AT&T - T-Moibile merger, poster child of America's corporate governance

Is there no problem government cannot solve?

@Apoc: The evolution of the American cellular market is very strange indeed, and the problems are not just related to bandwidth/fibre installations. If we have so little fibre installed, how is it that Google can be buying up practically every strand of dark fibre in the country? It seems if we had lack of infrastructure, there would be no such thing as dark fibre in the US.

I'm not intimately familiar with details on how our cellular market evolved, but the fact we developed CDMA and TDMA rather than adopting GSM when the whole rest of the planet did seems curious to me. The fact that all of the major carriers offer plans that vary in price by less than 5% also strikes me as curious. Virgin rolls in and offers the same product in the areas where they have coverage for a fraction of the price and without a contractual commitment. If there really is open competition between the three national carriers, how is it Virgin can do what they do on a local basis for dramatically less money? I suspect the truth of the matter is, by the time you get down to two or three carriers, price fixing happens as a matter of good business.

I used to fly back to the states 2-3 times a year for a month at a time and needed a phone. For 36$, I could buy a cheap Chinese made Virgin Mobile phone, have it activated with a new number and voice mail, and have 25$ worth of calling credit at 5 cents a minute. If I needed more, I just topped up. When I left, I threw the phone in the trash. The best T-Mobile could offer me with my GSM phone was a $25 charge for the chip(no call credit at all), which also got me a phone number, then pay as you go charge ups at 10 cents a minute. Less hardware, higher startup costs, double the per minute rate. Mind you, I can fly into panama, and get a GSM chip with a phone number attached for 29$, with 25$ worth of calling credit at 2 cents a minute. Something is most definitely not working properly in our market here.

 

there you are calling the US gov a corrupt piece of shit...but you are so quick to defend your government for its bomb droppings and terror campaigns...

maybe its just the domestic affairs part of the US gov that is a corrupt piece of shit?? maybe the terrorist part eeer i meant to say the foreign affairs part is completely righteous

makes perfect sense to me LOL

cameras in US police cars... non-corrupt police? well just ignore the fact that drugs are sold on every corner in the USA and every druggie knows where to "score" but the police do not and I will agree that you have something to be "proud" of....

 

No government on the planet is free of corruption. Maybe when our government is rounding up citizens of a certain ethnicity, killing them, and dumping their bodies into mass graves, you'll be able to accurately say, "Hey! you are as bad as we are!".

Until then, you are a bit like Charles Manson rambling on your insane rant from behind the bars of your prison cell. I'm mildly amused but glad you are where you are. Dance monkey, dance!

Your nation has war crimes tribunals, yet you still walk the streets. To be fair, if your nation was to jail all it's criminals, it would be a lot cheaper and easier to just build a wall around it's borders and call it a prison.

 

yes yes all serbs are genetically evil this is proven fact tell it to a serb i dont give a shit you ape LOL... did you mention killing? iraqbodycount.org thats just iraq... oh sure this does not count because you are "americans" oh and iraq is so thankful!!!! they love you so much you have to ram them out of the way AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA

yes if i dont live in the USA my life has to be shit and you are starting to imitate me now LOL its squirm squiiiiiirm not dance remember? like you squirm for my amusement LOL

yes im not a stupid mother fucker to go fight/kill for wall street politics LOL...when your puppets started picking people off the street to go fight the minorities I fled and started a new life because im not a looooooooooseeeeer like the typical US army inbreed slack jaw LOL and I can actually make a living without having to resort to murder and terrorism ...

yes yes release the fury LOL ... you are just a racist pig aint you?

 

@AtvKing: Is this where I throw you a peanut, or do you prefer bananas?

 

Then there is only one thing for you to do. Start a cell network for the people. The president and board will be elected by popular vote, democratic/republic style.

 

Could call it "The People's Network", and adopt a hammer and cycle as our logo! Who knows, George Soros might offer funding.

How about campaigning against the politicians who play a direct role in cronie capitalism? We can never extinguish crime or corruption, but that doesn't mean we should stop locking people up for crimes, or voting them out of office for bad behavior.

 

We can change policy; make it an instant felony to lie. But how would you get a politician, a professional liar, to pass it. ?? Something like that could only be passed by a group of people who are NOT politicians.

 

Seems like such a law would lead to a never ending stream of witch hunts, as if it were possible to make that particular group of people any less productive than they already are. Besides, what is the point of creating laws for people who, for the most part, are above the law. Did Charlie Rangle see a day of jail time for tax evasion? How bout Tim Geitner? They passed a balanced budget amendment and Bush had no problem blowing through that. California passed a 2/3 vote requirement to raise taxes, but the legislature just got a ballot measure passed that bypasses the requirement to create new state debt, which means exactly the same thing at the end of the day.

Besides, voting your with your special interest supporters, be they unions, big business, or the communist party, is expected behavior, even when the quid pro quo is obvious to anyone with a set of eyes and an IQ over 80. It would seem our sole recourse is taking their jobs away, though even then, the lowest of them, like Anthony Weiner, get a 1.2 million dollar golden handshake.

