Why Everyone Should Hate Cellphone Carriers 329
The Byelorrusian Spamtrap writes "Wired Magazine's made its position clear on the state of play in America's cellular industry, delivering a long, satisfying screed on why all of us should stop complaining and do something about it. 'They own politicians - Sure, it's just phones. In a world where worse things happen all the time amid the muck and despair of human existence, having to pay for premium text is hardly worth worrying about, is it? You can (and should) opt out, and not sign on the dotted line to begin with. But today's cell towers might be tomorrow's Pony Express: they're TV stations, internet access, emergency 911 and news networks all rolled into one. WWAN could well end up supplanting copper sooner than anyone expects: do you want these companies in charge of it?'"
you could make it a flowchart (Score:5, Funny)
That depends. Are you paris hilton? If yes, then yes.
Well of course (Score:2, Interesting)
If municiple wifi becomes a reality, so does their chance to make insane and obscene profit. Sure, it sucks for "we the people", but conservatives don't care, they are too busy spewing their anti-Americ
Re:Well of course (Score:5, Interesting)
Buy a Broadband connection, then put a WIFI router on your main router's DMZ and let the folks know that service might be intermittent, but they can hit that router for (or negotiate a group rate with friends and neighbors, you maintain the power bill and the hardware and keep the big public WIFI router on a DMZ, etc.)
If every neighbor in the area with broadband provides a WIFI network (I even put up a SQUID cache server in the old days) you can actually provide "municipal" wifi without needing the government to get involved.
If you get to KNOW your neighbors before letting them have the WIFI WPA access key, then you can truly "secure" your network by knowing, A, who's logged in, and B, whom it is that you're sharing your data with.
And technically, you can do whatever you damn please with the connection, especially if you run a cache server to keep things clear. Discussing other features (such as data retention policy or lack thereof, etc, will help keep things honest...) I have known of NO endeavors ever done by big corporations (child of government) or the government itself that has EVER been honest, whether here in North America, or anywhere else.
To believe that gov'co ever does ANYTHING without having ulterior motives, is to be starkly and childishly naive.
Re:Well of course (Score:4, Insightful)
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Actually it's 'tubes'.
Yes! (Score:3, Funny)
How about the source of the problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
HOW ABOUT PUNISH THE POLITCIANS!? I'm so sick of people repeatedly voting in incumbents, then whining about how things never change, and they're just all so corrupt. Vote for an independent, hell, write in yourself, but don't whine that you'd just be *wasting a vote*, and continue to support people who are not serving you! Then tell people they should live the life of a hermit to *stick it to the man*. It is NOT the corporations fault that they attempt to maximize profits. That is the job of a public company. Our government allowing them to do so through shady practices is a problem with the GOVERNMENT!
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Re:How about the source of the problem... (Score:4, Insightful)
Scam Industries:
1) Telecom
2) Health-Care
3) Personal Banking
feel free to add to the list.
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In fact, I would argue that by knowingly supporting a company involved in corruption while chastising others for not punishing corruption in government would make someone a hypocrite.
Re:How about the source of the problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no false dichotomy there, at least not in the real world. Many people who choose to live in society, and have a job, may require wireless telephone service. This means they'll have to support a company involved in corruption, because there's no other choice (all the companies in this cartel are corrupt, after all). The only organization that can do anything about it is the government, which is also corrupt, but is under control (theoretically) of the voters, if they would bother to vote intelligently. The only alternative is to simply not use cellular service, which may cause much worse problems socially for any individual who tries this approach.
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What's sad is that there are a lot of smart people in America who are either blinded by religion and this code of morals/ethics attached to it, or they too have lost hope and couldn't be bothered to vote. And thus I give to you.... America!
I vote. And I vote my conscience after lear
Re:How about the source of the problem... (Score:4, Insightful)
I do too, at least I do my best in doing so. However, it doesn't help much voting for Candidate B when everyone else is voting for Candidate A. (It's even worse if you vote for Candidate C.) You can't control everyone else when we all have equal votes. You can try to make noise about it, raise awareness, etc., but in the end, if everyone else makes the wrong choice, you're stuck with it.
A lot of Slashdotters really don't seem to understand this concept, judging by the responses to my post here.
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You can't control everyone else when we all have equal votes. You can try to make noise about it, raise awareness, etc., but in the end, if everyone else makes the wrong choice, you're stuck with it.
