If the Indians get their way and say "everything is data" and start charging a flat monthly fee and only capping your top speed (i.e. you get less top speed for less money, should you be skint), only the greedy shareholders would have something to moan about.
No no no. They won't change how voice is delivered. Remember, this is INDIA we're talking about. The vast majority of people are on domestically made phones that cost like, $10 or if they're really after a status symbol, the Nokia 1110 - that sort of thing. All they're saying is that voice calling will become free and data/value services would be the sources of revenue.
I think you're misunderstanding. They're not going to be delivering voice as data. Voice and data remain separate as you know them, there's no VOIP implementation going on.
Modern network: Kinda. We only got 3G here in 2010. Honest: No. Completely IP on the inside: mmmmm... to a point, but not as much as you might think. The legal framework actually introduces a lot of technical inefficiencies because streams have to be converted multiple times to get from A to B and it's led to, frankly, shit quality. Can't even keep a stable call in some parts of Mumbai (where I live). Build costs: Cheaper than some countries. Spectrum: Expensive, but considering the size of the audience, probably justified. ARPU: Only about US$4 according to some companies. Unsustainable: Definitely.
The other thing is that people still expect "unlimited" data on 3G, so what so often happens is people buy x amount of gigabytes and then they get reduced in speed to 128k or something thereafter - but even at 128k with the kind of population densities we're talking about the networks are choked all the time.
Source: In the industry, in India... just not in cellular services. Not even remotely interested.
Except this is not what is being suggested. VOIP is basically illegal in India (though the regulations are being changed for Mukesh Ambani's LTE service over which he wants to allow voice, which under the current legal framework he can't, so... being a multi-billionaire and whatnot, he's having the law changed).
What is being suggested is that calling goes down from it's current rates of 30-80 paise (that's 0.3 to 0.8 rupees**) per minute - although, most plans are pay per second now, with most operators charging 1.2 paise per second - yes, Indians really are that cheap - to zero, and the companies should only make their revenue from charging for data.
Since only a small percentage of people actually use (or are able to use) data on their phones, two things could happen if this goes ahead:
1. Minimum monthly plans are introduced as mandatory which will include data to cover the cost of the minutes. 2. Data prices will go up and become even more convoluted and confusing than they already are. Currently 1GB at 3G speeds costs something like Rs250-300 though if you buy a lot that could potentially go down to as low as Rs100/GB, whereas on 2G a typical rate is Rs98 for 2GB of data. I don't get it either, but they do price differently for 2G/3G data. Probably because 2G is completely unusable - can barely even receive emails on 2G.
While I'm sure the scheme is intended to bring cellular service to even more of India's poor, both of these would potentially bring the cost of owning a mobile up and thus actually taking the service out of the hands of the people for whom the scheme is intended to benefit - as is so often the case here. Plus, all the major telcos are so heavily in debt (ESPECIALLY the government telcos) they can't really afford to do this anyway, in my opinion.
(**current exchange rate 1 rupee = US$0.019, so basically, calls cost all of around 1.6 cents a minute here).
You're kidding, right? I carry as many as 6 (yes, 6) hard drives through customers all the time - both in and out of caddies. One time I went from India through a bunch of airports and border crossings in the Caucasus (Istanbul, Kiev, Tbilisi - those kinds of places) with 4 hard drives in a shoebox (each surrounded by foam).
Done the same thing through most of Asia (Singapore, HK, various airports in Japan...)
Frankly, they cared more about the gold medallion I was carrying than the hard drives and I think the one time I was asked "what are those" the person understood what I meant when I said "they're hard drives".
You can't even get in to an airport in India without having (at the very least, your e-ticket) printed out - even the small ones - making it impossible to book at the counter if you need to fly somewhere on short notice (been there, done that) or don't have a printer (more likely) because you're a tourist (been there done that too, but even though I live here now, I still don't own one, and yes, I could pop down to any one of the misspelled shops with the word "Xerox" spelled incorrectly and print the thing out but that's not always an option, either - whether because of the time of day or because you don't want your email password to be compromised by logging in on some 7-year old badly maintained, spyware and virus ridden but still somehow barely working machine).
