Cell Phone Cost Calculator Killed In Canada 214
inject_hotmail.com writes "Internet and law genius Michael Geist writes about some shenanigans by the cell phone carriers and the Canadian government in his column in The Star. Canadian taxpayers funded a 'Cell Phone Cost Calculator' so that the average person could theoretically wade through the disjointed and incongruent package offerings. The calculator wound up being yanked a couple weeks before launch. Geist suggests that the major cell carriers lobbied the appropriate public officials to have the program nixed because it would bite into their profit if the general public could make sense out of pricing and fees. Geist continues, 'Sensing that [Tony] Clement (Industry Minister) was facing pressure to block the calculator, Canadian consumer groups wrote to the minister, urging him to stick with it.' Moving forward, Michael makes a novel suggestion, one that would show an immense level of understanding by the government: 'With public dollars having funded the mothballed project, the government should now consider releasing the calculator's source code and enable other groups to pick up where the OCA (Office of Consumer Affairs) left off.'"
Oh well. (Score:5, Insightful)
No leaks? (Score:4, Insightful)
No one with access to the code cares enough to post it to Wikileaks? Strange..... Does Canada execute whistle blowers or something? I always thought they were at least as free as the United States. Someone put it out there, and let it go viral. Screw the politicians. Better yet, hope they drown in the saunas and pools they build in their back yards with all that bribe money.
Re:No leaks? (Score:4, Funny)
We'll get to it. It's just the line up at Tim's Drive thru is a bit slow.
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Contrary to popular belief, Tim Horton's is not coffee. It is brown coloured water that tastes strange - at best.
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It may sound a little odd, but in Canada, our public service is wrather a-political. Advancement is merit based throughout the whole thing, and the only political supervision they have is a parrel BOD at the top. One of the reasons this arangement functions is that public servants are responsible for not fucking over politicians. Always be very nice, and don't contradict what the politicans say. They do it for all political parties, and the parties mainly keep their noses out of their bussiness. Some e
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Then we can have us a French Revolution. Only we can call it a "Freedom Revolution", and not do it for stupid jingiost motives.
And would you like fries with that?
Free market (Score:5, Insightful)
to have the program nixed because it would bite into their profit if the general public could make sense out of pricing and fees
OMG competition! Think of the shareholders!
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Every business would rather not have competition. The problem here isn't that they tried to eliminate it, it's that the people who put the site up took it down. The deeper problem is that politicians yield to pressure from companies, thus giving said companies power beyond simply controlling their own property.
Re:Free market (Score:5, Interesting)
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In other words, things about which the general public is largely ignorant. I suspect that the only reason why the software industry is not included
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Re:Free market (Score:5, Insightful)
People get poor deals on telephone service, mortgages and financial services because they are ignorant and lazy not because they are unable to do better if they put some effort into the negotiations.
You can't have PhD's in every single area of your life. And please don't bring up financial services when even the knowledgeable (those who do this for a living) ran head forward into the the wall. And how do you negotiate with a multi-billion dollar company? They'll just tell you to go away.
Bah. Who am I fooling. Money is God, customers are Opponents (if not the Enemy), and if they buy your product and it's bad for them, they deserve it and they should feel bad!
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This is like the grandmaster burning the novice's move book, because it might give the novice a chance.
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Part of the
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I have money and want a service or product. They have a service or product and want my money. We should be working together to trade, not engaging in battle. So why should it be a battle that employs deceit? And yes, chess does involve deceit, as it is a battle, and there are specific "feint" moves intended to deceive. But if an industry does it, t
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They think of it as a battle, because that's how society has dressed it up for centuries. "us vs them" is a very seductive packaging for any idea.
Now if only people could realize that we spend most of our lives talking about, worrying about and being slaves to money, well then maybe they'd find a way to write money out of the equation and we could go back to fucking like rabbits.
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Re:Free market (Score:5, Insightful)
No matter how educated I might want to be about the options available, I'm still limited to choosing among just those options. I'd like a cellular plan whose cost covers only the network portion and doesn't include a device subsidy. I've looked, and AFAICT, none of the major operators are willing to sell me just a connectivity plan.
I've been on the same plan for about seven years now because I'm a grandfathered Cingular user. Any plan I might switch to costs more for the same level of service as I have now. In comparison to the cost of wireline telephony or Internet connectivity, rising prices for cellular service make absolutely no sense. Since it seems likely that the cost of providing cellular service must have declined in the past decade as past investments in plant are paid off, I'm guessing the carriers are making some significant profits.
I'm all for educating consumers, but even an educated body of consumers can't do much when confronted with oligopoly pricing. There's no "free" market in cellphone service that I can see. If there were, I'd be able to go to AT&T or T-Mobile or some competing GSM carrier, buy a voice-only plan for $30/month, get a SIM chip, and stick it in my existing phone.
Free press (Score:5, Insightful)
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But this is Canada, our politicians are already a humiliation.
So good luck with that strategy.
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Compared with the rest of the developed world i.e. Europe and the US (in some respects) we are country miles behind in the adoption and the availability of technology. I know this comes to many as a surprise but if you have ever visited Western Europe i.e. UK, Germany, France, Sweden, Denmark in the last 10- 15 years you know exactly what I mean. Even just take a trip to a Best Buy in the US, you will find products choices not available in Canada. Why I don't know but I suspect it has to do with unenlighten
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Canada has a pretty low population (and even lower population density) than most of the places you mentioned. The retailers know that the marketplace won't sustain high profits if there is a lot of aggressive competition, so the companies generally don't enter into aggressive competition with each other. If I'm selling widget X and you're selling thingie Y, I'm not going to start selling thingie Y
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Sorry to burst your conspiracy theory, but it all comes down to profit margins, and general corporate laziness.