A lot of Slashdotters really don't seem to understand this concept, judging by the responses to my post here.
Idealists. They can be exasperating. For the most part, their notions of the ideal world we should be working towards are prefaced with "If only everyone would...". Well, the problem with idealists is that they don;t realize that everyone NEVER will.
Re:How about the source of the problem... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How about the source of the problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the "real world" people get along just fine without cell phones.
Many people have jobs which require them to be on call. What would you say to them? Quit? I guess you don't really want medical care, right?
In the "real world" people make ethical decisions for their company every single day even when the "real world" makes that supposedly impossible.
What does this have to do with anything? I never advocated making unethical decisions while on the job.
However, lots of companies make unethical decisions all the time, and there's nothing you can do about it.
In the "real world" people get the companies they pay for and the government they deserve.
Maybe so, at the societal level, but at the individual level, there's nothing you can do about what everyone else does. You can become a hermit if you wish.
In the "real world" not everyone waffles on their principles because they are afraid or because someone waives a dollar under their nose.
Right, those are the hermits. Everyone else has to compromise because they have to live in a society with other people, who don't abide by the same principles. Do you buy services from any large, evil company like Comcast, Cox, Verizon, etc.? After all, you're here on Slashdot, so I presume you have an internet service provider. Well, you just compromised on principles by buying from a company with poor ethics. Do you grow your own food? If not, you're probably buying from some large agribusiness with poor ethics. I can cite lots of other examples.
And in the "real world" claiming something is unavoidable and not in our control (especially when we're funding it!) is just a way to apologize for our own hypocrisy.
So you think you're not a hypocrite? How do you explain your post here? You're using the products and services of large companies which have committed ethical transgressions in the interest of profit. It sounds like you're the hypocrite.
Re:How about the source of the problem... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:How about the source of the problem... (Score:5, Interesting)
You say that as if there is any other kind of corporation. Seriously, if you were to opt out of the services of every corporation that has politicians in it's pocket you would be so alienated from society as to be unable to affect any change with-in society. To put it in concrete terms, how are you going to have a house without a bank account? How are you going to have a job without any telephone number? How are you going to vote when you are an unemployed homeless person?
Corruption is one of the prices we pay for having such a large society. Even if all corporations and government entities had wonderful transparency there would be an unfeasible amount of oversight needed to prevent corruption. Here is an excerpt from an article that explains "Why big things fail":
So preventing corruption in our international mega-corps and our global military and our world police government is about as likely as finding a Humpback Whale with no barnacles. It's never going to happen because we are too big to find and reach all of the parasites.
Our best chance at lowering corruption and improving the average citizen's voice in government would be to break up our behemoth government by transferring most of the budget and power to the individual States. But with that transition we would be sacrificing our superpower status and the Federal level players wil never willingly let that happen.
Re:How about the source of the problem... (Score:4, Interesting)
The main problem is that empires are backed by industrial power. Waging war requires a lot of goods. While the United States economy still produces a lot of military equipment (bullets & bombs, cruise missiles, airplanes & helicopters, etc), production of other goods required to support the economy has shifted over the past 30+ years to other countries: Japan, Mexico, Taiwan, China, etc. The trade deficit has risen concurrently with the shift to offshore production. Trade is fine, as long as it's a two-way street. As it is, the U.S. has been freeloading for a generation, and the piper always gets his due.
This was fine as long as Japan/et al could use their surplus dollars to buy Crude Oil. But now more and more oil-producing countries are accepting (and preferring) Euros/Yen/etc for their product, and are divesting themselves of their dollar holdings. See Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hitman [economichitman.com] on how the Feral Government enlisted the Saudi royal family's help in establishing the Petro-Dollar, to help finance their push for Empire. (Saudis bought U.S. Treasuries with all the excess dollars they had).
There was a recession from March-November of 2001. It was caused by Bill Clinton's dismantling of the economy via NAFTA, and the dot-com bubble. Instead of having an orderly restructuring of the economy, GWB, Alan Greenspan and the U.S. Congress worked together to blow an even bigger bubble in the nation's housing markets.
Anyways, the housing market has now 'popped', and it's all downhill for the Empire from here on out. This is a good thing, as the Feral Government's Perpetual War sucks money from the middle class and redistributes it to Wall Street and the Military-Industrial Complex.