And when you do get in to the airport, prepared to be frisked between 1 and 5 times depending on the size of the airport. And lots of queueing. So much queueing the British would look jealously on at how much queueing there is... only here it's less orderly.
Yeah, the TSA has nothing on India when it comes to security (theatre, at least - it rarely actually stops anything), but despite this? Still not looking forward to flying to the US any time soon.
I've found it easier to just have someone else to decide what I wear, how I wear it, what type of haircut I get, when to get my nails cut, what soaps, shampoos and moisturisers to use... She knows all my measurements, what scents work, what colour ties work with which shirts and won't wash my face out or whatever. I haven't had to worry about anything except occasionally giving her money to buy me more stuff in nearly 4 years.
Someone in this position probably has a PA, Secretary or Wife who can do this, and for the women in power, they probably have one or more (more often than not) gay men at their disposal. Nobody at the top has an excuse for not looking good.
Thanks AC, but I'm not a Muslim. I merely live in an area which has Muslims, Christians and Hindus mixed in with one-another - and I don't belong to either religions.
I'm all for mocking religion - including Islam - and I'd love it if they could take jokes in the jovial way in which they were intended... however, perhaps they are not ready yet. Imagine if you were mocking Christianity 400 years ago - you'd probably have been hanged for it.
The point I was trying to make is that all these "Muslims" who are saying "kill the guy because he insulted us" are demonstrably UN-Muslim in their words and actions and if anything, they should want to kill the guy for distributing a movie with such poor production quality. Seriously, where do I apply to get my ~14 minutes back?
Sorry sorry sorry, did you say delays? In Germany? Nein nein nein!! Das ist verboten!! The crew would be shot:P
However, at the same time, Germany is a (comparatively) small country compared to, say, the US. Germans, being the stereotypically efficient folks that they are, have worked out that they can probably can get from Frankfurt to Berlin by car faster than they can by train - and it's less hassle than a plane (while I seem to recall Berlins airports being all accessible by train, they're not as well connected as Frankfurt)... but distance is comparable to what... DC to NYC? (I'm guessing wildly here), so it becomes a matter of value/time. No tolls on Autobahns (unlike, say, France and Spain) so driving is perhaps cheaper too, even with the taxes... and so on. But that doesn't mean the German rail network isn't brilliant.
Germany is a great country to go through, so for getting from point A to point B (say, Paris to Vienna - even though I assume this isn't what you mean by tourist**) it's a great option as opposed to flying shitty budget airlines.
And if you don't appreciate it, come to where I currently live (India) - or try my homeland (NZ), where the problem is basically the same: a small island country which you can drive major centre to major centre in ~8 hours even at 100km/h, thus, trains are grossly underused and the roads, similarly free of tolls, are preferred due in part to the pricing but also the scheduling.
**Also, I spent too long in Europe to be a mere tourist.
I live among Muslims, in a country with THE single largest Muslim population in the world, and while we didn't see too many riots as a result of this film (though we had some a few weeks ago under different auspices), there were a lot of people who were confused, if not a little on edge because of it, BUT, before you go spouting horseshit about Mohammed, please check your facts.
All religions that centre around an idol which is inherently fallible (whether Christianity, Islam, Hinduism or whatever) are centred on something that is not perfect. If one is to argue that Mohammed was a pedo or whatever then fine, Jesus hung out with prostitutes and the Hindu god Shiva smoked weed.
At the end of the day? Who really gives a shit.
Frankly, the only problem I have with Muslims at the moment is that they don't follow their own spiritual guides (that is, the Q'uran). For a religion whose default greeting is "As Salamu Alaykum" (peace be with you) saying anything about "death to this" and "we hate that" is really un-Islamic - perhaps even to the point where hatred of someone who has wronged you is the opposite of what Islam is all about and those who have reacted this way should not call themselves Muslim nor should they be included by us ignorant westerners as such.
(That being said, many religious people don't follow their spiritual teachings - Christians, Jews, Hindus - hell, even the Dalai Lama (who as a Buddhist should be strictly vegetarian) eats chicken.
This whole movie thing is a load of horseshit. I wanted to gouge my own eyes out not because of the content of the film but because of it's complete and utter shittiness. It was one of the stupidest things I've seen in my entire life and if I could charge this guy for the time I spent watching that film, I totally would.
