Because the native network is not as strong of a signal, and it would be a better service for the customer? Seriously, if the companies were FORCED to allow this, they'd either 1) continue eating the cost or 2) improve signal in the affected area. If they did 3) raise rates and do nothing else, they'd quickly lose customers to the provider with better coverage.
Raising rates is the likely outcome of a mandate like that. I doubt many people would switch to the provider with "better coverage" because "better coverage" is very subjective. Yeah, AT&T might have better coverage inside Wally World than T-Mobile but if T-Mobile works everywhere else do you really see many customers switching over it?
I'm not a fan of Governmental mandates but if you want to impose them on the wireless industry I can think of much more important things to fix than mandated roaming.
Then your network must allow roaming in that particular area. With GSM the network that you connect to (even if it's the native network) contacts your home location register to find out if your phone is allowed to connect to that particular part of the network and what features are enabled on your account.
If your provider saw fit they could disable roaming and no amount of hacks to your device would override it.
I've been doing this for the past 4 years and they still have not canceled my account.
I doubt they ever would, unless you are predominately using the roaming partner instead of your native network. AT&T and T-Mobile both have policies in place to cancel the accounts of customers that go over a certain threshold of minutes used on roaming partners. For AT&T I think it's 40% of your minute usage. T-Mobile is 50% IIRC.
Does this kind of situation explain why we in North America are a little bit "behind" Europeans and Asians when it comes to the "cell phone" and exploiting its maximum potential?
No. All this situation relates to is which networks you are allowed to roam on. Europe works much the same way. If you have Deutsch Telekom phone you probably aren't going to be able to connect to and use Vodafone's network in an area where DT has native coverage. Why should they pay Vodafone a per minute rate for you to roam when they have a native network in the area where you happen to be?
I hear the "cell phone" elsewhere in the world is capable of so much more than simply making calls and texting, which are the bulk of what we use cell phones for over here.
*shrug*, we have a smartphone market. I haven't been in Europe for a few years but the last time I was over there I was actually disappointed with the state of 3G. It's probably better now but when I was in Europe their 3G offerings weren't any better than ours.
Japan and South Korea are different animals -- they are a full generation ahead of Europe and the US and people use their phones for all manner of things over there. That's as much cultural as anything -- how many Americans don't even see the point of SMS let alone internet browsing? Most people I know with phones regard them as phones and don't care about the extra features.
I would love to see the part of the Constitution that says "Congress shall provide a robust cellular network for its citizens."
Don't worry -- someone will come along sooner or later and twist the interstate commerce clause until they manage to come up with that interpretation. Remember, all parts of the Constitution should be interpreted as liberally as possible, except the 2nd amendment of course. That clearly provides for a collective right and doesn't apply to the states.....
I wish I had mod points for you. I used to work for a WISP and had the "privilege" of climbing towers in god-awful weather after storms to restore service to our customers. It's scary enough to climb the things in normal weather. Doing it Upstate New York in January after a storm has coated the tower with ice is absolutely horrible.
The worst part was that was my first job and I only got paid $10/hr to scale the friggen things. Looking back on it I wasn't making nearly enough money to be risking my life like that. At least our customers were appreciative though. That helped more than you can imagine.
You're right, this is a case of corporate power struggles trumping customer service, as any of these phones should automatically fail over to another GSM network. In an emergency, dialing out is essential.
T-Mobile has been known to enable unrestricted roaming during natural disasters. During non-disasters they limit the areas that you can roam based on where they have native service. If they have native service in your city you will never be allowed to connect to AT&T no matter how crappy the T-Mobile signal is. During some natural disasters they've removed this restriction and you can connect to AT&T (and other GSM providers) at will.
Comes in handy if the T-Mobile network goes down or is congested. I've never been in that situation but a few friends of mine have and were very thankful that they removed the roaming restrictions.
AT&T/Comcast/AT&T burned a LOT of bridges when they became Cingular. I used to be able to roam almost anywhere, and if a roaming tower was the best strength I connected to that. After cingular got involved they pissed off a lot of other carriers. Now my phone refuses to talk to any nearby roaming towers but tries to connect to that single AT&T tower about 12 miles away that gives me barely any signal
I don't think that really has to do with burning bridges. It has to do with AT&T not wanting to pay money for you to roam. It costs them money every single minute that you are using another carriers network.
I used to have a T-Mobile phone (had to ditch them for Verizon when I moved in with the GF -- no signal at her house) and they did the same thing. They would disable roaming on AT&T/Cingular in areas where they had coverage. Even if you were in a zone with no T-Mobile service you couldn't hop onto Cingular. To be able to roam on Cingular you had to drive out of the county where T-Mobile had native coverage -- then you'd be able to connect to and use the Cingular network. If you were within the county where they had native service but happened to be in a dead zone you were SOL -- roaming wasn't allowed.