Not to imply that the Neoconvicts aren't still a loose cannon. I guess Darth Cheney is gaga over nuking Iran - see Esquire's recent piece, The Secret History of the Impending War with Iran That the White House Doesn't Want You to Know [esquire.com]. If Cheney/et al are successful in turning their 'wet dream' into reality, it'll just be that much more Karma that We The People will have to meet, and the depression will be that much worse ('cause China/Russia are fully capable of bitchslapping our now-hollow economy).
Save America: Help Ron Paul [ronpaul2008.com], he's our only hope. As the economy tanks over the course of the coming year, Ron Paul's support will continue to grow, while the rest of the Republicrat candidates will have to buy their support one vote at a time.
Re:How about the source of the problem... (Score:5, Funny)
Looks like somebody just made it onto the terrorist watch list...
Re:How about the source of the problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
Incumbents don't lose [slashdot.org]. 93% of House elections (and something like 96% of state legislative elections) were decided shortly after the 2000 census. Voting doesn't matter, with the possible exception of the party primaries (since the parties function as kingmakers).
"Vote for an independent,"
Also doesn't work. [wikipedia.org]
"write in yourself,"
Even if you did live in a state that allowed write-in candidates and you filed the necessary paperwork (and paid the necessary fees) to be counted as a write-in candidate, we still have a plurality voting system. If every person who normally didn't vote went in next year to vote for themselves, the results would not be different.
"but don't whine that you'd just be *wasting a vote*"
"Whine?" It's essentially a mathetmatical certainty. Rhetoric doesn't trump political science demonstrated by centuries of practical examples.
"Our government allowing them to do so through shady practices is a problem with the GOVERNMENT!"
Yeah, OK, go start the revolution, then. We'll be right behind you.
Re:How about the source of the problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How about the source of the problem... (Score:4, Insightful)
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That's not a problem. That's the first step to any hope of accomplishing anything useful politically in the USA.
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I've voted in elections where only 25% of registered voters showed up. That means my vote was worth 4 votes. Assuming you're registered, my voice had 4 times the clout because people like you didn't bother voting. But that's only counting registered, not *eligible* voters who never bothered to even register! In that case, my vote was worth much more than 4.
When you don't vote, my voice gets heard even more, and I'm more likely to get what I want. You may agree with my
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No, it doesn't. The winner is chosen by who has a plurality of the ballots cast. The only way your vote would be "worth 4 votes" is if the election turn-out dropped 75%
"Assuming you're registered, my voice had 4 times the clout because people like you didn't bother voting."
And your voice will be a part of the (average) 40% of voters who didn't vote for the local incumbent/local majority party/whatever. Who you vote for doesn't mater when the party faithful have been
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Perhaps sitting silently with no representation is the form of democracy that you prefer. I prefer to participate.
Re:How about the source of the problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
Incumbents don't lose [slashdot.org]. 93% of House elections (and something like 96% of state legislative elections) were decided shortly after the 2000 census. Voting doesn't matter, with the possible exception of the party primaries (since the parties function as kingmakers).
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If you don't have an overwhelmingly compelling reason to vote for the incumbent, you should vote against him/her, even if you think the other guy is a bad choice. You can always vote him out next election. He won't have the chance to do much harm in one term. The longer a person is in the legislature the more harm he/she can do.
I wish i had a mod point for you. I have this view as well, I wish we limited terms as well but that'd be a much more active stance on the issue. This may not work anyways if the party leadership was too powerful - or should I have said "since the party leadership is too powerful."
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The vast majority of elections in this country consist of two candidates. After that come the ones with only one candidate. The number of elections where third parties have the ability to get their candidates on the ballot is smaller even than that. The result of your philosophy is to replace the Replublocrat with a Demican.
