Re: Monopolies and iPhone [Telecom]

Thanks for the clarification.

But I still have no sympathy for the Slate article writer. I still felt his comparisons to the old Ma Bell were inaccurate and irrelevent.

Frankly, i fail to see what a phone could possibly offer to justify its high cost. If someone is willing to pay the money for the phone, fine, go and enjoy, but no one is forcing you; it is clearly a luxury item, not a necessity.

To me, it's like complaining about the costs or sales terms of a high end automobile (e.g. $40,000 on up), when one can get a very nice car for much less.

I think the underlying idea is that "they" (the big telcos, the big manufacturers, etc.) will offer services and/or advantages with "their" products, that "everyone" will "have to have one" in order to be considered a serious professional.

If enough users believe it, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If enough users shake their heads and laugh, then it becomes more marketing background noise.

Bill Horne Temporary Moderator

(Please put [Telecom] at the end of the subject line of your post, or I may never see it. Thanks!)

Just to emphasize Bill's point, back in the early '90s the owner of the company where I worked told me that we needed a web page. We didn't, I explained, because we don't sell anything online or mail order, and no one would buy our high-end products based on an online brochure. Doesn't matter, he replied: at sales pitches people ask for your web site address and, if you don't have one, they think you're nobody... even if they have no intention of visiting the web site. Same as years earlier, he went on, when people asked for your FAX number.

I can see a day when people in industries will need to brandish mobile data devices to get any technical respect, and executives will have to show off a stylish device such as an iPhone.

It's not about having a status symbol like, say, a Ferrari. It's about something being viewed as a sign of professionalism or preparedness. As I was told all those years ago, if you didn't have a FAX machine at one point, potential customers inferred that you were running a penny-ante business, and web pages were gaining the same status.

We'll see whether the marketing people convince 'us' that the same is true of mobile data solutions.

You make excellent points. Indeed, I myself [am] just not answering the phone anymore and letting the answering machine do it. Part of it is that many calls are solicitors or surveys that I don't want to deal with. Part of it is I just want 'me' time.

But every generation thinks its [youth] doesn't have the quiet they enjoyed. When I was growing up the telephone was everywhere. That is, almost every home had service and most middle class homes had extensions throughout the house, some with multiple lines. Businesses had extensions throughout their building, and a PA system to page people. We didn't have electronics, but we did have secretaries who would hunt people down to take a call.

As kids, we wanted our own phones. If cell phones were available we would've grabbed them. A friend of mine got a job as a driver [for] someone who had a mobile phone in the [car] and we were all jealous.

My generation also had television and transistor radios that were always on. We also embraced high end stereo music, blasting out of multi-story sized speakers.

My parents' generation came to have phones and even years ago they were seen as a potential source of annoyance and an invasion. They also had radio in a big way.

The prior generation came from the farm to the city to escape the rural isolation. But the city, especially with people packed in housing, had lots of noises on the street.

The point I'm trying to make is that we're all realizing that we can't make everybody else happy at our expense, and for a while that's what we were trying to do. Staying constantly in touch with the world means that the world gets to grope you any time it pleases, and while that might be exciting for some, it's just not the way normal people live.

We don't just need "Me" time (although there's precious little of that), we also need "Just Us" time: time for our spouses, our families, and out friends. For the past ~20 years, corporations have been expecting their employees to give up that time and put their shoulders to a grindstone which has become a Sisyphean rock.

Bill Horne Temporary Moderator

(Please put [Telecom] at the end of the subject line of your post, or I may never see it. Thanks!)

What you're missing is this: much of the functionality of high-end cellular phones (not just the iPhone but also the Blackberry and its various imitators) is overpriced because of "bundling", which is the clever misuse of a legal monopoly right such as intellectual property to gain monopoly-like control of other goods and services that extend beyond the scope of the legal monopoly.

Not only portable computers but also digital cameras could easily be combined in a single device with a cellular phone without being locked so you can't configure them to work the way YOU want, or so that you can't upload a picture from the camera onto your PC without transmitting it over the cellular phone for an extra fee. But the big phone companies that now control the cellular market in the US won't allow any such unlocked device to operate on their networks, and they've conned the FCC into conflating any attempt with hacking and theft-of-service.

The cure is for the FCC, or Congress, to issue a "cellular Carterfone decision" and put a stop to the abuse. The purpose of your handheld device should be to do what you want, not to generate billable events.

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