I have to hack my phones to disable this configuration to get decent cellphone service out of them.
I'm surprised that worked. With GSM your home network decides whether or not you will be allowed to connect to that roaming partner based on the location area code. If that LAC indicates an area where they have native service they probably won't let you connect to the roaming partner. If it indicates an area where they don't have native service then you stand a better chance of being allowed to use that roaming partner.
Our republic is supposed to be setup so that the majority can't run roughshod over minorities. Democracy is nothing more than codified mob rule.
Tell that to the idiots that think pure democracy is the best thing since sliced bread. I would advocate at least two changes to get us back to what the Republic was supposed to be:
1) Repeal the 17th amendment. Senators should be responsible to the state and not the people, otherwise the US Senate might as well be abolished.
2) Pass a Constitutional Amendment to overturn Reynolds v. Sims. Reynolds v. Sims was a SCOTUS ruling that prohibited state legislatures from drawing districts geographically. So it's ok for the US Senate to be drawn geographically but not for the New York State Senate? WTF was that ruling for other than a urban power grab?
I am, frankly, offended by how little thought went into your post.
I'm frankly offended at how many people around here eat up Hamas propaganda and make excuses for their terrorist attacks. This guy said it far more eloquently than I can. Until Israel's enemies accept that she has the right to exist I really don't see why she should feel compelled to obey UN resolutions that relate to those enemies.
The Arab's would seem to have three choices:
1) Build enough military superiority to defeat Israel on the battlefield. This doesn't seem particularly likely and even if they managed it there's the little matter of MAD to consider.....
2) Keep engaging in tit for tat attacks and accept disproportionate casualties on your side. They launch some rockets, kill or wound a few Israelis. The Israelis retaliate and kill hundreds of Palestinians.
3) Accept that Israel has the right to exist and end the violence.
Option 3 seems like the best one to me but what do I know?
Imagine a high-density city with half a million people in the United States (say El Paso, Texas) being surrounded and blockaded by Chinese troops
Did the United States try three or four times in the last century to conquer China and drive the Chinese people into the ocean? No? Your comparison is absurd.
Does not stop Israel-bashers from demanding, that: "Israel respect UN-resolutions". That the country's enemies refuse to accept this very first resolution on the subject is rarely noticed.
Interesting contrast isn't it? Israel is condemned for not following UN-resolutions while her neighbors remain at war with her (honorable exceptions: Jordan and Egypt) and the Palestinians choose to be represented by a group whose charter specifically calls for the destruction of Israel.
or the fact that there's absolutely no justification for its having been established at that particular location in the first place?
Take it up with the UN. The UN created Israel as I recall. The Arabs have done their worst and she's still around. Don't blame me if you can't win on the battlefield.
Hmmm... I am 100% certain that deliveries by sea are restricted by Isreal also.
Well, maybe if they'd stop launching rockets into Israel and join the civilized nations of the World they'd be able to trade with the rest of the World.
Oh, I'm not sure of that. Some of the countries with coastlines near Somalia are getting pretty fed up with today's pirates.
The only reason those pirates are getting away with it is because nobody has the political will to take them out. That said, a lot of nations gave up the right to issue letters of marque under the Declaration of Paris. The United States wasn't one of those nations though -- we could still issue them. Seems to me like it would have been an effective way to go after Al Quada.
Since coming to Russia i feel a lot more free than i did living in the UK
So how many of it's citizens has the UK poisoned with polonium-210 lately? I'm glad your happy but I'd take living in the UK over Russia any day of the week.
Not necessarily but it's really not too much to ask that their basic human rights be respected, is it?
Hey, if your issue is with torture then I'll join you for the protests. If your issue is with holding them without charges then you'll be protesting without me. Combatants are held for the duration of hostilities -- I don't recall anybody complaining that we weren't giving trials and due process to all the Japanese and German POWs that we captured.
The problem is that our government has gotten away with imprisoning people without charges for the first time since the Roosevelt administration, and the public outcry was negligible.
Umm, you realize that we are at war, right? With people that don't follow the accepted laws of war. What should we do with them? Bring them into the United States and run them through the civilian justice system?
After living in both countries I can assure all of you that "right to a dwelling" alone provides more impact than all your piddly "you have a right if you are rich enough, otherwise you are screwed" rights.
So you'd rather live where the Government tells you than have the freedom to decide that for yourself?
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Because the native network is not as strong of a signal, and it would be a better service for the customer? Seriously, if the companies were FORCED to allow this, they'd either 1) continue eating the cost or 2) improve signal in the affected area. If they did 3) raise rates and do nothing else, they'd quickly lose customers to the provider with better coverage.
Raising rates is the likely outcome of a mandate like that. I doubt many people would switch to the provider with "better coverage" because "better coverage" is very subjective. Yeah, AT&T might have better coverage inside Wally World than T-Mobile but if T-Mobile works everywhere else do you really see many customers switching over it?