Even if there are more than two candidates on the ballot, if the "vote the bastard out" p
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If the way we count votes is broken, we can change it from plurality voting to something that actually would work [condorcet.org]
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If the way we count votes is broken, we can change it from plurality voting to something that actually would work"
Collect a few thousand signatures to get a constitutional amendment proposition in your state's next election. Then find a way to convince several million eligible voters who tend not to vote to vote in favor of your proposition, because the people who do already vote will be against it (as they have a vested intere
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Voting doesn't matter? Because people vote in a way that you don't like? I don't think that one necessarily follows from the other. It shouldn't be surprising that most the time people will vote for the same person in election N that they voted f
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The simple solution to this, though hard to achieve, is independents in each state need to unite and compel their states to allow independents to have their own primary. Basically any independent or third party should be able to get on the independent primary ballot. You would want a low but achievable bar, some thousands of dollars or thousands of petition signatures, to get on the ballot
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I seem to recall almost that exact scenario happening in November 2000. But Al Gore isn't stupid, so he didn't make a big stink, he made a concession speach. Why? Because all-hell-breaking-loose is going to result in a reorganization of this country's power structure, and anyone with enough clout to get their name on the ballot ha
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Cell phones are not essential to your existence, They are nice to have but life doesn't stop without them. To continue to support a company that engages in overtly illegal practices is not productive. Companies that do
Universal law of disdain (Score:5, Funny)
Will cell providers failed miserably like P.E.? (Score:5, Funny)
Probably not. While an exciting and deadly ride for its employees, the Pony Express was an abysmal failure as a business. It went bankrupt in just a matter of months as I recall. I see the cell phone companies neither providing exciting, deadly rides nor going out of business in a hurry.
Re:Will cell providers failed miserably like P.E.? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Will cell providers failed miserably like P.E.? (Score:5, Funny)
Damn, exactly how old ARE you?
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You haven't been the rider when the driver is on a cell phone have you?
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you've never watched and idiot talking on his cellphone drive right through and arrow board in a construction zone and kill 4 construction workers then. I did not see it, I saw the aftermath as I drove by at 2 miles per hour.
Cellphones + low IQ idiots Traveling at high rates of speed = Exciting deadly rides.
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Yep. It was introduced 6 months before the transcontinental telegraph line was completed. Turns out the horses couldn't keep up...
A Scary Monopoly (Score:4, Insightful)
I doubt carriers could suddenly gain control over all of these things, but it is something that needs to be avoided, however it may happen. The real reasons that would be a problem lie in their customer relations practices.
A billing error that can't be fixed at local stores, and the subscriber is forced to lead resolution of the issue while waiting on hold for 10 minutes every time an attempt is made, then arguing with customer "service" to convince them a problem exists. (AT&T)
Quality of tech support is laughable - I was told by a tech supervisor that data transfer on my phone was very expensive because the screen was large. Not just physically, but it had a high resolution too. (Cingular)
Salespeople lying directly to customers about plan availability when a similar plan with higher commission is available. (T-Mobile)
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Obviously (Score:2)
Article failed in one minor, but disappointing way (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Article suggests unrealistic alternative (Score:5, Insightful)
The submitter refers to the story as a "long satisfying screed". In other words, it feels good to read it and yell "right on! you go!" That's the problem with current political discourse: it's designed to make you feel good, not to actually accomplish anything.
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In addition to being logically disconnected, this statement also shows your ignorance.
Start here [wikipedia.org]. It leaves out sprint's share of the oligopoly; for that try looking here [wikipedia.org].
Article speaks for itself in this matter (Score:2)
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what I am doing about it (Score:2)
By maintaining these two policies, I limit the control the provider has over my phone and I limit the control the provider has over their cash flow. At any month I can terminate my servic
It doesn't matter (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems to take about ten years for the general public to really get their heads around technical issues.
out-innovated? (Score:5, Insightful)
Such futures can't be relied upon if innovation is permitted
The remaining [author couldn't be bothered to count] reasons are similarly kvetching and dripping with angst.
What can you do? It's hopeless--for now (Score:4, Interesting)
Many/most of us require telephone communication. I for one can't simply go without telephone service, if I want to have a decent relationship with my wife and relatives, and if I want to be able to function in society and business and my job. When I finally ditched the landline back around 2002, I was paying about as much for a crappy landline from Qwest with no features as I did for a cellphone. Somehow I doubt this has changed much. I might be able to save a little money by getting a landline from Cox cable (since I already have internet service from them, after all), but then I'd miss out on the versatility that I and so many others have grown accustommed to with cellphones; it'd be a real pain to be out of contact while driving or shopping, in the lab where I work, etc. The few extra dollars per month for cell service is worth it to me.
Am I jealous that people in other countries get far better and freer cellular service than me, for much less money? Sure! But there just aren't any alternatives here.
