgage Interest Deduction encourages real estate inflation, and the average voter is too stupid to realize that giving up their precious deductions (aka social engineering) and switching to the Flat Income Tax [flattax.gov] plan would leave them at least as well off. Local zoning regs that make high-density development impossible do the rest (thus why we have yuppie lofts in renovated decrepit downtown buildings
renting for $big bucks rather than highrises).
Ah, the Flattax, which gives breaks to companies (deductablity of expenses) and denies that to individuals. An individual expenses (housing, education aka human capital, car, etc.) are not deductable, despite them being used in teh exact same matter as a company's, i.e. produce revenue aka income.
Of course, what is income for a Flattax - will my company's (deductable to them) purchase of a car for my use be income to me? How about housing they provide? Maybe I'd be better of becoming Me, Inc. and selling my product to a company to produce revenue, from which I deduct my expense (house, car, commute, etc.) Or, my company provides those things and I take a lower salaray (income0 to reduce my tax while providing my employeer with deductions (expenses).
You also forgot one definition:
Objectivist - someone who wants teh government out of their busienss, until a better competitor comes along and beats them, at which point they run to big brother (aka government) and cry foul and whine until it steps in (aka Microsoft vs everyone).
Usually, ISP contracts include language to the effect: "$ISP may terminate your service at any time, with or without cause." And because "without cause" is acceptable, it's perfectly OK for them to say "You can no longer use this service now that we've discovered you're $ethnicity."
Actually, while you can write virtually anything into a contract, it's up to the courts to decide what is enforcable (some things are automatically non-enforcable), and in many cases, what a clause really means. For , example, what is unsolicited email? If you pull my email address off a post and send me an (on-topic) comment, does that count? What if I say please post all replies? What if you mistype an address - should your ISP be able to terminate you?
And yes, in a libertarian utopia, companies that are draconian would eventually go out of business, but that ignores the very real search costs to customers to identify the bad ones and to replace them as they are discovered.
Unfortunately, until enough suits are decided, and appealed, much of this area will be unclear. As much as I hate lawsuits, they do serve to clarify and codify the law, so ISP and spammers know the limits.
Given the adoption of "Linux" as teh official name by the popular press, there's no chance GNU/Linux will ever catch on, except for a few diehards. By cementing Linux in the minds of ordinary users, the press has basically constrained GNU as answer to Computer Bowl trivia. Adding GNU/ to the front of Linux in ads, articles, and press releases would only confuse most users, since the new name would make them think somebody has added something new to Linux, not just changed the name.
You don't like the license on a DVD? Don't buy it.
Don't like closed source software? Don't buy it.
You have a choice - you either buy or don't buy someone's product. If enough people buy it, that person makes money. If too few do, he or she goes out of business. Taking away that choice will just result in other ways for basic economics to regulate the market.
No matter what RMS says or does, the basic economic principles that drive commerce will not change. Those that have tried failed.
Ok, I'm confused. What happened to the GPL and the requirement to distribute teh soruce? Has Sony developed proprietary run time libraries, independent of Linux, to let Linux programs run on the PS2?
Scrounging is a time honored tradition in the DOD. I was a submariner, and our motto was "If it fits down the hatch, it's ours. If we can't use it, we might be able to trade it for something we need." We had stuff stored away in every nook and cranny, and you never knew when something would come in handy.
You should have seen our nuclear grade stainless steel joystick attached to an Apple II.
ObProliferation - we had to inventory our reactor core once a quarter, and our commanding officer had to sign the ineventory to verify it was still in our possesion.
option 1 puts you afoul of securities laws. Just because you are not a company "insider" doesn't mena you can't be guilty of trading on inside information.
Re:Joy of Sex...er...Linux!
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Joy of Linux
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Well, the cover is a takeoff of the "Joy of Sex" cover.
Of course, there isn't a chapter on the pleasure of being a lone Linux user, or the pleasure to be had from networking 2 or more Linux "boxes" together in various ways. And the original Joy had pictures, not cartoons like in volume 2.
ICBMs (or more correctly S(ubmarine) LBMs, which is what I'm most familar with) guidance systems fixed their position by monitoring certain stars (similar to celestial navigation on the earth). The actual warhead was ballistic, but the delivery platform needs a navigation system to know where it is so it can hit its targets.
Actaully, accurate targeting is probably less of an issue. I'd guess such a weapon system would be designed to strike large, fixed targets (missile bases, ports, rail yards - whose position you can accurately fix) with enough destructive power that a few dozen feet one way or the other wouldn't matter.
You could probably adapt the star sight system used by ICBMs and fire a ballaistic trajectory to a target. Then you can fix your position relative to the target and calculate the trajectory.