...you should come to India - for some STUPID reason everyone seems to model their ideas on how great American broadband is, and then do it only about 10% as well.
Moreover, regulations are created in such a way that it often seems like a race to the bottom... and the amount of crappy advertising I see here is nothing short of hilarious. People here think 2mbits is "lightening fast" and even most of those who are offering FTTH services are still only offering 512k-2mbit/s services for the most part - or you get 10mbit/s for like 25GB then throttled.
WTH are you talking about? I've been all over Europe in both trains and cars (even drove right in to central Asia from Germany once) and very little of what you're saying is true.
Buses are reasonably common in Germany and regular people use the railways all the time. DB even has special weekend passes where you can pretty much have unlimited travel in Germany for 35 Euros (granted, these are for slow trains and this was ~5 years ago so the price is probably different nowadays)... this alone seems a little contradictory to your "large parts of Germany" statement, but it would seem you can get to most of Germany fairly easily - but if you just want to get from A to B, the high-speed trains are there.
In most countries ticket prices are the same or less than driving - last time I drove from Nice to Barcelona the cost of tolls was similar to the cost of the actual petrol and not so far removed from the price of the train ticket (for comparison, I did the same route a month later by train). Moreover, the trains are highly reliable throughout most of Europe, except when there's a strike on, but those are *relatively* infrequent, even if they are disruptive when they happen. In places like Italy and Spain trains get delayed but, that's not necessarily a railway problem, that's the nature of the country you're in (India, where I live nowadays, is the same or worse).
On the other hand, trains in Scandinavia are top-notch, fairly reasonably priced (arguably cheaper per KM than Germany) and well used. Austrian, Czech and Ukrainian trains are reasonably comfortable, not too expensive and for the most part seemed reasonably well used....Anyway, in all countries the railways are built with tax money (not much isn't) but the roads are too - not just with your municipal/federal taxes but at least in Germany the cost of your TUV certificates, insurances and tax from petrol and everything else all contribute to keeping those magical autobahns in service.
Perhaps the government has no place in being an ISP, but building a Layer 2 network - on which private ISPs can sell their services (not unlike the way NBNs are being done in Australia and NZ) and compete on stuff like, you know, quality of service/customer support - is a good idea.
In addition, it also means that any and all ISPs have nationwide infrastructure available to them and can service any household in the country and what service(s) you can get are no longer dictated by your address. Shifting house is also less cumbersome because you can stay with your existing provider (if you wish) and therefore don't have to change details like phone numbers (assuming you're not moving to another city/state unless your provider is able to allocate you a non-geographic number like what they have in France and Japan at least) or learn a new remote control and such.
In a situation like this one, it becomes such that the government can't really censor the people and tramp on your rights because all they're doing is laying dumb pipes, it would be up to them to convince the ISPs in question to censor subscribers as they see fit (whether by saying "please censor this for whatever reason" or forcing it to be done legally as they already do, as in, obliging ISPs to censor illegal materials like CP and whatnot - and by illegal, I mean criminally illegal, not civilly "illegal" as in the copyright folks will have a problem).
Had something like this happen to me in Helsinki, too.
One time got a call from my downstairs neighbour (how she got my number I have no idea) complaining about noise in my flat. I was out of town at the time so said "Well, if there's noise in my flat, please call the police for me as I must be being burgled". And hung up.
Another time I woke up to torches being shined through my 4th floor window. While I was sleeping. Opened the window and asked what the problem was and was told I was making too much noise, so I said "If I was making so much noise, why didn't you even come up and knock on my door?" (There was noise but it was coming from another building a block away).
She found other things to complain about too - and called the police on several occasions complaining about everything from TV noise (didn't own one for a start, but Finland also has laws relating to reasonable hours and stuff) to being too loud on the stairs (I'm not a large person, but apparently I should have been taking off my shoes in the lobby and tip-toeing up the stairs in socks) - but the police were always on my side... it was only after several months when she called the landlord that I was eventually forced out.
Guess that's why the rent on that place was so cheap (considering the property value in the area).
I'm a foreigner living in India, and presentation skills are not a strong point of... well... almost anyone... because most people don't have to make presentations, and it's not really taught here.