Until something else comes along that offers a real alternative, I don't see the point in saying "we should do something about it", because we can't. Cellular service isn't like writing open-source software: it requires not just phones, but a network consisting of central offices, antenna towers, fiber-optic lines, and billions of dollars worth of equipment and infrastructure. The cellular providers are just following the Golden Rule: "he who has the gold makes the rules", and our stupid government isn't bothering to regulate them to prevent them from acting so poorly.
Maybe eventually some brilliant quantum physicist will come up with a way for us to all communicate using "subspace" or whatever, so with the proper equipment we can just establish point-to-point communications with whomever we please, with no need for any infrastructure or middle-man like these cellular providers, and no worries about having to share limited spectrum. But until then, or until some other alternative is found, or until our government steps in and regulates them (yeah right), we're stuck.
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Re:What can you do? It's hopeless--for now (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, my wife places a lot of value on being able to reach me any time she has an important question or concern, whether I'm shopping, at work (I'm not always next to my desk phone), etc.
Many people have jobs which require them to have cell phones and be on-call. Obviously, you don't have such a job, but don't deride people who do, and tell them they don't need a cellphone, because that would get them fired.
Most people require telephone service of some kind for the daily lives, even if it's not a cellphone. Guess what? The landline companies are the same evil companies that provide cellular service, so you're not getting away from them by using a landline. Do you go without a phone altogether? Most people with jobs don't have that luxury. I certainly don't.
"the internet" isn't like subspace; it's a shared infrastructure just like that provided by cellular providers. How do you access the internet? Do you use a pringle's can and steal from your nearby Starbuck's? Most people have to pay for internet access, and this usually means using another big, evil company like Qwest, Cox, Comcast, Verizon, etc. So you're not getting away from these companies by using the internet either.
So unless you have some way of keeping in touch with family and business partners which doesn't involve using a big, evil company like one of those above (and you live in the USA, as this discussion is irrelevant elsewhere), then you're completely missing the point and your argument is invalid.
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Learn to say no to your wife. People got along just fine before cell phones. Your wife doesn't need to know where you are 24/7.
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I must be a dynamo of a person because I don't own a cell phone, yet manage to keep in touch with my family and business partners.
Same story here - ditched my cell phone (T-Mobile) in February, and yet my landline (which curiously enough is done through Vonage) seems to suffice quite nicely. While (almost) as evil with the whole contract thing as the cell companies, I can honestly say that they actually do provide a decent service all around.
In spite of that, I can still work w/o a problem for a rather large technology company... if the pager goes off (the employer provides that, pays for it, etc), I can still deal with its reaso
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Somehow, before planes, trains, ships, and automobiles existed, the world kept on turning, families stayed together without needing powered transportation and life continued just fine, you don't need to travel more than 20 miles in your life no one really does. Only an overblown sense of self important makes anyone "need" to travel more than 20 miles from their birthplace over their lifetime. Get a life!
In case you don't get it, society has evolved since the invention of the sh
Telcos will win regardless... (Score:3, Interesting)
I fully expect that these companies will wind up "in charge" of it by fiat if nothing else. It's only a matter of time. Like the article said, these companies own Congress. Well, Congress makes laws that govern "interstate commerce" (which the courts have interpreted as shorthand for, basically, any damned thing they please), so Congress can, and will, do the equivalent of declaring them as being the sole carriers for this stuff if the competition keeps them from taking that role otherwise.
Didn't you get the memo about what fascism is really all about?
Get a GSM phone with a US SIM chip (Score:4, Interesting)
Some of the reasons that people hate cell phone companies have to do with the abusive service contracts which are difficult or impossible to get out of. One way to avoid this is to buy a GSM cell phone with a US SIM chip. This has a side advantage that you can easily use the phone overseas by buying a SIM chip for the country you're visiting. You buy prepaid cards for these phones. Calling is a little more expensive, but you don't have a contract to deal with. There is also much less information about you as a cell phone user, since the only way to track you back to your phone is through the company you bought it from.
In theory if more people used GSM phones and phone cards, there would be more competition since the cell providers can't lock you in to a contract. This is, by the way, the situation in Europe where GSM is the standard.