Accuracy is relative, after all how far can you run if the shock wave takes an extra minute to reach you?
Of course, know you have to develop something to quickly shoot down aircraft at 300k feet.
Neat idea, but my machine lets me select a boot drive by holding down the shift key during boot-up. I get a little pop-up that lets me select from all the installed drives. My MB/BIOS is nothing new or fancy, in fact it's just a cheap Biostar MB. I'd guess this feature isn't that common?
Look at the bright side, Congress may no nothing about peer to peer networks, be clueless about open source, but when it comes to sex, they have quite a collection of experts, on both sides of the aisle. It's about time they put all that collective experience chasing interns, cheating on their spouses and getting a little on the side to good use.
What happened was actually much more complex than waht th emedia syas (surprise, surprise).
CA decided to remove the monopoly on production, but maintained it on distribution and transmission, and required the plant owners to sell the plants. In exchange for getting back their total investment (via a bond deal), the utilities agreed to cap prices until the bonds were paid off(that's a simplification, but OK for this discussion). They also were required to meet all demand, even if prices went above what they were getting.
Utilities were also prohibited from entering into long term power purchase contracts - which would give them price stability. The CA legislature mandated spot purchases, thinking (can we say that about politicians?) that spot prices (i.e. what it costs right now) would drop.
What happened was CA demand kept rising, but no new plants or transmission lines were built. CA is really like two islands - North and South, with small interties (bridges, so to speak) to bring in power. So you have limited capacity in state, limited ability to bring in power, and no price incentive for consumers to lower use. Instead of supply and demand, you had artifically low prices, and utilities that were required to buy at whatever price and sell at a lower one. The suppliers ramped up prices to meet demand, and the utilities were left holding the bag.
Actually, market forces worked - once the utilities started running out of money, scarcity (brownouts) replaced price to keep demand in line with supply.
Interestingly enough, the very politicians that touted their deregulation scheme as the greatest thing since, well, cheap electricity ran as far and as fast from it as possible. Even the "Father of CA deregulation" was demanding a paternity test to prove he wasn't really the father.
Sure, to a certain extent every service/product comes down to price. But that price musn't necessarily be cheap.
I give you an example: One of my vices are cigars, preferrably (but not necessary) Cuban cigars, which are readily available in most European countries. Not cheap, mind you, but worth the price.
I'm not a big cigar smoker, but I think Cubans are a bit overrated, in the US at least. I agree that the "you can't get it so it must be good factor" tends to inflate prices. I'd just a soon have a top of the line non-Cuban and a fine glass of Port.
It seems to be worth it in Europe. Roaming and SMS are probably the biggest cash cows for the phone companies. As with every product the price is a sensitive issue and they try to make it as high, that it generates nice profits, but not that high, that people don't roam. After all, the infrastructure and the (exorbitant expensive) billing systems are in place anyhow. So in essence, a call not made is lost revenue to them (at least until the network is saturated).
I wasn't very clear - I'm surprised that Europe doesn't have the equivalent of the US' no roam plans - you're still paying roaming fees throughout Europe?
Actually, I'm not all that surprised - even in the EU, each country has done a pretty good job of protecting its companies. It's not a bad deal for the companies, either, given the amount of cross border travel in Europe. It's another example how regulation ultimately benefits the regulated. Each countries carriers want to protect their home markets and get money from raoming. There is , after all no technical reason why a carrier couldn't establish a pan Euopean network - either by buying carriers or buying space on non-carrier owned infrastructure. Alternatively, they could also get agreements with other carriers to offset roaming use. Of course, that stil leaves the issue of how to collect taxes in each country unsolved.
In Europe, it appears that consumers don't get all the benefits a single GSM standard can provide.
Changing tower output could even let carriers cross borders without investing in a country - such as happened in northern Italy and Slovenia (if I rememebr correctly, that is the former Yugoslav country that borders northern Italy-Southern Tyrolia) Italians were getting inter-Italy calls via a neighboring country. Pissed off the Italian carriers.
As for SMS, the Blackberry is very popular here, and personally, I think it's a better form factor for messaging than a phone. I've sent exactly one email on my phone, an dits easier to use my Palm and a modem at the airport than sending stuff from the phone.
Also, European hotels are learning a painful lesson: Nobody (at least not European business travellers) use their phones anymore. Why should they ? They have a GSM phone, which is cheaper, mobile and as reliable as a hotel phone, so why would you want to get ripped off ?
We do that here too - I use my cell phone (unless its to an 800 number), especially since I pay a monthly flat rate rather than per minute.
SO it's not really interoperablity that people want, but cheap interoperablity
You're implying here and you are dead wrong. (alas I can only speak for myself)
Roaming is expensive, but since I travel a lot and depend on this feature, it's well worth the price and I'm willing to pay for it.
