Cell Providers and privatization argument [split from Of boards and display thread]


WizardStan

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However, the part that you have correct is that CDMA devices require carrier cooperation in order to get them onto their networks - and that is unlikely to be forthcoming
Someone on Verizon right now may want to give them a call and explain that they're planning to buy a phone internationally that is compatible with their network and will they activate it if they do.I suspect they'll say no.

Even their "Bring Your Own Device" plans states "eligible Verizon Wireless phone" meaning a phone you've already purchased from them for use on their network, which, honestly, is complete BS and shouldn't be a selling feature but whatever.
 
GSM Total in the top 10 companies is 175.6 Million


CDMA Total in the top 10 companies is ~187 Million
Wow, I didn't know there were that many GSM subscribers in the US to be honest.
Well, AT&T uses it, and they're the world's oldest phone company. They probably have a lot of loyalty. I mean, that's why I am with them. My parents used them, and their parents did.
 
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Well... T-Mobile is part of the German Telekom, which once used to be part of the state-driven German postal service. In the end it led to this company owning about 99% of all copper cables used for telecommunications in Germany. And of course, they totally abused this power...

I'm one of the few lucky ones that are actually able to get their internet from the only company that was brave enough to lay their own cables right after the Telekom's privatization, others just rented the opened up Telekom cables 'cause it was cheaper. You don't have any idea how it is to be independent of the Telekom in Germany nowadays...
 
Fascinating bit of history there! T-Mobile is actually cheaper than AT&T, but I stay with them because they're good.
 
Well... T-Mobile is part of the German Telekom, which once used to be part of the state-driven German postal service. In the end it led to this company owning about 99% of all copper cables used for telecommunications in Germany. And of course, they totally abused this power...


I'm one of the few lucky ones that are actually able to get their internet from the only company that was brave enough to lay their own cables right after the Telekom's privatization, others just rented the opened up Telekom cables 'cause it was cheaper. You don't have any idea how it is to be independent of the Telekom in Germany nowadays...
There are several "Netzbetreiber" in germany with there own network. Most of them with fiber to the customer.
But those are only local ones.


Take: NetColone, ThüringerNetKom, Versatel, Wilhelm.Tel, and so on


And also you should know, that many small villages have build there own fiber/copper net, because no big one takes it for them. So they are also "Netzbetreiber"
 
There are several "Netzbetreiber" in germany with there own network. Most of them with fiber to the customer.

But those are only local ones.
I explicitly referred to copper cables, of course the situation is different with fibre cables - because the Telekom doesn't care about spreading them, leeching out the already existing copper cables as long as possible is simply much more profitable.Of course they try to hinder others from spreading their own fibre cables as best as they can.

Pretty much every other company offering internet over copper cables just rents the Telekom's cables, so in the end you can't evade them without going fibre.

EWE was one of the only few local companies that kept laying their own cables after '98, and some years ago they've invested a shitload of money to set up a dense fibre network all over the city here, offering FTTH. A pretty optimistic approach for only about 160k inhabitants :p

I'm using one of their FTTH products myself, though it's kind of overkill that they are using NTFAs that could directly feed up to 4 separate routers for a small single family house. I should probably note that our city has an extremely high amount of single family houses for its size...

BTW: I don't know about other countries, but here the Telekom is known to have a horrible customer service. They have always been voted to be one of the worst, right next to our once state-driven railroad company.

Yes, privatization is a BAAAAD idea... at least we still have public water suppliers, I've heard some rather horrific stories from other countries that even privatized that.
 
Perhaps I need some assistance understanding why you would want your government to run everything, or why privatization is bad.  Maybe in countries other than those in which I have stayed for a while the government is more functional and competent.  When the government can't get simple things right I would NOT want them to be responsible for things that I feel are outside their scope of responsibilities.  Using water as an example, sure, allow them to define the standards of acceptable drinking water, and permit them to enact punishment on those that distrubute drinking water that does not meet that standard.  If my federal government was responsible for my water I would probably be dead.  More local levels of government aren't much better.  I currently filter all water I drink.
 
If a particular utility (water, sewer, power, natural gas, phone, internet) is going to be a local monopoly, I would rather have it controlled by a government who's leaders I can vote to change than a company who's actions are purely profit motivated.