You are smoking crack: Re:Get GSM with a US SIM (Score:2)
1) GSM Phones work on two major networks in the US
Crapular
T-Shitty - both of these networks are less than... adiquate
2) The GSM system in the US uses two different carrier bands than GSM systems in the rest of the world. If you want a quad band phone, you pay significantly more.
3) If you want the ability to use another c
Re:You are smoking crack: Re:Get GSM with a US SIM (Score:4, Informative)
The GSM networks are indeed more limited (T-Mobil and Cingular are the ones I've accessed) and the reception is not as good perhaps. However, you can buy very reasonably priced unlocked phones. I bought an unlocked from from Telestial in San Diego three years ago. I think that it cost around $100 US. I've used it in Spain, and twice in Italy. I now have a US SIM chip for it. I feed it T-Mobil cards every once in a while.
I hope you're able to take care of that smoke coming out of the ears problem. It sounds painful.
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Voicemail Airtime Gouging (Score:4, Insightful)
ring... ring... ring... (me):"Hello, I'm not here right now, please leave a message" (sprint): "To leave a voice message press 1, or just wait for the tone. To send a numeric page press 2 now. At the tone please leave a voice message. When you are finished recording, you may hang up, or press pound for more options"
Several gripes here.
1) 20 seconds of instructions doesn't sound like that much on its own. But if that pushes your phone call to roll one minute longer it's a minute of possible airtime charge the phone company gets. You start paying the minute the call is answered, even leaving voicemail.
2) A typical voicemail message is probably 2 minutes or less. The phone company's instructional message here is taking up a significant portion of that airtime.
3) These instructions are ridiculous and seem to be there only to draw out the duration of the call. They couldn't be phrased more verbosely. Oh, I can hang up when the message is done? I didn't know that. I can press pound for more options? How about you tell me about those AFTER I've left a message.
4) The features are really ridiculous, too, and I suspect some 1% even use them. Send a numeric page? Why the hell should I do that? Cellphones have caller ID already. Send a FAX?? Please Slashdotters tell me who has sent a FAX over a cellphone. Do you have to make the modem sounds with your voice? If anyone DOES use these features they probably don't need the help message to remember what button to press to initiate their cellphone fax.
5) There is no option to turn these messages off. They probably also require you to add your own greeting. Resulting in a totally redundant 30-second prelude to leaving any voicemail.
6) Every mobile company I know of has these messages, some worse than others. Is this an unspoken or conspired arrangement between the mobile carriers? Sprint doesn't necessarily make money when someone has to listen to their God-awful pre-message, but they might. They certainly will make money when my Sprint phone is waiting on Verizon's equally obnoxious introduction, or T-mobile's, etc...
7) The worst part of this, in my perspective, isn't that I might pay, if I totally screw up, 50c or 5 bucks some month because a few extra minutes were incurred waiting to leave my friends voicemail - or dropping coffee on the bus trying to press 1 to bypass the spiel. The worst part is I leave a moderate amount of voicemail messages, and this amounts to Minutes, Hours, or God knows, even Days of my life eventually wasted listening to a robot tell me how to leave a voicemail and that it's ok to hang up. It's robbery, I tell you!
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2 Answers (Score:5, Informative)
- buy a pre-activated T-mobile 2 Go SIM off of ebay
- buy an unlocked GSM phone off ebay
No contracts, no fees, no lame choice of stupid phones, nobody knows who you are or how to hassle you. You put minutes on the SIM card and that's that.
This is the "plan" my wife and I have been on since May. Works nicely. Some friends just asked me to set them up with the same deal, since they were sick of paying $90/mo for a set of phones they barely used.
Tomorrow:
Replace handset you bought in "step A" wth an openMoko device. My next handset will hopefully be 100% open-source. I can get partway there with the P2k tools and what not for Motorola, but a truly open device just makes it all that much easier.
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The company works overtime to try and brick my phone; on a limited-data plan like what i've described, an iphone doesn't sound very useful anyway.
OpenMoko has no features explicitly designed to piss me off. That puts it head and shoulders above the iphone. When it's done, I'll buy one.
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Additionally, i don't try to save money on the handset -- it costs what it costs and something that seems like a bargain usually isn't. People that sell thousands of them a month and have 99.99999999999999999 positive feedback probably aren't going to sell defective handsets as a matter of policy.