If however a company tries to extort me, they'll lose my business and I sure as hell find alternatives.
Still - it comes down to price. Calling Switzerland is not worth $2.50/minute to you, as you stated in your phonecard example. For you, the European roaming costs are worthwhile. Personally, I don't understand why you can't have a plan like I have in the US - less than 10cents/minute, no roaming fees in the US.
If you *really* valued roaming you would be much less price sensitive - but you only value it up to a certain price. It's probably simply not worth the phone companies effort to try to offer true international roaming, since they either would not make enough money off of it to cover the cost or they can make more from customers by selling them other long distance services.
Quite frankly, the phone company has you over a barrel - if you had a US phone number, you could get a calling card that gives you the same rates as does a normal landline call. There is no incentive for a phone company to cut rates for people who operate on a transactional basis (i.e. need the service but aren't a potential customer for other services, such as home/business long disatnce), and since they can identify them by phone card use, they can and do) charge alot for the service. It's like the hotels in Europe with their phone surcharges (which US hotels are starting to do as well)- they're betting the business traveler will want the privacy of an in-room phone instead of going to the PTT.
In theory, you are. I never bother with cell phones, when in the US, since prices are OUTRAGEOUS. In Europe, depending on the country, I pay between 40 and 90 cents for outgoing calls and 20-30 cents for incoming calls per minute.
All US Carriers with roaming agreements charge 1$ for incoming and 2-3.50$ for outgoing calls, per minute. I'm much better served with a 10$ phone card, since public phones are plentyful and it's dirt cheap. SO it's not really interoperablity that people want, but cheap interoperablity. Nextel offer(ed) a phon ethat worked in the US and Europe - I haven't seen them advertise it recently, so I guess it never really caught on. My guess is pricing was what hurt it - people are used to cheap service in their home countries, an dbalk at the rates they pay overseas. Until a few companies become truely global providers, I doubt you'll see cheap global servcie, even if we have one 3G standard, since each carrier wants to make money on the service and has to cover billing costs, verification of service or allow for fraudulent use.
Roaming is one area where our market has an advantage - I can call from anywhere in the US to anywhere in the US, with no roaming charges. It's all included in my monthly minutes. The only problem I've ever had is in rural Georgia, where I can call anywhere in the US but can't call to Europe. It turns out a few of the third tier carriers can't (!) handle international calls, because they can't figure out how to bill my carrier.
Just because a free market results in solutions that everyone doesn't think are optimal does not mean the market has failed. It just means the market is still sorting things out - and some CDMA advocates would probably argue 3G CDMA is better and will be rolled out quicker than GSM could/would in the US. If that turns out to be true, then a government mandated GSM would rule out a better long term option.
Just for a historical note, GSM is in use in the US, so you should be able to use your phone here in teh (few) areas that have GSM service.
I'm not real familar with Euopean cell phones (other than using one when I'm there, but I don't pay the bill nor do I roam) - do you pay a flat rate fro calls anywhere in europe - i.e. if I have a Portuguese provider does it cost m ethe same if I call from/to Lisbon or Berlin?
Interestingly enough, at the dawn of the electrical era we had multiple vendors and competing formats (AC vs DC). The utilities asked for government regulation (i.e. local monopoly) in order to provide efficient, standardized service.
ps: regarding "standardizing in over all of europe is a no-brainer": i dare you to sit down an english and a frenchman and have them come up with a standard - they will probably not even agree on what they disagree on:-)
Having worked with NATO (in US and Europe) over the years, I am amazed that Europe came up with one cell phone standard.
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Heck, why not give them one of those offshore phone scam numbers - the one where a call costs al lot per call or minute - and let the telemarketers fight it out.
On the subject of no jobs for dot.com peeps, we have 7 openings in my group (growth), and almost 30 for our department. We cant even find the right people to fill the jobs, it seems hard to find any unix/dba/network specialist or someone with a little experience who would pick it up. We hired one person who started 2 ISP's from scratch and sold them off before the boom, a very rare find. The local head hunters run out of people with any marketable skills quickly
If you can't find people, you're probably not offering enough money.
1. Each country wants to protect its incumbent carriers, which it does through tax and regulatory schemes designed to keep competitors out
.75 cents/minute for calls, which means the phone cost is not the major cost to use the service)
This is absolutely not true. This would be illegal under EU law. Besides which, there are many multinational carriers like Vodafone (who I think own Verizon now), Deutsch Telekom, and KPN/Orange.
Look at the varying tax schemes for cell calls across Europe - the effect of that is to make it very difficult for carriers to enact flat rate pricing across Europe. Just figuring out how to price and what the usage pattern might be is enough to keep companies form doing it since they can't be sure of the potential profit and may wind up with large losses. That not only protects the incumbents, it also helps maintain the national phone company market share for international calls, since flat rates Europe wide would put pressure on them to offer similar plans or risk losing profitable long distance calls to cell providors.