Now, if it is a market with infrastructure that can support three or more entities in true competition for my service dollar - privatize it.
 
Consider the privitization of healthcare in the US vs the way pretty much everyone else does it. Unregulated, costs have skyrocketed, with drugs and procedures costing several times (sometime thousands of times) more than what they do anywhere else, because if you need a drug to live and you only have one company you can get it from that company is going to charge more than humanly possible for it, because your alternative to not paying the million percent profit margin is death.

Basically the problem isn't privitization vs government run, it's a problem of unregulated monopolies. Companies will always charge as much as they can, fact of business, maximize profits. Do not assume that a corporation (especially if they're large enough to hold a monopoly over a major commodity) will be altruistic and cut their prices. They will find the sweet spot to get as many people to pay their prices as possible. If you need a drug to live, they will charge the amount that most people can pay: some people will not be able to pay and will die but their loss is balanced out by the others paying the higher prices. Eventually phone prices will be so high that people just accept that they can't have a cell phone, and that'll be that balance point.

Without a monopoly, when people have choices, there's additional pressure to keep prices low. In absence of competition, government forces are required to ensure companies don't take advantage of their situation.

Remember, time was when 14 hours, 6 days a week was the norm for a blue collar employee. A lot of people were dying as a result, because it was either work or starve. It took huge effort from the government to set the current 40 hour work week with a lot of companies fighting every step of the way, and when we came out the other side it turned out that not literally working your employees to death was a very good thing for everyone, including the companies that wanted to keep wages low. There's a reason why minimum wage law exists and why very few companies exceed it; there's a reason why hygene laws exists, why standards exist, why all these laws protecting consumers and employees exist: because, while I'm certain some companies are definitely looking to the betterment of mankind, there are at least some that wouldn't hesitate to kill you and harvest your organs for profit if they could.

Anywho, that's the thing you don't undertand. No one is really against privitization (with a few exceptions that I could go into but won't), they're against the monopolies currently being abused.

As for your water example, here in Ontario the water supply is government run and consistently tests significantly safer than bottled water which consistently tests barely within the mandate. If the whole thing suddenly became privitized I would go out and buy myself a filter too.

edit: Grench said in, like, 2 sentences what I took an entire wall of text to say.
 
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Or from another perspective: A private company always ends up targeting profit, so they'll only invest in what's really needed. A public company only wants to get even, if money is left it is actually being spent into improvements. The privatization of infrastructure always ends up with saving on the wrong side.

I still remember reading some years ago that some very large American city starting to buy German water meters (we pay our water based on demand), simply because they've been losing so much water through old and broken (partially still wooden!) pipes that they needed some better way to locate those leaks.

I don't want to sound communistic here, of course it can backfire in other cases. Just look at Gazprom: Tons of gas leak into the atmosphere through badly maintained pipelines - nobody cares because they already make more than enough money from selling the remaining gas to other countries.
 
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A public company only wants to get even, if money is left it is actually being spent into improvements.
LOL - most of them cannot even get even and bleed money and need to be constantly rescued by taxpayers. Yeah, I can say the exact same thing : "The publicisation of infrastructure always ends up with saving on the wrong side". And don't ask me for examples, open a newspaper, it's full of it. 

and you seem to be oblivious that, for re-investing money into new infrastructures, you actually need profits in the first place. Capital does not fall from the skies.
 
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Well, lovely...  I lost a rather lengthy reply again.

Key points are that my local government controls the water here.  Due to blunders on their part regarding bookkeeping and keeping track of our account information, and a recent water main break, we had a bill that was about 3 times our usual.  A month or so prior to the main breaking we were given a new account number.  They seem to have lost historical data related to our meter readings, so we had to pay for sewage (the bulk of the water bills), which we will get back once they can see our typical usage.  Additionally, the water quality is extremely inconsistent.  In the past I have had wells with fairly consistent test results, and I intend to go with wells in the future, and supplement that with collected rain water, and reusing grey water (when I have a house built).

Recent events reminded me how the local government here seems to have the inability to maintain roads if there is snow (an inch or two!)  or wet weather and temperatures drop below freezing.  I have lived in this area for a few years, and it is the same every year.  Yes, I am planning on relocating.  There are some additional details that make the winter roads stories funny to some, but they have little value in this conversation, but I would love to share some.