Forgetting the language/accent issues (I can deal with those), often they're just incredibly boring - I've had to fight the urge to fall asleep at almost every conference I've been to - there's no charisma at all and they frequently ramble on about nothing.
Those that can present well were often educated overseas, and the resulting hierarchy/society, unfortunately, reflects it: those that got the advantage to begin with keep their advantage and those that learn from these local guys that teach you to "speak like James Bond" (yes, seriously - http://goo.gl/GRQoK), well... you get where I'm going.
To add insult to injury, I've also seen people try to fit WAY too much stuff on to each slide (8 point text even on a large projected screen is still damn near impossible to read), though this isn't strictly limited to India - I've seen this in the west as well.
To be frank, any western company that chooses to outsource certain facilities (call centres and in a lot of cases, manufacturing) to India is idiotic and is unlikely to actually save money in the long run. While they might be outwardly known for a good work ethic, my experience in living here, setting up and running a company I set up here (I am a westerner myself) is entirely different.
People in this country will strike at the drop of a hat, political parties will force shops to close seemingly at random (by force, I mean come around with weapons ranging from sticks to guns and threaten, cajole and beat anyone who refuses) and there are festivals for some minority or another seemingly 3 or 4 times a week.
There's no accountability, they're prone to saying "yes" to pretty much everything but most of all... the majority of them are simply slack, especially young graduates - many of whom are unemployable, even fresh out of college.
I instituted a policy in my company of refusing to hire anyone who comes from an IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) because they have this "I'm better than you" complex and a sense of entitlement I've not even seen in the west - they want to be paid western wages even though they just don't actually know anything (the sales pitch for the college said they would make this kind of money) and I've had graduates of IITs who were unable to tell me such simple things like how much bandwidth standard old GPON has (something pretty important to us). At that point I handed them back their CV and told them straight up they had zero chance of working for me.
I have no problem with paying people well for doing a good job - and I do pay above average (the examples above are, while not embellished, a little on the extreme side) - but getting people who will do a good job here? That's an incredible challenge - the signal to noise ratio here is definitely way higher here than anywhere in Europe or Australasia (I've never lived or worked in America so I can't comment on that).
In some countries (like India), it also comes down to a legal issue. ISPs are required to identify who is on the network, and if everyone is hidden behind NAT, that identification can't be made and/or if a crime is committed (whether calling one of the Gandhi family a naughty name or making fun of the chief minister of West Bengal - or something, you know, actually criminal), then there are certain requirements that have to be met for those people to be traced, otherwise you've got anything from 254 to several million potential violators to choose from and no suitably easy way to identify which person it was, so unless the ISP is prepared to block at least a couple of hundred customers from accessing the net while something was being investigated (not likely) then you need to use public IPs.
I would also point out that India (in particular) has a very very small number of IPs compared to some other countries in the region (0.03 per capita) yet some other countries (*cough* USA *cough*) has what... 5.5 IPs per capita? And some other countries have 2-3 IP addresses per capita. Why? Surely not that many are required, are they? Really?
How long ago was this? I also used to live there and I've never seen the city covered in ash - in my lifetime (since the mid-80's). During the last major eruptions in the 90's it all went north-east over the Bay of Plenty and missed the Waikato basin completely... even Auckland got more fallout than Hamilton did thanks to dispersion in the wind.
Someone else may be more of an expert by if I'm not mistaken, European standards are more strict than US standards, so, yes, probably some cars do get better mileage in Europe.
I'm aware of the Bible Belt and the Mason-Dixon line and all of that other nonsense you United Statians have, but I just pointing out that Georgia etc could very well be considered the "Bible Belt" of Europe (or Asia, depending on whether you want to go by race or geography):)
Slashdot Mirror
No. http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3154149&cid=41579425 and http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3154149&cid=41579539
1. There's virtually no QOS here anyway. I get dropped calls even outside in a residential area.
2. http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3154149&cid=41579425 and http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3154149&cid=41579539
If the Indians get their way and say "everything is data" and start charging a flat monthly fee and only capping your top speed (i.e. you get less top speed for less money, should you be skint), only the greedy shareholders would have something to moan about.