And the last time I checked, just because something violates EU law or directives doesn't stop countries from doing it.
The EU's competitition office (I forget quite what it's called) recently raided several carriers in the UK and Germany to gather evidence about anti-competitive behaviour in the setting of roaming call charges.
It's not the companies, but the governments that protect companies by enacting rules.
2. Europeans are used to POTS per minute (or click) charges and companies see that as more profitable or are simply too short sighted to try something bold
In the UK at least, few calling plans have different rates for local and national calls, and generally they include some number of minutes of these. I have yet to hear of flat-rate pricing of international calls anywhere.
We have that in the US - I can get a plan that includes calls to and from Canada in my minute total w/o long distance. As a side note, given that the US and Europe are roughly the same size, my US wide flat rate calls would be the equivalent to being able to call throughout Europe at one flat rate. Ever wonder why that hasn't happened, even with one standard for phones?
I guess I'm not a proper European citizen; I require a boat, plane, or tunnel to get to the mainland. However, I know plenty of British people who think nothing of driving over to France for a day or so (usually to buy cheaper liquor), and they'll certainly take their phones with them then and when they go on a longer European holiday. Roaming is definitely common. Some people avoid the call charges by using text messages instead while roaming (which are also over-priced, but no so much).
Britain has generally considered itself a "separate" part of Europe, at least if you believe the Sun et. al.
The cheap liquor is one example of how country's tax policies help local businesses to the detriment of competitors.
My question to you is why should Europeans have to worry about roaming charges, especially since we Americans have shown that there is no real reason to charge them.
The marginal cost of providing 500 minutes vs 200 is negligible, so rather than compete on price, companies compete on the number of minutes they provide for a fixed fee.
But how come I can get 200 (off-peak) minutes a month for around £12 ($17) here when I'd be lucky to get anything for that price in the US?
Actually, you can get plans for close to that, but that's not the point. Phone companies exist t o generate revenue, and they should price to maximize total profit. Given there costs are not significantly different if the give 200 or 500 minutes, the question becomes what generates more profit, a 200 and 500 minute plan, or a higher priced 500 minute one? You have two types of 200 minute customers:
Those that won't buy a $50 plan, and those that will even if they only use 200 minutes.
If you offer a $20 200 minute plan, the customers paying $50 will migrate to the $20 plan, which means you have to pick up 2-3 additional customers for every one that moves down to keep the same profit levels. My guess is that the phone companies feel they won't get the additional customers, so they don't lower prices. An added benefit is that lessens the chance of expensive price cutting to get customers.
As for pre-paid services, that is a very different model, because of the ease with which consumers can switch carriers (I can get a phone for around $10 - $20 after rebates, with a bargain rate of
That's a bad model. Here the carriers have realised that it's lunacy to subsidise pre-paid phones. Even in the US, Cingular certainly wasn't doing this when I used their service. While working in the US I got a pre-paid SIM (not a new phone) from them which cost me $50 including only $10 of calls! Then they charged me up to 50 cents a minute to make and receive calls.
In short, they gouge you because they know you're not likely to be a long term customer.
It doesn't happen this way in the UK. I think the US cellular companies have a bad attitude towards their customers.
First of all, you really aren't a customer if you buy prepaid services, because they realize you won't hang around. In that case, it's best to get every last possible penny up front, since there is little chance of you providing any significant downstream revenue. It's like buying a phone card - you get screwed because there is no long-term relationship - its simply transactional.
As a side note, you can get extra minutes instead of a rebate - which is a good deal for the carrier because those minutes cost them a lot less than the rebate would. And they offer a rebate instead of a discount because they know many people simply never send in the rebate form.
Cingular certainly doesn't make an extra subscription charge for its GSM customers to roam overseas. However, call charges during international roaming can be very steep. Perhaps non-GSM operators make a charge because they have to make special provisions to enable such roaming whereas it's designed into GSM and can be set up on-demand.
.75 cents/minute for calls, which means the phone cost is not the major cost to use the service). Unlike the typical one year contract, they don't have a known income stream, unlike contract services where they have you for a year and know that many people won't switch later simply because of the hassle of letting everyone know your new number. Users probably are either people, such as parents that want to control cell phone costs but still ensure their kids have a phone in an emergency or to call home from college, or those that can't qualify for a contract plan. By offering low card costs, even at high per minute rates, they make it cheap to get into a phone (the high tech version of the 10$ down, 10$ a month for the next ten years to rent to buy a $200 TV) and get aas much money as possible in as hort of a time as possible, since the costs for you to switch are low. In short, they gouge you because they know you're not likely to be a long term customer.