Its good to be the king.


[video=youtube;XO99nL_at0o]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO99nL_at0o[/video]

 

In good old US fashion why not just throw another bomb at me?

Its amusing to see your double standard and how you support the bombing and murder done by your army because your government is "holier than though" but at the end of the day its the same corrupt piece of shit government that other countries have, but get bombed over...

what is amusing to me is how "in the know" you pretend to be about foreign affairs LOL but the very foundation of your arguments is based on the false presumption that "Americas corporate governance" is a fair player in the international business scene LOL and that it does not abuse its massive power

 

Nice to know your doing good. As for me I just shipped the last set of the blade servers back home. Side income won't hurt.

 

This is worthy of it's own thread, but it ties in nicely here. People always talk about right wing fascists, but lets not forget they called it the National German Sociailsts Party. Once Big Labor and and the Fortune 500 solidify their chokehold on our Big Government, scenes like this one will be plaid out on a daily basis on a national level. Any sane liberal in San Francisco would be making plans to march on city hall right now, though you know that isn't happening. F'n sheeple.

 

How much money do you think the man can get in settlements if he decides to sue Apple for defamation, violation of privacy and unlawful intimidation?

 

I didn't see his name in the article, so I don't know how much he can prove in the way of damages by means of defamation. I'm thinking emotional distress related to an illegal search should be worth a 20 million dollar suit, which Apple might settle at a million or so.

The fact our government facilitated the search causes me as much emotional distress as the actual victim. Perhaps I need to be contacting a class action attorney to represent myself and the millions like me .

 

You're correct, you're not familiar with cellphone technology. GSM is TDMA. They're different layers, not different technologies. You're saying that we invented Windows instead of using the internet - it's the same difference.

 

Easy fella, we aren't in high school and I'm not planning to give you a wedgie about your pocket protector. I'm also not running a challenge for your dominant position as elder geek, which is why I put the disclaimer at the front of my text.

Two questions, Dilbert.

1) Do you think a consumer of cellular service gives a crap whether it is a different layer or a different technology, or were you trying to imply a GSM phone would work on a TDMA network?

2) Are you trying to imply companies like Cingular were not peddling a TDMA network that was incompatible with GSM, then running the two networks side by side, until switching over to GSM entirely in 2006?

I have no idea what TDMA technology was being used by several US companies 5-15 years ago, but they branded it as TDMA and it was definitely not GSM. Perhaps you can enlighten me on this, oh wise one. Considering GSM was already popular in 22 countries by 1993, it seems pretty obvious US companies were either a) putting dated technology on their towers or b) betting on another TDMA derivative to avoid putting those dangerous portable little chips in the phones which cant be good for handset sales.

P.S Next time, spend the time to come up with a decent analogy, unless you truly think that TDMA and GSM have the same relationship(or are as unrelated) as the internet and windows. You'll find it hard to be intellectually condescending if you sound like an imbecile.

 

I'm not Dilbert, though I'll address your questions. Courtesy my 1 and half year experience as a network engineer in Vodafone(Europe).

1) Do you think a consumer of cellular service gives a crap whether it is a different layer or a different technology, or were you trying to imply a GSM phone would work on a TDMA network?

A consumer doesn't care what technology his phone is running at, he cares about what's his bill gonna be and what features he is gonna get with what tariff.
However, there is a difference between TDMA and GSM. TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) is a technology while GSM is a European standard that uses TDMA as base technology. So GSM is TDMA but TDMA is not GSM in general terms. So a GSM phone will not work in any TDMA network but only the networks that use GSM standards (GSM is the most popular standard in TDMA). Also Mobile phones supporting one frequency band will not work with another band. United States indeed uses GSM standard for TDMA networks, operating in Frequency bands of 850MHz and 1900MHz. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM_frequency_bands#GSM-850_and_GSM-1900)

If a network uses different band(like 900MHz and 1800 MHz) it wont be compatible with phones working at 850-1900 band. Quad band phones will, however, be compatible with both networks.

2) Are you trying to imply companies like Cingular were not peddling a TDMA network that was incompatible with GSM, then running the two networks side by side, until switching over to GSM entirely in 2006?

They could be very well using TDMA but a different standard than GSM all together. In that case, GSM phone will not be able to work in those networks. I'm not sure what standard Cingular would be using that time.


Other Multiple Access technologies than TDMA are CDMA(Code Division Multiple Access), FDMA(Frequency Division Multiple Access) and SDMA(Space Division Multiple Access).

 

No you are not Dilbert, and when he gets back, he is going to be angry you sat in his chair!

D-AMPS was the TDMA technology used by the non-CDMA US Carriers until around 2005.

The funny thing is, while looking it up, I also stumbled across a legitimate reason US carriers might have hung onto a dying technology.

 

Sorry Dilbert, you can have your chair back..

Ah yes, IS-54 and IS-136... It was known to us as USDC

 

The DOJ is putting a stop to the merger. This is good news for America right ?