No no no. They won't change how voice is delivered. Remember, this is INDIA we're talking about. The vast majority of people are on domestically made phones that cost like, $10 or if they're really after a status symbol, the Nokia 1110 - that sort of thing. All they're saying is that voice calling will become free and data/value services would be the sources of revenue.
http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3154149&cid=41579425
I think you're misunderstanding. They're not going to be delivering voice as data. Voice and data remain separate as you know them, there's no VOIP implementation going on.
It's that voice calling becomes free of charge and operators are only able to charge for data and other value added services. See http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3154149&cid=41579425 for more.
Modern network: Kinda. We only got 3G here in 2010.
Honest: No.
Completely IP on the inside: mmmmm... to a point, but not as much as you might think. The legal framework actually introduces a lot of technical inefficiencies because streams have to be converted multiple times to get from A to B and it's led to, frankly, shit quality. Can't even keep a stable call in some parts of Mumbai (where I live).
Build costs: Cheaper than some countries.
Spectrum: Expensive, but considering the size of the audience, probably justified.
ARPU: Only about US$4 according to some companies.
Unsustainable: Definitely.
The other thing is that people still expect "unlimited" data on 3G, so what so often happens is people buy x amount of gigabytes and then they get reduced in speed to 128k or something thereafter - but even at 128k with the kind of population densities we're talking about the networks are choked all the time.
Source: In the industry, in India... just not in cellular services. Not even remotely interested.
Except this is not what is being suggested. VOIP is basically illegal in India (though the regulations are being changed for Mukesh Ambani's LTE service over which he wants to allow voice, which under the current legal framework he can't, so... being a multi-billionaire and whatnot, he's having the law changed).
What is being suggested is that calling goes down from it's current rates of 30-80 paise (that's 0.3 to 0.8 rupees**) per minute - although, most plans are pay per second now, with most operators charging 1.2 paise per second - yes, Indians really are that cheap - to zero, and the companies should only make their revenue from charging for data.
Since only a small percentage of people actually use (or are able to use) data on their phones, two things could happen if this goes ahead:
1. Minimum monthly plans are introduced as mandatory which will include data to cover the cost of the minutes.
2. Data prices will go up and become even more convoluted and confusing than they already are. Currently 1GB at 3G speeds costs something like Rs250-300 though if you buy a lot that could potentially go down to as low as Rs100/GB, whereas on 2G a typical rate is Rs98 for 2GB of data. I don't get it either, but they do price differently for 2G/3G data. Probably because 2G is completely unusable - can barely even receive emails on 2G.
While I'm sure the scheme is intended to bring cellular service to even more of India's poor, both of these would potentially bring the cost of owning a mobile up and thus actually taking the service out of the hands of the people for whom the scheme is intended to benefit - as is so often the case here. Plus, all the major telcos are so heavily in debt (ESPECIALLY the government telcos) they can't really afford to do this anyway, in my opinion.
(**current exchange rate 1 rupee = US$0.019, so basically, calls cost all of around 1.6 cents a minute here).
You're kidding, right? I carry as many as 6 (yes, 6) hard drives through customers all the time - both in and out of caddies. One time I went from India through a bunch of airports and border crossings in the Caucasus (Istanbul, Kiev, Tbilisi - those kinds of places) with 4 hard drives in a shoebox (each surrounded by foam).
Done the same thing through most of Asia (Singapore, HK, various airports in Japan...)
Frankly, they cared more about the gold medallion I was carrying than the hard drives and I think the one time I was asked "what are those" the person understood what I meant when I said "they're hard drives".
You can't even get in to an airport in India without having (at the very least, your e-ticket) printed out - even the small ones - making it impossible to book at the counter if you need to fly somewhere on short notice (been there, done that) or don't have a printer (more likely) because you're a tourist (been there done that too, but even though I live here now, I still don't own one, and yes, I could pop down to any one of the misspelled shops with the word "Xerox" spelled incorrectly and print the thing out but that's not always an option, either - whether because of the time of day or because you don't want your email password to be compromised by logging in on some 7-year old badly maintained, spyware and virus ridden but still somehow barely working machine).