I'm not a fan of Governmental mandates but if you want to impose them on the wireless industry I can think of much more important things to fix than mandated roaming.
Then your network must allow roaming in that particular area. With GSM the network that you connect to (even if it's the native network) contacts your home location register to find out if your phone is allowed to connect to that particular part of the network and what features are enabled on your account.
If your provider saw fit they could disable roaming and no amount of hacks to your device would override it.
I've been doing this for the past 4 years and they still have not canceled my account.
I doubt they ever would, unless you are predominately using the roaming partner instead of your native network. AT&T and T-Mobile both have policies in place to cancel the accounts of customers that go over a certain threshold of minutes used on roaming partners. For AT&T I think it's 40% of your minute usage. T-Mobile is 50% IIRC.
Answer: "Not enough" since we're getting inane txt-speak commercials about it.
What are these commercials you speak of?
Does this kind of situation explain why we in North America are a little bit "behind" Europeans and Asians when it comes to the "cell phone" and exploiting its maximum potential?
No. All this situation relates to is which networks you are allowed to roam on. Europe works much the same way. If you have Deutsch Telekom phone you probably aren't going to be able to connect to and use Vodafone's network in an area where DT has native coverage. Why should they pay Vodafone a per minute rate for you to roam when they have a native network in the area where you happen to be?
I hear the "cell phone" elsewhere in the world is capable of so much more than simply making calls and texting, which are the bulk of what we use cell phones for over here.
*shrug*, we have a smartphone market. I haven't been in Europe for a few years but the last time I was over there I was actually disappointed with the state of 3G. It's probably better now but when I was in Europe their 3G offerings weren't any better than ours.
Japan and South Korea are different animals -- they are a full generation ahead of Europe and the US and people use their phones for all manner of things over there. That's as much cultural as anything -- how many Americans don't even see the point of SMS let alone internet browsing? Most people I know with phones regard them as phones and don't care about the extra features.
I would love to see the part of the Constitution that says "Congress shall provide a robust cellular network for its citizens."
Don't worry -- someone will come along sooner or later and twist the interstate commerce clause until they manage to come up with that interpretation. Remember, all parts of the Constitution should be interpreted as liberally as possible, except the 2nd amendment of course. That clearly provides for a collective right and doesn't apply to the states.....
Is it true they even charge you for receiving calls in the states????
Yes, but the flipside to that is the people who call us don't have to pay a higher rate just because they dialed a mobile number.
I wish I had mod points for you. I used to work for a WISP and had the "privilege" of climbing towers in god-awful weather after storms to restore service to our customers. It's scary enough to climb the things in normal weather. Doing it Upstate New York in January after a storm has coated the tower with ice is absolutely horrible.
The worst part was that was my first job and I only got paid $10/hr to scale the friggen things. Looking back on it I wasn't making nearly enough money to be risking my life like that. At least our customers were appreciative though. That helped more than you can imagine.
You're right, this is a case of corporate power struggles trumping customer service, as any of these phones should automatically fail over to another GSM network. In an emergency, dialing out is essential.
T-Mobile has been known to enable unrestricted roaming during natural disasters. During non-disasters they limit the areas that you can roam based on where they have native service. If they have native service in your city you will never be allowed to connect to AT&T no matter how crappy the T-Mobile signal is. During some natural disasters they've removed this restriction and you can connect to AT&T (and other GSM providers) at will.
Comes in handy if the T-Mobile network goes down or is congested. I've never been in that situation but a few friends of mine have and were very thankful that they removed the roaming restrictions.
AT&T/Comcast/AT&T burned a LOT of bridges when they became Cingular. I used to be able to roam almost anywhere, and if a roaming tower was the best strength I connected to that. After cingular got involved they pissed off a lot of other carriers. Now my phone refuses to talk to any nearby roaming towers but tries to connect to that single AT&T tower about 12 miles away that gives me barely any signal
I don't think that really has to do with burning bridges. It has to do with AT&T not wanting to pay money for you to roam. It costs them money every single minute that you are using another carriers network.
I used to have a T-Mobile phone (had to ditch them for Verizon when I moved in with the GF -- no signal at her house) and they did the same thing. They would disable roaming on AT&T/Cingular in areas where they had coverage. Even if you were in a zone with no T-Mobile service you couldn't hop onto Cingular. To be able to roam on Cingular you had to drive out of the county where T-Mobile had native coverage -- then you'd be able to connect to and use the Cingular network. If you were within the county where they had native service but happened to be in a dead zone you were SOL -- roaming wasn't allowed.
I have to hack my phones to disable this configuration to get decent cellphone service out of them.
I'm surprised that worked. With GSM your home network decides whether or not you will be allowed to connect to that roaming partner based on the location area code. If that LAC indicates an area where they have native service they probably won't let you connect to the roaming partner. If it indicates an area where they don't have native service then you stand a better chance of being allowed to use that roaming partner.
