Internet has been won: Most clueless post in history in Off Topic

ID:45729
 
Jul 24 2008, 1:50 pm
Keywords: skeptical
Yes, we can all pack up and go home. Now that the most clueless post in history has been made, and it's simply not possible for anyone to beat it, there's no more point to the worldwide web.

An excerpt:

Which got me to thinking about deregulation in the phone industry. Its been twelve years since the 1996 Telecom Act. I remember how it used to be when you wanted to get phone and internet service back in the day. I called the local phone company, got a two hour window, and someone showed up during that two hour window. Now, with deregulation, we have competition - now I can't get phone and internet service not just from one but rather from two companies that won't show up to provide me with that service. One company that provides the service, even if its a monopoly, beats two that do not in my book.

Now, before someone points out that the service is better now - internet is faster - well, technology advances. My guess is that the improvement in technology available to the consumer from 1984 to 1996 is more significant than the improvement from 1996 to 2008. (Anyone remember using a BBS?) And the improvements on the cell phone side of the business seem to come mostly on the manufactured hand-unit, which was never regulated because it isn't a natural monopoly. The rest comes from the switch, and that isn't manufactured by the former natural monopoly either.

Hat tip to Megan McArdle, who as usual posts an excellent rebuttal, though she forgets to mention that actually owning your own used to be illegal and that the phone company would occasionally send an electric signal through your line to see how many bells (remember phone bells?) were on the line, which would indicate that you were breaking the law.

Ah, for the good old days...
#1 Jul 24 2008, 3:01 pm
The comment directly on that article is actually quite nice: it would be great if the government offered a regulated option while also allowing a deregulated option.

I also remember how bad BC Tel was before they became Telus. They're still the chief provider of landlines, although VOIP and the competing cellular services have a strong foothold, and Bell Canada has moved in to take up the rest of the landline slack.
#2 Jul 24 2008, 3:20 pm
Jtgibson wrote:
it would be great if the government offered a regulated option while also allowing a deregulated option.

I wonder how possible that even is...in the US we have something like that with the Postal Service...the non-regulated service (overnight package delivery, etc) innovates and improves regularly...but to avoid competition, the government won't allow the private service providers to provide service that directly competes with the Postal Service, such as regular letter delivery.

The result is that we lose out by not receiving the innovations and cost reductions that would come from competition in all areas of postal service, even though we have lots of evidence of how good private mail delivery can be.
#3 Jul 24 2008, 6:22 pm
(remember phone bells?)

Not only do I remember them, I still hear them! I have one of these Crosley retro phones (link below) and I highly recommend it to the phone connoisseur. It looks good, has a bell, and unlike a lot of these newfangled gimcracks they're making nowadays, is VERY solidly constructed.

http://www.retrowonders.com/ index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=412
#4 Jul 25 2008, 12:11 am
Gughunter wrote:
I have one of these Crosley retro phones (link below)

Wow, can't say I agree with the choice to put in digital buttons. I'll admit I hate using dials but design-wise they're a must have on a phone like that.

Personally I'd like to get a full sized Bill & Ted style phone booth.
I never use my land line phone anyway so the inconvenience of having to stand in the booth to make a call on it will only serve to stop my stupid friends from sitting around making calls on my phone all day. =P
#5 Jul 25 2008, 3:11 am (Edited on Jul 25 2008, 3:21 am)
I'm still a bit iffy on privatised telephone services - after that happened here in Australia (recently - the Howard government sold Telstra, previously a government phone/internet provider) into the public domain - and service suffered, even while prices rose and Telstra's new CEO got a massive salary. Privatised Telstra is now firmly against the government improving the internet infrastructure within the country, basically because it would break their monopoly on the lines.

That said, I imagine you're talking about something slightly different from privatising a public company, as privately owned companies could and did compete with Telstra back when it was government-owned. Might be before my time.

EDIT: Right, Fizzy just informed me you were talking about the split-up of some company called AT&T, which I'd know nothing about. I'll just take my worthless two cents and spend it elsewhere. Sorry. :P
#6 Jul 25 2008, 8:26 am
Jp wrote:
That said, I imagine you're talking about something slightly different from privatising a public company, as privately owned companies could and did compete with Telstra back when it was government-owned. Might be before my time.

I would absolutely be for privatizing any government-run phone company (or mail service, cable provider, etc) in most cases.

Privatizing or deregulation can be done badly, but in almost all cases a government-run monopoly, or a government-mandated monopoly, does untold harm to consumers.

And I mean "untold" literally...if we in the US were still subjected to a government-mandated monopoly in the phone space, we might have absolutely no idea what we were missing...there might be effectively no internet access for us (heck the internet might never have come about and flourished), but we wouldn't even know we had missed out on it.

As it is, today, we have only an inkling on what we are probably missing out on in mail service, and in cable services in those areas where there are still government-mandated monopolies for that service.

And while it's nice if you are technically allowed to compete with the government-provided service, I am very skeptical that you'd ever be allowed to compete on a level playing field. If that's the case, there'd be no point to having a government-provided service.
#7 Jul 25 2008, 9:02 am
Jp: AT&T was a government mandated monopoly. It was setup to allow the lines to be built by a private corporation, using it's own money, without fear of competition. It worked remarkably well to build up the lines in a hurry, but to make sure AT&T would hold up their end of the bargain, they had to be allowed to have a monopoly for a good long time. This caused the service to build out, but not get better, as there was no competition.

When the monopoly rights were over, they broke up AT&T into several other companies (the one my Mom works for being one of them). This caused instant competition, but a lot of instability because you had a lot of new companies running lines that didn't really know how. But now that things are stable, everyone is just using cell phones, which are currently a far open'er market.

Also, I miss the old days when cordless phones could be used as a bludgeoning device.
#8 Jul 25 2008, 2:24 pm
I miss the days when cell phones were big enough that you would be able to press only one button at a time.