You're right, it's not the roaming charges but the long distance call fees that kill you. In the US, I use my cell phone more than my POTS - because I know that I won't get hit with hugh long distance fees (except when I call Europe, but that's why I have an MCI calling card tied to my home phone). From what I've seen in Europe, roaming throughout europe can result in a nasty surprise when the bill comes and you get all the long distance charges. I think one of the things that has driven usage in the US, unlike other parts of the world, is flat rate pricing that makes it easy for an individual to control the cost without severely limiting usage. If soem enterprising company offered flat rate servcie EU wide, I bet they'd grab a lot of market share. My guess why that hasn't happened is:
1. Each country wants to protect its incumbent carriers, which it does through tax and regulatory schemes designed to keep competitors out;
2. Europeans are used to POTS per minute (or click) charges and companies see that as more profitable or are simply too short sighted to try something bold;
3. Europeans are not as mobile as Americans, i.e. a five hour car trip is no big deal here, but to many of my European friends that is a major road trip. I realize I'm generalizing (and not trying to start a flame war, as I have lived and traveled regularly in Europe, although in my defense my swiss friends thought me nuts when I would drive from Zurich to Genf just to have a cup of coffee and walk around the lake, and I confirmed that suspicion when I drove to Berlin for a 4 day weekend.), but my conclusion is that they are willing to put up with the occasional long distance charge since they don't regularly roam outside of their home area.
Monthly subscriptions in the US are still comparatively expensive - you can get huge numbers of minutes for about $50 a month, but if you only want say 200 minutes then you're still stuck paying around $30 a month. (These are rough figures from memory.) Pre-paid service is fairly expensive too.
That's a function of the economics of providing service. Cell phone service providers are not capacity constrained, so they don't have to build more infrastructure to handle more calls. The marginal cost of providing 500 minutes vs 200 is negligible, so rather than compete on price, companies compete on the number of minutes they provide for a fixed fee. They also know that most people probably don't use all their minutes anyway, so connection costs and roaming fees for those that travel don't increase linearly as you go from 200 to 500 minutes. This lets them stablize their revenue by not getting into costly discounting wars as well as maintain their margins. Fortunately for the carriers, most of the players have realized that it's to their benefit to play the game this way, and avoid starting the costly rate wars that we've seen with airlines.
As for pre-paid services, that is a very different model, because of the ease with which consumers can switch carriers (I can get a phone for around $10 - $20 after rebates, with a bargain rate of
We don't - in the US I can go into Canada and call from my cell phone quite nicely - as well as from anywhere in the US (except for the odd location without any signal), all for one low rate. My coverage is about the same in terms of area as Europe - and I don't have to worry about roaming fees.
Personally, I doubt there is that big of a market for universal, global cell phone service. You can, after all, mimic that today with 2 phones - and if you want one number, ATT offers their Worldphone plan. If universla servcie was that important, Nokia/Samsung/Ericson et. al. would offer a multi-mode phone, similar to the tri-bands in the US today.
Cell phone use in the US took off as companies offered more airtime for the same price, and removed roaming fees. As was pointed out, in Europe, POTS is sometimes as expensive (especially with per minute charges)and/or hard to get as new service. Unless a carrier offers universal service as a no cost add-on (i.e. I only pay for minutes when I use them, not a fee to be able to call from anywhere wether I do or not), I'd guess most peopel would opt not to have the option - which means tehre si little incentive to build a network in the US design to allow universal access.
Well, for starters, companies don't get personal and dependent deductions. If a family of four gets to tax deduct their first $35K of income, are they really going to care that they don't have a separate deduction for their health insurance and mortgage? Like I said, with the Flat Tax, there's no social engineering. And it ends the massive tax discrimination against renters.
Actually, there's still social engineering, you've just changed the goals. For example, you now shift much of the tax burden to individuals directly, rather than hiding it in higher costs of goods. You also now value corporate spending more than individual, because you give them deductions you deny individuals. Companies get expenses and capital deductions, which individuals do not. In fact, they lose the biggest capital deduction they have - the home mortgage. You've created a two tier system that now discriminates greatly against individuals.
Companies are just tax collectors, btw. Their customers pay their taxes. It's just easier for politicians to tax an abstract accounting construct than a flesh-and-blood individual. All the same, having the same 17% rate for individuals and corporations minimizes the risks of accounting trickery.
Sure, but I decide by my purchasing power which taxes to pay. All a flat tax will do is change the accounting trickery to accomplish the same thing we do today - minimize our tax burden. As an individual, I'd be looking at ways to create a corporate shell to hide revenue and maximize expenses. And if you don't think companies will get special provisons that create new types of 'expenses" and "capital expenditures" passed by Congress, I'd ask why do you think 200+ years of political chicanery will disappear overnight? More importantly, why do you think anyone in Congress would support it if they didn't think they could still serve "their" special interests?