It's also important to be aware of what GSM bands are in use in your area vs. what the handset (an
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The real question (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason is cell phone companies are spending billions to upgrade their equipment. Those billions have to come from somewhere. We went from analog to digital 1x to data over 1x to 2G to 3G. Even after 3G was introduced we had data rates increase in leaps and bounds.
Customers demand performance and features. While mobile companies could probably provide you with voice-only service pretty cheaply, they'd lose customers to other companies that provided a fancier service.
I work in the business, and I have no idea why people want to watch videos on those teeny tiny screens. But they do, and the networks have to be modified as a result.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Out of genuine curiosity is it REALLY what people wanted or just some new idea from marketing that they're now telling us is what we want? I've asked friends and family (many of whom are non-technical types so it's not just the geek demographic talking here) and everyone thinks it's silly. It seems like instead of winning customers with better
Re: (Score:2)
The fact that the bigger companies have the biggest internal bureaucracies in the known universe helps, but even with an equally efficient organization, all those extra towers needed to keep your typical midwestern suburb well covered end up making the price higher than Europe.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Go with a prepaid plan like Virgin Mobile. I pay $5/month for about 25 minutes, and 5 cents/text. Plus, the money in my account just accumulates when I don't use it all. Of course, this is only a good deal if you don't chat a lot on your phone.
Or, in smaller cities, there's Cricket Wireless, which gives you unlimited voice and text for $45/month. This works great for my daughter, who's going to school in a town that has their coverage. But it wouldn't be good for someon
Everyone should hate them? Even stockholders? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you don't like the product, don't buy it as the article submitter says. Don't buy the contract, accept the contract, then bitch about it later.
TAKE our AIRWAVES back !!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_spectrum [wikipedia.org]
opening up the closed mobile phone networks (Score:3, Informative)
So the issue is how to get out of the current muddle and to cut ties with these carriers. Of course, we can use Skype or various IM and video conferencing tools to talk to people without making a traditional landline or mobile call. The coming deployment of WiMAX networks will increase our ability to use IP-based devices for calling.
The forthcoming FCC auction of the 700MHz spectrum, now scheduled for January, will introduce more openness into the bidding process, and should enable a company such as Google to develop a competing service. Assuming that happens, there will be an alternative our dependence on the incumbent carriers, which will have its ups (price, flexibility) and possible downs (advertising, privacy concerns).
There are also numerous efforts underway to create devices based on open source software. The Nokia N800/N810 http://www.nseries.com/ [nseries.com] is a Linux-based device with a useful developer site http://www.maemo.org/ [maemo.org]. The OpenMoko project http://www.openmoko.org/ [openmoko.org] is aimed at developing an open source phone. These devices are, of course, unlocked. When OpenMoko has advanced a little further, you should be able to take anyone's SIM chip, put it in your OpenMoko phone, and make a call. For now, though, the best you can do is to have an unlocked phone. (I have about 8 SIM chips from different countries, and switch them when I travel, thereby avoiding the extortionate international roaming charges of the mobile carriers. You can easily buy "pay-as-you-go" service almost everywhere, including in the US.)
So we can already take various steps to loosen our ties to the cellphone carriers. With some luck, many of us will be able to extricate ourselves completely. It's only then that the cellphone carriers will feel the need to improve their products and services to attract and retain customers.
Big picture (Score:2)
Is it really efficient to have, say, 20 companies all sticking up cell masts and laying fibre?
Wouldn't one network with sufficient capacity be more cost efficient?
If you do have only one network, who gets to build it, and what stops them from abusing it monopolywise?
Free market. Sometimes it's not always the answer.
Re: (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_System#History [wikipedia.org]
We tried that for about 100 years. Yes, it worked just fine. It efficiently pissed off just about everyone in the United States. It efficiently managed to keep innovation out of the hands of the customer, dictated who could install what on their network (such as a 9600baud modem that was the size of modern mini tower PC), and vacuumed billions of dollars from the US treasury.
What we need is a customer who is knowledgeable enough to pick the
Everyone Provide Your Carrier Hating Anecdotes (Score:2, Interesting)
I have many reasons, but I'll throw out the most current situation. I'm a customer of the old AT&T. My contract expired but I have an old TDMA phone and they are shutting down the network. Fine, technological progress, I support that part. But, do they have to send me a text message at least once every day to tell me this? I was given an AT&T GSM phone from a friend, but they won't let me use it unless I si
Re: (Score:2)
No, he's wrong. While shopping for an carrier for a Nokia N95, I specifically asked if I could get the same deal as the iPhone and was told by two reps in two different stores that I could. Of course, I still had to sign on for a 2 yr deal, and AT&T would be getting a better deal from me since they didn't have to share that revenue with AAPL or subsidize my ph
AT&T "Gas-lights" it's customers... (Score:2, Interesting)
Fine, great, GSM's superior in almost every way.
