Guess what Chad?
Created on: August 17th, 2007
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Actually, that isn't really true. Many of the services *do* share the same towers -- they try to justify their prices with "value add" services. The number of cell phone towers in US is actually fairly reasonable given population density and more importantly the size of the nation. Comparing tower coverage to the tiny countries of Europe, you can't really come up with a fair coorelation.
It is quite true that many cellular towers are shared by various providers. Hence why you see different antenna types (one for Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, etc). Also, when it comes to there being cell phone that cuts off in NYC, you answered your own question. It is very dense and therefore the signal cannot go as far. If a provider can stick a cell phone tower that is directional (Lets say ~180 degrees) and it is on a mountain or some other place, it can cover a large and flat area such as the Gobi.
I also must add that I was looking at Vodaphone's pricing over in the UK. 500 minutes costs £30 which is about $59.50 in US Dollars. I could easily get 450 minutes from Sprint for $40/mo, or if I went the SERO route, then I could get 500 minutes for $30/mo. or 1,250 minutes for $50/mo. That also includes unlimited data usage, picture messaging and video messaging.
Also, in China, it is probably cheap due to the average income not being on level as to what it is here in the states.
I was being sarcastic about NYC. Let's discuss Binghamton, or North Adams, MA or other, less dense towns where signal cuts out. Also, the Asian phones were satellite based, not tower based, hence their coverage. As for China, despite the low wage earners you mention, there are more middle class Chinese than there are middle class Americans. Millions more. And their buying power far exceeds that of Americans.
Binghamton is a very hilly area. If you've ever been there, the towers are located on hills with saddle inclines. The valley as a whole has rolling terrain so even when placed on the mountainside, the towers still don't have line of sight to some places and hence, bad reception in those areas. Though it is a good example of the need for shared towers. Also note that the University has repeaters for certain providers.
Of course, the great irony of this is just prior to the advent of cell phone technology, America did have a singular, near-monopoly of land-lines: AT&T. After the destruction of AT&T the market was infected by a bunch of worthless, regional-based companies (start ups and Baby Bells) who would fight each other tooth and nail for their small portion of the market, leaving us in our current disaster. Our high-speed internet service suffers from the same dilemma but for a variety of additional reasons.
Free-market capitalism is not the same thing as corporatism. Capitalism is the greatest ally to the common man, whereas corporatism is what is absolutely evil. The competition in the market is a good thing. Eventually, the price for service will drop as each network competes over the other as opposed to using a shared network. If it doesn't, that is not the system of capitalism at work. That is evidence of corporatism and is the makings of a cartel, which is illegal.
Vote for Ron Paul, bitches.
I will five of course, but I must say, all the knee-jerk anti-capitalists here would be screaming MONOPOLY if there was actually one cell tower where we now have 3 or 4 or 5 hojillion. If I have to choose between publicly-owned or -regulated infrastructure (it works so well with Amtrak!), a private monopoly, or the current system, I'll take the current system.
I'm pretty satisfied with T-Mobile, but they started out in Europe so I don't know....
Ever take a train in Europe? Amtrack's downfall is as much a result of the US's highway systems, oil lobbies, and trucking and auto industries (see Los Angeles: the city built by the Ford company) as much as it is gov't bureaucracy. That said, I'll give you FedEx over the PostOffice, but that's hardly a publicly owned project anymore.
The consumer always pays for it, by nature. Of course each company wants the lion's share of everything did you just fail 10th grade economics? Maybe we could just have 1 company and they could set the price to whatever they want. And one political party too... As for shared infrastructure it isn't possible here because as the site said, it came from all the companies wanting to dominate the market which resulted in different techs used to make different networks.
2 for intellectual stimulating-tmnd
Guess what, Chad? In this commercial I am going to try to make it look like my service is good, however, you are much much smarter than me and will end up making your service look better; even when all five cell phone service providers completely suck. This stems from back when the technology was first introduced and the existing phone companies could not come to an agreement for building and using a shared infrastructure since each company wanted the line share of the profits.
So, in the end, they each ended up adding their own infrastructure, each one of which is expensive to maintain. As a result, America has five times as many cell phone towers as they need and the consumer is paying for it. As a result, cell phone service costs five times what it should. In Europe and every other industrialized nation but America, there does exist a shared infrastructure, and as a result, service is very cheap.
The cellphone is the ultimate testing ground for a non-neutral internet. Cellphones work and render Web pages (and who decided it was a bright idea to put Web pages on a cellphone anyway? sigh) so differently, and the contracts so sickeningly restrictive and pro-service-provider, that there is effectively no competition in the US, allowing the providers to eschew standards and bandwidth improvements for stagnating networks, fee raises, and even tougher contracts. In short, I'll stick with pay phones.
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