All it does is shift deductions to corporations (who still get itemized expense deductions)from the individual (who'll now see medical benefits, parking, etc as taxable income). For example, Why should a car be deductable to a company if it buys it to move peopel and generate income, but not to an individual who uses it to generate income as well (to commute)?
All teh falt tax will do is cause people to dream up new ways to reclassify income as an expense (such as incorporating and being a firm of one, perhaps. Why should a company get expense carry forward, but an individual gets one flat deduction, and if his/her income is less, no carry forward.
All a flat tax is is a new way for "Big Brother" to decide who benefits from the tax code.
2) Surviving on little to no income while the company gets off the ground. Even without dependents, just paying for housing is a bitch, and geeks tend to congregate in territories with the looniest real estate valuations. (In the Midwest, that means my home city of Ann Arbor, Michigan, home of the University of Michigan, with housing valuations second only to Chicago.) The reason valuations are so high is that the Federal Mortgage Interest Deduction encourages real estate inflation, and the average voter is too stupid to realize that giving up their precious deductions (aka social engineering) and switching to the Flat Income Tax [flattax.gov] plan would leave them at least as well off. Local zoning regs that make high-density development impossible do the rest (thus why we have yuppie lofts in renovated decrepit downtown buildings
renting for $big bucks rather than highrises).
Ah, the Flattax, which gives breaks to companies (deductablity of expenses) and denies that to individuals. An individual expenses (housing, education aka human capital, car, etc.) are not deductable, despite them being used in teh exact same matter as a company's, i.e. produce revenue aka income.
Of course, what is income for a Flattax - will my company's (deductable to them) purchase of a car for my use be income to me? How about housing they provide? Maybe I'd be better of becoming Me, Inc. and selling my product to a company to produce revenue, from which I deduct my expense (house, car, commute, etc.) Or, my company provides those things and I take a lower salaray (income0 to reduce my tax while providing my employeer with deductions (expenses).
You also forgot one definition:
Objectivist - someone who wants teh government out of their busienss, until a better competitor comes along and beats them, at which point they run to big brother (aka government) and cry foul and whine until it steps in (aka Microsoft vs everyone).
Usually, ISP contracts include language to the effect: "$ISP may terminate your service at any time, with or without cause." And because "without cause" is acceptable, it's perfectly OK for them to say "You can no longer use this service now that we've discovered you're $ethnicity."
Actually, while you can write virtually anything into a contract, it's up to the courts to decide what is enforcable (some things are automatically non-enforcable), and in many cases, what a clause really means. For , example, what is unsolicited email? If you pull my email address off a post and send me an (on-topic) comment, does that count? What if I say please post all replies? What if you mistype an address - should your ISP be able to terminate you?
And yes, in a libertarian utopia, companies that are draconian would eventually go out of business, but that ignores the very real search costs to customers to identify the bad ones and to replace them as they are discovered.
Unfortunately, until enough suits are decided, and appealed, much of this area will be unclear. As much as I hate lawsuits, they do serve to clarify and codify the law, so ISP and spammers know the limits.
Given the adoption of "Linux" as teh official name by the popular press, there's no chance GNU/Linux will ever catch on, except for a few diehards. By cementing Linux in the minds of ordinary users, the press has basically constrained GNU as answer to Computer Bowl trivia. Adding GNU/ to the front of Linux in ads, articles, and press releases would only confuse most users, since the new name would make them think somebody has added something new to Linux, not just changed the name.
You don't like the license on a DVD? Don't buy it.
Don't like closed source software? Don't buy it.
You have a choice - you either buy or don't buy someone's product. If enough people buy it, that person makes money. If too few do, he or she goes out of business. Taking away that choice will just result in other ways for basic economics to regulate the market.
No matter what RMS says or does, the basic economic principles that drive commerce will not change. Those that have tried failed.
Ok, I'm confused. What happened to the GPL and the requirement to distribute teh soruce? Has Sony developed proprietary run time libraries, independent of Linux, to let Linux programs run on the PS2?
Scrounging is a time honored tradition in the DOD. I was a submariner, and our motto was "If it fits down the hatch, it's ours. If we can't use it, we might be able to trade it for something we need." We had stuff stored away in every nook and cranny, and you never knew when something would come in handy.
You should have seen our nuclear grade stainless steel joystick attached to an Apple II.
ObProliferation - we had to inventory our reactor core once a quarter, and our commanding officer had to sign the ineventory to verify it was still in our possesion.
option 1 puts you afoul of securities laws. Just because you are not a company "insider" doesn't mena you can't be guilty of trading on inside information.