And when you do get in to the airport, prepared to be frisked between 1 and 5 times depending on the size of the airport. And lots of queueing. So much queueing the British would look jealously on at how much queueing there is... only here it's less orderly.
Yeah, the TSA has nothing on India when it comes to security (theatre, at least - it rarely actually stops anything), but despite this? Still not looking forward to flying to the US any time soon.
I've found it easier to just have someone else to decide what I wear, how I wear it, what type of haircut I get, when to get my nails cut, what soaps, shampoos and moisturisers to use... She knows all my measurements, what scents work, what colour ties work with which shirts and won't wash my face out or whatever. I haven't had to worry about anything except occasionally giving her money to buy me more stuff in nearly 4 years.
Someone in this position probably has a PA, Secretary or Wife who can do this, and for the women in power, they probably have one or more (more often than not) gay men at their disposal. Nobody at the top has an excuse for not looking good.
Thanks AC, but I'm not a Muslim. I merely live in an area which has Muslims, Christians and Hindus mixed in with one-another - and I don't belong to either religions.
I'm all for mocking religion - including Islam - and I'd love it if they could take jokes in the jovial way in which they were intended... however, perhaps they are not ready yet. Imagine if you were mocking Christianity 400 years ago - you'd probably have been hanged for it.
The point I was trying to make is that all these "Muslims" who are saying "kill the guy because he insulted us" are demonstrably UN-Muslim in their words and actions and if anything, they should want to kill the guy for distributing a movie with such poor production quality. Seriously, where do I apply to get my ~14 minutes back?
Sorry sorry sorry, did you say delays? In Germany? Nein nein nein!! Das ist verboten!! The crew would be shot :P
However, at the same time, Germany is a (comparatively) small country compared to, say, the US. Germans, being the stereotypically efficient folks that they are, have worked out that they can probably can get from Frankfurt to Berlin by car faster than they can by train - and it's less hassle than a plane (while I seem to recall Berlins airports being all accessible by train, they're not as well connected as Frankfurt)... but distance is comparable to what... DC to NYC? (I'm guessing wildly here), so it becomes a matter of value/time. No tolls on Autobahns (unlike, say, France and Spain) so driving is perhaps cheaper too, even with the taxes... and so on. But that doesn't mean the German rail network isn't brilliant.
Germany is a great country to go through, so for getting from point A to point B (say, Paris to Vienna - even though I assume this isn't what you mean by tourist**) it's a great option as opposed to flying shitty budget airlines.
And if you don't appreciate it, come to where I currently live (India) - or try my homeland (NZ), where the problem is basically the same: a small island country which you can drive major centre to major centre in ~8 hours even at 100km/h, thus, trains are grossly underused and the roads, similarly free of tolls, are preferred due in part to the pricing but also the scheduling.
**Also, I spent too long in Europe to be a mere tourist.
I live among Muslims, in a country with THE single largest Muslim population in the world, and while we didn't see too many riots as a result of this film (though we had some a few weeks ago under different auspices), there were a lot of people who were confused, if not a little on edge because of it, BUT, before you go spouting horseshit about Mohammed, please check your facts.
All religions that centre around an idol which is inherently fallible (whether Christianity, Islam, Hinduism or whatever) are centred on something that is not perfect. If one is to argue that Mohammed was a pedo or whatever then fine, Jesus hung out with prostitutes and the Hindu god Shiva smoked weed.
At the end of the day? Who really gives a shit.
Frankly, the only problem I have with Muslims at the moment is that they don't follow their own spiritual guides (that is, the Q'uran). For a religion whose default greeting is "As Salamu Alaykum" (peace be with you) saying anything about "death to this" and "we hate that" is really un-Islamic - perhaps even to the point where hatred of someone who has wronged you is the opposite of what Islam is all about and those who have reacted this way should not call themselves Muslim nor should they be included by us ignorant westerners as such.
(That being said, many religious people don't follow their spiritual teachings - Christians, Jews, Hindus - hell, even the Dalai Lama (who as a Buddhist should be strictly vegetarian) eats chicken.
This whole movie thing is a load of horseshit. I wanted to gouge my own eyes out not because of the content of the film but because of it's complete and utter shittiness. It was one of the stupidest things I've seen in my entire life and if I could charge this guy for the time I spent watching that film, I totally would.