We had an internal website where you could check for known service outages in the event that a customer calls and reports no service or other technical problems.
I can't remember where it was, but mostly in southern california, they had one 'known outage' listed. It explained that the transmit power on cell towers in a given area for TDMA customers
Why no "Bring your own phone" plans? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Well, who SHOULD run it? (Score:4, Insightful)
While I sit here and defend the obvious, I do not own a cell phone, and probably never will again. I realized that I REALLY don't need one. If you sit down and think about it, 90% of you probably don't either.
Just gonna say this once (Score:3, Interesting)
It just comes to this: when our country, which should be representing us, sells our resources to private corporations, it has an obligation to ensure that it represents our interests in doing so.
I don't consider it in the public interest when all we get from such a transaction is a couple billion bucks the oligopoly will have a hard time recovering and a parking lot hand job for select bureaucrats. Oh boy. We can finally afford to pay the cell phone companies for that no-warrant surveillance system we always wanted. woop de doo.
Who else has a valid claim to being in charge? (Score:2)
Well, it is their property. Should we expropriate the assets of the capitalist class in the name of the the glorious People's Revolution, for the dictatorship of the proletariat?
Or if that's not your thing, we could pull a Putin, and seize the property of the telecommunications industry for reasons of "State security."
Conclusion: You don't like something that exists, make something else,
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Don't fall for their business plan. (Score:2)
There's no reason to forgo cell phones entirely to make a statement about how they run their business, all you really have to do is be a smarter (and more moderate) consumer.
First thing to do is rid yourself of the keeping
Broader reforms (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is much larger that just the cell providers. They're probably the worst of the bunch, but they're hardly the only industry with abusive contracts and pervasive fraudulant practices.
The most obvious is the concpt of contracts where one paarty may chang the terms at will and the other is simply stuck with them. I simply cannot imagine a sufficient contortion of reasoning that could make that seem conscionable or that could make any legal system that supports it seem just. For that matter, in a truly just world, the inclusion of such terms should be sufficient to void any contract. After all, nobody who would put such a thing in a contract and then stuff it down someone's throat could possibly be contracting in good faith. Before someone makes the inevitable "you aren't forced blah blah", yes, when most or all providers of a particular service do that, they ARE stuffing it down someone's throat. Becoming a hermit in a log cabin with candles for lighting is not a realistic alternative to electricity and phone service!
Billing errors in general are an issue, plenty of companies seem to routinely make "errors" in their favor (never in the customer's favor) In the case of many cell providers most of the bills they send out are that way month after month and we're supposed to believe it's NOT fraud? They deserve no mercy here. If they billed a million customers fraudulantly, charge them with one million counts of criminal fraud. Only large corporations can seem to get a bulk discount on felonies. If the evidence there isn't airtight, charge them with a million counts of negligence. Surely that has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt over the years. I have deealt with many companies large and small over the years. Only telecomms providers (not just cell BTW) ROUTINELY make billing errors.
Here's a simple one that IS specific to cell phones. They should not be allowed to charge for dropped calls. At the very least, they should be forced to refund any connection charges (since the need to connect again is clearly due to their screwed up network).
Truth in advertising! Is there anyone at the FTC who even knows we have truth in advertising laws? The public SHOULD be able to presume that advertisments are at least basically truthful. Unlimited means without limit. Making promises in bold and retracting them in fine print is a fundamental dishonesty. Fine print on television that is not clearly and easily readable even with 20/20 vision should not be lgally considered to have been displayd at all. Occasionally, out of curiosity, I freeze frame a commercial disclaimer (perfect digital reception) and frequently find that it is greeked, unreadable at any distance from 10 feet away to nose pressed against the screen. How can that possably be considered an act of communication?
Finally, the fines themselves. If they are not at LEAST as large as the ill gotten profit that caused them, they will be (and are) treated as a tax rather than a penelty.