Well, the cover is a takeoff of the "Joy of Sex" cover.
Of course, there isn't a chapter on the pleasure of being a lone Linux user, or the pleasure to be had from networking 2 or more Linux "boxes" together in various ways. And the original Joy had pictures, not cartoons like in volume 2.
ICBMs (or more correctly S(ubmarine) LBMs, which is what I'm most familar with) guidance systems fixed their position by monitoring certain stars (similar to celestial navigation on the earth). The actual warhead was ballistic, but the delivery platform needs a navigation system to know where it is so it can hit its targets.
I'd guess ICBMs use a similar system.
Actaully, accurate targeting is probably less of an issue. I'd guess such a weapon system would be designed to strike large, fixed targets (missile bases, ports, rail yards - whose position you can accurately fix) with enough destructive power that a few dozen feet one way or the other wouldn't matter.
You could probably adapt the star sight system used by ICBMs and fire a ballaistic trajectory to a target. Then you can fix your position relative to the target and calculate the trajectory.
Accuracy is relative, after all how far can you run if the shock wave takes an extra minute to reach you?
Of course, know you have to develop something to quickly shoot down aircraft at 300k feet.
Lucas, I am your doctor.
Neat idea, but my machine lets me select a boot drive by holding down the shift key during boot-up. I get a little pop-up that lets me select from all the installed drives. My MB/BIOS is nothing new or fancy, in fact it's just a cheap Biostar MB. I'd guess this feature isn't that common?
Look at the bright side, Congress may no nothing about peer to peer networks, be clueless about open source, but when it comes to sex, they have quite a collection of experts, on both sides of the aisle. It's about time they put all that collective experience chasing interns, cheating on their spouses and getting a little on the side to good use.
What happened was actually much more complex than waht th emedia syas (surprise, surprise).
CA decided to remove the monopoly on production, but maintained it on distribution and transmission, and required the plant owners to sell the plants. In exchange for getting back their total investment (via a bond deal), the utilities agreed to cap prices until the bonds were paid off(that's a simplification, but OK for this discussion). They also were required to meet all demand, even if prices went above what they were getting.
Utilities were also prohibited from entering into long term power purchase contracts - which would give them price stability. The CA legislature mandated spot purchases, thinking (can we say that about politicians?) that spot prices (i.e. what it costs right now) would drop.
What happened was CA demand kept rising, but no new plants or transmission lines were built. CA is really like two islands - North and South, with small interties (bridges, so to speak) to bring in power. So you have limited capacity in state, limited ability to bring in power, and no price incentive for consumers to lower use. Instead of supply and demand, you had artifically low prices, and utilities that were required to buy at whatever price and sell at a lower one. The suppliers ramped up prices to meet demand, and the utilities were left holding the bag.
Actually, market forces worked - once the utilities started running out of money, scarcity (brownouts) replaced price to keep demand in line with supply.
Interestingly enough, the very politicians that touted their deregulation scheme as the greatest thing since, well, cheap electricity ran as far and as fast from it as possible. Even the "Father of CA deregulation" was demanding a paternity test to prove he wasn't really the father.
Sure, to a certain extent every service/product comes down to price. But that price musn't necessarily be cheap.
I give you an example: One of my vices are cigars, preferrably (but not necessary) Cuban cigars, which are readily available in most European countries. Not cheap, mind you, but worth the price.
I'm not a big cigar smoker, but I think Cubans are a bit overrated, in the US at least. I agree that the "you can't get it so it must be good factor" tends to inflate prices. I'd just a soon have a top of the line non-Cuban and a fine glass of Port.
It seems to be worth it in Europe. Roaming and SMS are probably the biggest cash cows for the phone companies. As with every product the price is a sensitive issue and they try to make it as high, that it generates nice profits, but not that high, that people don't roam. After all, the infrastructure and the (exorbitant expensive) billing systems are in place anyhow. So in essence, a call not made is lost revenue to them (at least until the network is saturated).
I wasn't very clear - I'm surprised that Europe doesn't have the equivalent of the US' no roam plans - you're still paying roaming fees throughout Europe?
Actually, I'm not all that surprised - even in the EU, each country has done a pretty good job of protecting its companies. It's not a bad deal for the companies, either, given the amount of cross border travel in Europe. It's another example how regulation ultimately benefits the regulated. Each countries carriers want to protect their home markets and get money from raoming. There is , after all no technical reason why a carrier couldn't establish a pan Euopean network - either by buying carriers or buying space on non-carrier owned infrastructure. Alternatively, they could also get agreements with other carriers to offset roaming use. Of course, that stil leaves the issue of how to collect taxes in each country unsolved.