Similarly, I also wish I could mod you up to +10. See my comment below.
...you should come to India - for some STUPID reason everyone seems to model their ideas on how great American broadband is, and then do it only about 10% as well.
Moreover, regulations are created in such a way that it often seems like a race to the bottom... and the amount of crappy advertising I see here is nothing short of hilarious. People here think 2mbits is "lightening fast" and even most of those who are offering FTTH services are still only offering 512k-2mbit/s services for the most part - or you get 10mbit/s for like 25GB then throttled.
WTH are you talking about? I've been all over Europe in both trains and cars (even drove right in to central Asia from Germany once) and very little of what you're saying is true.
Buses are reasonably common in Germany and regular people use the railways all the time. DB even has special weekend passes where you can pretty much have unlimited travel in Germany for 35 Euros (granted, these are for slow trains and this was ~5 years ago so the price is probably different nowadays)... this alone seems a little contradictory to your "large parts of Germany" statement, but it would seem you can get to most of Germany fairly easily - but if you just want to get from A to B, the high-speed trains are there.
In most countries ticket prices are the same or less than driving - last time I drove from Nice to Barcelona the cost of tolls was similar to the cost of the actual petrol and not so far removed from the price of the train ticket (for comparison, I did the same route a month later by train). Moreover, the trains are highly reliable throughout most of Europe, except when there's a strike on, but those are *relatively* infrequent, even if they are disruptive when they happen. In places like Italy and Spain trains get delayed but, that's not necessarily a railway problem, that's the nature of the country you're in (India, where I live nowadays, is the same or worse).
On the other hand, trains in Scandinavia are top-notch, fairly reasonably priced (arguably cheaper per KM than Germany) and well used. Austrian, Czech and Ukrainian trains are reasonably comfortable, not too expensive and for the most part seemed reasonably well used. ...Anyway, in all countries the railways are built with tax money (not much isn't) but the roads are too - not just with your municipal/federal taxes but at least in Germany the cost of your TUV certificates, insurances and tax from petrol and everything else all contribute to keeping those magical autobahns in service.
Perhaps the government has no place in being an ISP, but building a Layer 2 network - on which private ISPs can sell their services (not unlike the way NBNs are being done in Australia and NZ) and compete on stuff like, you know, quality of service/customer support - is a good idea.
In addition, it also means that any and all ISPs have nationwide infrastructure available to them and can service any household in the country and what service(s) you can get are no longer dictated by your address. Shifting house is also less cumbersome because you can stay with your existing provider (if you wish) and therefore don't have to change details like phone numbers (assuming you're not moving to another city/state unless your provider is able to allocate you a non-geographic number like what they have in France and Japan at least) or learn a new remote control and such.
In a situation like this one, it becomes such that the government can't really censor the people and tramp on your rights because all they're doing is laying dumb pipes, it would be up to them to convince the ISPs in question to censor subscribers as they see fit (whether by saying "please censor this for whatever reason" or forcing it to be done legally as they already do, as in, obliging ISPs to censor illegal materials like CP and whatnot - and by illegal, I mean criminally illegal, not civilly "illegal" as in the copyright folks will have a problem).
Had something like this happen to me in Helsinki, too.
One time got a call from my downstairs neighbour (how she got my number I have no idea) complaining about noise in my flat. I was out of town at the time so said "Well, if there's noise in my flat, please call the police for me as I must be being burgled". And hung up.
Another time I woke up to torches being shined through my 4th floor window. While I was sleeping. Opened the window and asked what the problem was and was told I was making too much noise, so I said "If I was making so much noise, why didn't you even come up and knock on my door?" (There was noise but it was coming from another building a block away).
She found other things to complain about too - and called the police on several occasions complaining about everything from TV noise (didn't own one for a start, but Finland also has laws relating to reasonable hours and stuff) to being too loud on the stairs (I'm not a large person, but apparently I should have been taking off my shoes in the lobby and tip-toeing up the stairs in socks) - but the police were always on my side... it was only after several months when she called the landlord that I was eventually forced out.
Guess that's why the rent on that place was so cheap (considering the property value in the area).
