Telecom bigwigs: 'We're all friends – really' A gaggle of the world's top telecom grandees put on a show of smiling unanimity as the Mobile World Congress got underway in a kumbaya-fest that masked the intense competition among them. Get the bosses of Telefonica, Vodafone, AT&T, Telecom Italia, and China Mobile together – five men who have a significant majority of the …
If you really want to get their attention, stop using those fucking things.
Nothing gets a businessman's attention better than to watch his cash flow dry up.
Control is in the palm of your hand. Let your cash do some talking. Price too high? When your contract is over, ditch the dammed thing. Consumers do not owe these bastards a living.
So there is too much competition in the mobile carrier markets but not enough in the in the OS & browser markets?
I've got scads if choice in OS and in browsers, only two choice in mobile. Maybe I'm just not understanding. Maybe I should read the fine print that accompanies the keynotes where I'm sure ill discover how they are trying to give me the stuff one eye.
The problem for mobile operators is that spectrum is finite. If there are too many players in a given market then not everyone gets enough to run a comprehensive network. I have no idea though what the commercial or technical remedy would be to allow more competition with that finite spectrum - the mobile equivalent of something like Openreach or Network Rail?
Quite. The issue is exactly the same as the issue that another El Reg hack pretends doesn't exist: the (US) Cable TV non-compete duopoly (there are two players, but they agreed not to compete, leaving less than two).
The delivery of service (whether via fiber/cable or wireless spectrum) has to be considered separately from the service being delivered. Because spectrum is finite, it is actually beneficial that there are as few competitors as possible (i.e. two), but what is HARMFUL is that those competitors monopolize the services available, since consumer preferences imply that there should be a large number of service providers accessible across the limited number of connection providers.
That further suggests that the right model is to unbundle connections from services, so that e.g. I can use Verizon's wireless service to access my AT&T phone services (or vice versa).
Of course, the chance of anything like that happening is nil, because in addition to the vested interests of the Telco giants, you have monsters like the one in Cupertino that wants -- more than anything -- to control every aspect of whatever it is you do with the gizmo they make.
Hmmm... on second thoughts, maybe that's the one (remote possibility) way that unbundling _could_ happen: Apple contracting with (e.g.) Verizon in much the same way as Amazon contracted with Sprint for their Whispernet service?
Ditto for the UK...
3G offers me enough to do my mobile browsing, but I don't stream to my phone because I only get 1Gb bandwidth on my tarrif, so imagine that problem on 4G. I believe 4G has the potential to be disruptive to the likes of fixed broadband, but only once the bandwidth limits become realistic, EE are offering 2 for $40+ per month, simple put, I would burn through that in an evening.
Though it will be interesting to see the tarriffs 3 offers :)
Alierta also dusted off his old argument that he wants to charge Google, Facebook, and friends for taking advantage of his precious network. That same network that is supposedly already paid for by the customer yet still has to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st Century in terms of bandwith, services, etc...
Maybe when he's got his bunged-up bit pipes sorted out he can start thinking about charging double.
He sounds like that asshole who ran AT&T a few years ago, doesn't he. He went on about it "being their pipes, and anyone who used them was going to pay". I wish I could remember his name.
(later: Thank you google, I found out his name: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Whitacre,_Jr.)
4G (once they uncap it) is going to be good for mobiles, but the disruptiveness is going to stem from the hammering of DSL/cable/T1 usage across urban and suburban homes and businesses. Businesses are slowly but steadily waking up to the fact that they no longer have to depend on wire carriers and their 8-week "we cannot commit to an install date, but we'll try moderately hard" install/move schedules.
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