In Europe, it appears that consumers don't get all the benefits a single GSM standard can provide.
Changing tower output could even let carriers cross borders without investing in a country - such as happened in northern Italy and Slovenia (if I rememebr correctly, that is the former Yugoslav country that borders northern Italy-Southern Tyrolia) Italians were getting inter-Italy calls via a neighboring country. Pissed off the Italian carriers.
As for SMS, the Blackberry is very popular here, and personally, I think it's a better form factor for messaging than a phone. I've sent exactly one email on my phone, an dits easier to use my Palm and a modem at the airport than sending stuff from the phone.
Also, European hotels are learning a painful lesson: Nobody (at least not European business travellers) use their phones anymore. Why should they ? They have a GSM phone, which is cheaper, mobile and as reliable as a hotel phone, so why would you want to get ripped off ?
We do that here too - I use my cell phone (unless its to an 800 number), especially since I pay a monthly flat rate rather than per minute.
SO it's not really interoperablity that people want, but cheap interoperablity
You're implying here and you are dead wrong. (alas I can only speak for myself)
Roaming is expensive, but since I travel a lot and depend on this feature, it's well worth the price and I'm willing to pay for it.
If however a company tries to extort me, they'll lose my business and I sure as hell find alternatives.
Still - it comes down to price. Calling Switzerland is not worth $2.50/minute to you, as you stated in your phonecard example. For you, the European roaming costs are worthwhile. Personally, I don't understand why you can't have a plan like I have in the US - less than 10cents/minute, no roaming fees in the US.
If you *really* valued roaming you would be much less price sensitive - but you only value it up to a certain price. It's probably simply not worth the phone companies effort to try to offer true international roaming, since they either would not make enough money off of it to cover the cost or they can make more from customers by selling them other long distance services.
Quite frankly, the phone company has you over a barrel - if you had a US phone number, you could get a calling card that gives you the same rates as does a normal landline call. There is no incentive for a phone company to cut rates for people who operate on a transactional basis (i.e. need the service but aren't a potential customer for other services, such as home/business long disatnce), and since they can identify them by phone card use, they can and do) charge alot for the service. It's like the hotels in Europe with their phone surcharges (which US hotels are starting to do as well)- they're betting the business traveler will want the privacy of an in-room phone instead of going to the PTT.
In theory, you are. I never bother with cell phones, when in the US, since prices are OUTRAGEOUS. In Europe, depending on the country, I pay between 40 and 90 cents for outgoing calls and 20-30 cents for incoming calls per minute.
All US Carriers with roaming agreements charge 1$ for incoming and 2-3.50$ for outgoing calls, per minute. I'm much better served with a 10$ phone card, since public phones are plentyful and it's dirt cheap.
SO it's not really interoperablity that people want, but cheap interoperablity. Nextel offer(ed) a phon ethat worked in the US and Europe - I haven't seen them advertise it recently, so I guess it never really caught on. My guess is pricing was what hurt it - people are used to cheap service in their home countries, an dbalk at the rates they pay overseas. Until a few companies become truely global providers, I doubt you'll see cheap global servcie, even if we have one 3G standard, since each carrier wants to make money on the service and has to cover billing costs, verification of service or allow for fraudulent use.
Roaming is one area where our market has an advantage - I can call from anywhere in the US to anywhere in the US, with no roaming charges. It's all included in my monthly minutes. The only problem I've ever had is in rural Georgia, where I can call anywhere in the US but can't call to Europe. It turns out a few of the third tier carriers can't (!) handle international calls, because they can't figure out how to bill my carrier.
Just because a free market results in solutions that everyone doesn't think are optimal does not mean the market has failed. It just means the market is still sorting things out - and some CDMA advocates would probably argue 3G CDMA is better and will be rolled out quicker than GSM could/would in the US. If that turns out to be true, then a government mandated GSM would rule out a better long term option.
:-)
Just for a historical note, GSM is in use in the US, so you should be able to use your phone here in teh (few) areas that have GSM service.
I'm not real familar with Euopean cell phones (other than using one when I'm there, but I don't pay the bill nor do I roam) - do you pay a flat rate fro calls anywhere in europe - i.e. if I have a Portuguese provider does it cost m ethe same if I call from/to Lisbon or Berlin?
Interestingly enough, at the dawn of the electrical era we had multiple vendors and competing formats (AC vs DC). The utilities asked for government regulation (i.e. local monopoly) in order to provide efficient, standardized service.
ps: regarding "standardizing in over all of europe is a no-brainer": i dare you to sit down an english and a frenchman and have them come up with a standard - they will probably not even agree on what they disagree on
Having worked with NATO (in US and Europe) over the years, I am amazed that Europe came up with one cell phone standard.