Our republic is supposed to be setup so that the majority can't run roughshod over minorities. Democracy is nothing more than codified mob rule.
Tell that to the idiots that think pure democracy is the best thing since sliced bread. I would advocate at least two changes to get us back to what the Republic was supposed to be:
1) Repeal the 17th amendment. Senators should be responsible to the state and not the people, otherwise the US Senate might as well be abolished.
2) Pass a Constitutional Amendment to overturn Reynolds v. Sims. Reynolds v. Sims was a SCOTUS ruling that prohibited state legislatures from drawing districts geographically. So it's ok for the US Senate to be drawn geographically but not for the New York State Senate? WTF was that ruling for other than a urban power grab?
I am, frankly, offended by how little thought went into your post.
I'm frankly offended at how many people around here eat up Hamas propaganda and make excuses for their terrorist attacks. This guy said it far more eloquently than I can. Until Israel's enemies accept that she has the right to exist I really don't see why she should feel compelled to obey UN resolutions that relate to those enemies.
The Arab's would seem to have three choices:
1) Build enough military superiority to defeat Israel on the battlefield. This doesn't seem particularly likely and even if they managed it there's the little matter of MAD to consider.....
2) Keep engaging in tit for tat attacks and accept disproportionate casualties on your side. They launch some rockets, kill or wound a few Israelis. The Israelis retaliate and kill hundreds of Palestinians.
3) Accept that Israel has the right to exist and end the violence.
Option 3 seems like the best one to me but what do I know?
It's not as if Israel's creation gains any moral legitimacy due to being established by the UN.
I hope you remember that the next time you whine about Israel not following UN resolutions.
Imagine a high-density city with half a million people in the United States (say El Paso, Texas) being surrounded and blockaded by Chinese troops
Did the United States try three or four times in the last century to conquer China and drive the Chinese people into the ocean? No? Your comparison is absurd.
The Israeli's have something a little bit more impressive than knives or guns if it comes to it......
Does not stop Israel-bashers from demanding, that: "Israel respect UN-resolutions". That the country's enemies refuse to accept this very first resolution on the subject is rarely noticed.
Interesting contrast isn't it? Israel is condemned for not following UN-resolutions while her neighbors remain at war with her (honorable exceptions: Jordan and Egypt) and the Palestinians choose to be represented by a group whose charter specifically calls for the destruction of Israel.
Disgusting isn't it?
or the fact that there's absolutely no justification for its having been established at that particular location in the first place?
Take it up with the UN. The UN created Israel as I recall. The Arabs have done their worst and she's still around. Don't blame me if you can't win on the battlefield.
Hmmm... I am 100% certain that deliveries by sea are restricted by Isreal also.
Well, maybe if they'd stop launching rockets into Israel and join the civilized nations of the World they'd be able to trade with the rest of the World.
Holding someone until the end of hostilities with no charges in an endless war is a pretty bad idea.
And letting someone go who has professed a desire to kill Americans is an even worse idea.
Oh, I'm not sure of that. Some of the countries with coastlines near Somalia are getting pretty fed up with today's pirates.
The only reason those pirates are getting away with it is because nobody has the political will to take them out. That said, a lot of nations gave up the right to issue letters of marque under the Declaration of Paris. The United States wasn't one of those nations though -- we could still issue them. Seems to me like it would have been an effective way to go after Al Quada.
Actually you are missing something. Classifieds and ads constituted of the majority of newspaper revenue, not subscriptions.
So why don't they borrow a page from RIAA's playbook and sue Craigslist?
Since coming to Russia i feel a lot more free than i did living in the UK
So how many of it's citizens has the UK poisoned with polonium-210 lately? I'm glad your happy but I'd take living in the UK over Russia any day of the week.
We should issue letters of marque and reprisal, and offer rewards for their capture
I think that's a great idea. It would never happen in the modern world though. More's the pity.
Not necessarily but it's really not too much to ask that their basic human rights be respected, is it?
Hey, if your issue is with torture then I'll join you for the protests. If your issue is with holding them without charges then you'll be protesting without me. Combatants are held for the duration of hostilities -- I don't recall anybody complaining that we weren't giving trials and due process to all the Japanese and German POWs that we captured.
The problem is that our government has gotten away with imprisoning people without charges for the first time since the Roosevelt administration, and the public outcry was negligible.
Umm, you realize that we are at war, right? With people that don't follow the accepted laws of war. What should we do with them? Bring them into the United States and run them through the civilian justice system?
After living in both countries I can assure all of you that "right to a dwelling" alone provides more impact than all your piddly "you have a right if you are rich enough, otherwise you are screwed" rights.
So you'd rather live where the Government tells you than have the freedom to decide that for yourself?