My reason for replying to the water comment was that I dont see how if some governments can't handle things that are probably widely agreed to fall into very basic needs that they should be responsible for they can be expected to perform better with additional responsibilities.
 
most of them cannot even get even and bleed money and need to be constantly rescued by taxpayers
Nothing in Canada or the US, as far as I'm aware. Your country must suck, sorry to say.I mean, we have non-profit programs, TV and radio, education, etc... which are tax funded but those are intentional.

And yeah, there are inneficiencies, but I don't believe for a second that that's because it's government run vs privitized. Having worked for big businesses I can guarantee you the same wastes happen regardless of who's in charge.

Due to blunders on their part regarding bookkeeping and keeping track of our account information, and a recent water main break, we had a bill that was about 3 times our usual
And you honestly believe that this couldn't happen if it were privitized? If that's the case have I got some mind blowing stories for you.
 
A public company only wants to get even, if money is left it is actually being spent into improvements.
 LOL - most of them cannot even get even and bleed money and need to be constantly rescued by taxpayers. Yeah, I can say the exact same thing : "The publicisation of infrastructure always ends up with saving on the wrong side". And don't ask me for examples, open a newspaper, it's full of it. 

and you seem to be oblivious that, for re-investing money into new infrastructures, you actually need profits in the first place. Capital does not fall from the skies.
The problem is, that not everything will turn profit in the end, so if you are a company (and rely on profit) you certainly need to cut costs in order to keep the company running.I guess a nice example is public transportation. Anyone of the people living in the UK want to tell about the "wonderful" situation their in since the public transportation system was privatized ?

Same tendency can be observed here, with the market beeing partially opened, private companies can now participate in a tender for a specific area. But in the end most of these tenders are falling back into state service as no private company wants to put money into something where no profit can be made (because maintaining transportation service for small villages is costly, especially with the ongoing urbanization). So this boils down to having a bidding war for certain areas were the amount of commuters is high enough to earn profits. Which in turn leads to lower profits for state service (either because it lost that certain area, or because they needed to undercut) which in turn leads to having to lower to costs in order to not "bleed money".

Any hints on how to easily change that by privatizing it completly ? Except just to cease transportation services for certain areas , which would be against the local understanding of what one of the main responsabilities of a goverment is.
 
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Aye, good point on the transportation. Seemingly a prime candidate for privitization, but what company would willingly invest in infrastructure to rural communities? There's no money to be made there, no sane company will run a bus out to buttfuck-nowhere, not without charging ridiculous prices for it. So the government "bleeds" money supporting communities that can't be profitable because that's what government is supposed to do, that's why we pay taxes: everyone chips in just a little so that we communally benefit as a whole.
 
Well, lovely...  I lost a rather lengthy reply again.

Key points are that my local government controls the water here.  Due to blunders on their part regarding bookkeeping and keeping track of our account information, and a recent water main break, we had a bill that was about 3 times our usual.  A month or so prior to the main breaking we were given a new account number.  They seem to have lost historical data related to our meter readings, so we had to pay for sewage (the bulk of the water bills), which we will get back once they can see our typical usage.  Additionally, the water quality is extremely inconsistent.  In the past I have had wells with fairly consistent test results, and I intend to go with wells in the future, and supplement that with collected rain water, and reusing grey water (when I have a house built).

Recent events reminded me how the local government here seems to have the inability to maintain roads if there is snow (an inch or two!)  or wet weather and temperatures drop below freezing.  I have lived in this area for a few years, and it is the same every year.  Yes, I am planning on relocating.  There are some additional details that make the winter roads stories funny to some, but they have little value in this conversation, but I would love to share some.

My reason for replying to the water comment was that I dont see how if some governments can't handle things that are probably widely agreed to fall into very basic needs that they should be responsible for they can be expected to perform better with additional responsibilities.
Is your local government a democracy?  If so, run for office and fix it or support a candidate who will.  Even if the service (water) doesn't make sense to have multiple competing companies (high entry costs = pipes), there can still be competition for the governmental positions that control the operation of municipal utilities through elections to their boards or through elections of the people who appoint them.

If you're not in a democracy and have municipal/state run utilities, good luck to you.  That is a recipe for corruption and abuse.

We have gone WAY off topic of boards and displays.  I'm not opposed to a moderator moving this portion of our conversation to 'Off Topic'.
 
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