

The Irksome Cellphone Industry - dangoldin
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/technology/personaltech/23pogue.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss

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plkjysfrtdhn
It also suggests that the NYT intern that wrote this has very little idea
about phone companies.

>DOUBLE BILLING In Europe calls to cell phones (from landlines) cost the
caller 5-10x as much as calls to another landline - local calls on landlines
aren't free. Because of this cell phones have special numbers so the caller
knows it's a cell phone. So you can't have a cell phone with a local exchange
number. Which means you don;t have the wholesale replacement of home phones
with cell phones in europe. Many people there are campaigning for the US
system of cell phone owner pays.

INTERNATIONAL CALLS: The reason your call to Greenland costs $3/min is that
the Greenland state telephone company is charging them this. It's also the
reason that calls to say the UK cost less than to geographically closer
countries in S America and why calls to the 3rd world cost a fortune. For a
lot of countries 'settlement charges' are their main source of hard currency.

THE SUBSIDY GAME Have they not heard of interest? Of return on investment?
Perhaps not, perhaps they built a new office block in NY because they assumed
they simply paid back a fraction of the cost each month until the capital was
repaid.

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tome
I don't know anyone in Europe who'd like the US system of cell phone owner
pays. In fact, quite the opposite: I imagine everyone I know, without
exception, would hate it.

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incomethax
Open Question to HN: How would you go about making a cellphone company that
could both make a good network and not treat its customers terribly?

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madh
You need spectrum. Those with spectrum have all the power and can do
essentially whatever they want. The FCC could step in and regulate this or
that but I wouldn't count on that happening too soon.

This is why it's a shame that Google didn't go for a win in the wireless
spectrum last year. $5 bn would have been worth it and put Android on a whole
other level, IMHO. Maybe they were worried about anti-trust scrutiny.

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seldo
The most interesting thing about this article to me is that the author has
linked to another site using a visible bit.ly link -- literally "One blogger
(<http://bit.ly/gHkES>) calculated...". It suggests some disconnect between
the NYTimes journalist and the technology he's using.

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erikwiffin
we do that at my newspaper because it's an easy way to track outbound links.
sure we could set up our own outbound redirection thingy, but bit.ly is _les
cool_ and we have other things to work on.

~~~
seldo
You could also use awe.sm to set up a redirector on a domain of your choice,
which is pretty cheap and looks more professional than a generic shortener
(disclosure: I know the founder).

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duckbridge
Although I think it's a good thing for congress to help us out with things
like this every now and then, the author's list of gripes are a bit much. I
think congress has better things to do.