I'm a foreigner living in India, and presentation skills are not a strong point of... well... almost anyone... because most people don't have to make presentations, and it's not really taught here.
Forgetting the language/accent issues (I can deal with those), often they're just incredibly boring - I've had to fight the urge to fall asleep at almost every conference I've been to - there's no charisma at all and they frequently ramble on about nothing.
Those that can present well were often educated overseas, and the resulting hierarchy/society, unfortunately, reflects it: those that got the advantage to begin with keep their advantage and those that learn from these local guys that teach you to "speak like James Bond" (yes, seriously - http://goo.gl/GRQoK), well... you get where I'm going.
To add insult to injury, I've also seen people try to fit WAY too much stuff on to each slide (8 point text even on a large projected screen is still damn near impossible to read), though this isn't strictly limited to India - I've seen this in the west as well.
Anyone who outsources to India is not doing themselves or customers any favours. There are unions aplenty here, actually and they strike at the drop of a hat - http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3120989&cid=41372899
Anyone who outsources to India is not doing themselves any favours - http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3120989&cid=41372899
To be frank, any western company that chooses to outsource certain facilities (call centres and in a lot of cases, manufacturing) to India is idiotic and is unlikely to actually save money in the long run. While they might be outwardly known for a good work ethic, my experience in living here, setting up and running a company I set up here (I am a westerner myself) is entirely different.
People in this country will strike at the drop of a hat, political parties will force shops to close seemingly at random (by force, I mean come around with weapons ranging from sticks to guns and threaten, cajole and beat anyone who refuses) and there are festivals for some minority or another seemingly 3 or 4 times a week.
There's no accountability, they're prone to saying "yes" to pretty much everything but most of all... the majority of them are simply slack, especially young graduates - many of whom are unemployable, even fresh out of college.
I instituted a policy in my company of refusing to hire anyone who comes from an IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) because they have this "I'm better than you" complex and a sense of entitlement I've not even seen in the west - they want to be paid western wages even though they just don't actually know anything (the sales pitch for the college said they would make this kind of money) and I've had graduates of IITs who were unable to tell me such simple things like how much bandwidth standard old GPON has (something pretty important to us). At that point I handed them back their CV and told them straight up they had zero chance of working for me.
I have no problem with paying people well for doing a good job - and I do pay above average (the examples above are, while not embellished, a little on the extreme side) - but getting people who will do a good job here? That's an incredible challenge - the signal to noise ratio here is definitely way higher here than anywhere in Europe or Australasia (I've never lived or worked in America so I can't comment on that).
In some countries (like India), it also comes down to a legal issue. ISPs are required to identify who is on the network, and if everyone is hidden behind NAT, that identification can't be made and/or if a crime is committed (whether calling one of the Gandhi family a naughty name or making fun of the chief minister of West Bengal - or something, you know, actually criminal), then there are certain requirements that have to be met for those people to be traced, otherwise you've got anything from 254 to several million potential violators to choose from and no suitably easy way to identify which person it was, so unless the ISP is prepared to block at least a couple of hundred customers from accessing the net while something was being investigated (not likely) then you need to use public IPs.
I would also point out that India (in particular) has a very very small number of IPs compared to some other countries in the region (0.03 per capita) yet some other countries (*cough* USA *cough*) has what... 5.5 IPs per capita? And some other countries have 2-3 IP addresses per capita. Why? Surely not that many are required, are they? Really?
http://www.bgpexpert.com/addressespercountry.php
How long ago was this? I also used to live there and I've never seen the city covered in ash - in my lifetime (since the mid-80's). During the last major eruptions in the 90's it all went north-east over the Bay of Plenty and missed the Waikato basin completely... even Auckland got more fallout than Hamilton did thanks to dispersion in the wind.
Someone else may be more of an expert by if I'm not mistaken, European standards are more strict than US standards, so, yes, probably some cars do get better mileage in Europe.
As for citations, this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmxUsGiGp3w may be of interest to you.
I'm aware of the Bible Belt and the Mason-Dixon line and all of that other nonsense you United Statians have, but I just pointing out that Georgia etc could very well be considered the "Bible Belt" of Europe (or Asia, depending on whether you want to go by race or geography) :)