And with particular regard to the GP's point that there is stuff available at Best Buy in the US that isn't in Canada, this has mostly to do with a combination of the US having a larger population and a wider income distribution. That means that low-end items that would have a substantial market in the US simply wouldn't get picked up frequently enough in Canada to make it worth going through the
Re:Free press (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry to burst your conspiracy theory, but it all comes down to profit margins, and general corporate laziness. Canada has a pretty low population (and even lower population density) than most of the places you mentioned. The retailers know that the marketplace won't sustain high profits if there is a lot of aggressive competition, so the companies generally don't enter into aggressive competition with each other. If I'm selling widget X and you're selling thingie Y, I'm not going to start selling thingie Y, because it won't be profitable to have half of a small pie. And a price war in a small market leads to mutually assured destruction.
But that actually IS a conspiracy theory. It's a valid one, too. When all or most of the companies in a market collude together to produce a situation that benefits them at the potential expense of everyone else, like what you just described, they are indeed conspiring. That they do it out of mutual self-interest and not on behalf of a more abstract agenda doesn't change this. That they do it by means of business decisions and not by secret meetings in smoky back rooms doesn't change this either.
We really need to get over the term "conspiracy theory." "Conspiracy theory" does not mean "instant way to halt all debate by stigmatizing your opponent," nor does it mean "instant excuse for dismissal without examination." It means "theory concerning people who work together in certain ways." There's nothing magical about the word "conspiracy" either. If you work at a company that makes widgets, you and all of your coworkers are conspiring to make widgets.
It's sort of like the word "sanction" in that it does not necessarily indicate a bad or undesirable activity, it's just often used that way and has taken on a connotation which excludes other things that it can mean. This is particularly true in the minds of people who don't really understand the words they are using. If you do a good deed and are rewarded for it, you have been sanctioned. However, if you read a headline which says "U.N. sanctions $NATION" it's assumed that $NATION was punished in some way. Something similar has happened to the concept of a conspiracy theory and all of the well-meaning yet not very courageous people who tiptoe around that phrase when it really is the one that applies.
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However, if you read a headline which says "U.N. sanctions $NATION" it's assumed that $NATION was punished in some way.
That has less to do with the word "sanction" and more to do with the U.N., which never does anything good in the world, so whenever they appear in the news, we assume it's bad news.
Perhaps a more familiar term for these corporate conspiracies would be "cartel", or did I attend the only high school that taught what a cartel is and why they're evil ?
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Pit bulls--the real ones--are notoriously illegal in Ontario: http://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/english/about/pubs/dola-pubsfty/dola-pubsfty.asp [gov.on.ca]. Apparently that's not so in the rest of Canada, but since the government is located there, the press might want to consider attacking like a pack of chihuahuas, or perhaps Cocker Spaniels.
Re:Free press (Score:5, Funny)
Don't be making fun of the land pirañas. Chihuahuas are funny little dogs individually, but if they're ever again allowed to form large packs you'll find out why they were universally feared in days of yore.
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I generally oppose such restrictions, viewing them as the government's way of telling us that it needs to have its size and power reduced because it has run out of real problems to address. However, I will tell you why I don't care much (either way) about this one. By and large, people seem to want to own pit bulls because they think it's cute or flattering to have a creature that is kind to them (the owner) and aggressive or potentially aggress
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Dogs are great for lonely people. They are also great for lots of other things, but "self defense" should not be one of them. A dog is not unduly bothered by the things we call "conscience", and it is by human standards retarded and hopelessly emotionally dependent (upon its owner). Its natural weapon will hurt you in much the same way a pair of rusty, dirty scissors would do. What would people say if you hired a human bodyguard like that?
Oh, I'm sure they would be afraid of your Norman Bates-with-scissors
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Good timing :
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2009/09/01/toronto-cyclist-collision-death481.html [www.cbc.ca]
Yes, we have our share of dirty rotten self-righteous political fuckwits. They're mostly concentrated in Ontario and Alberta... As to why, well I'm afraid that's up to speculation.
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And the Irvings own the east coast print media
Re:Free press (Score:4, Insightful)
This is where you need free press that attack like a pack of pitbulls and demand to know who ordered the cancellation and why. Nothing teaches politicians honest like public humiliation.
Unfortunately you need good honest people to become interested in politics too. Otherwise every election is just a "lesser evil" type of choice and you never get anything like the self-correcting system that you describe here. The ability to choose your form of corruption is not real honesty, just like the ability to choose your master is not real freedom.
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Nothing teaches politicians honest like public humiliation.
Hit their wallet.
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Here in Norway there is a similar service. The best part? It is actualy run by a government agency to aid consumers in the jungle of cellphone and broadband plans. (http://www.telepriser.no/ , in Norwegian only)
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Humiliation doesn't work on our politicians, they bathe in it every single goddamned day and THEY LOVE IT!
What we need is a JFK style assassination or two, a little scare to wake them out of their circle-talking stupor.
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So, really, we need Press that isn't owned by the politicians that they are reporting on?
It's not so much that the press is owned by the politicians. It isn't. It's that both the press and the politicians are owned by similar (and sometimes identical) monied interests, many of which operate through various think tanks, front groups, and foundations because they have much to hide. Behind these fronts you often find various "old-money" families which are also openly active in politics. In that way, the aristocracy is alive and well in (North) America. In the cases where it is not outright ow
I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada (Score:5, Interesting)
Believe it or not things are actually better in the States because in Canada absolutely nobody understands the concept of a SIM card or an unlocked phone. If I ever visit that country I'm taking an Iridium phone because I'd rather pay $1.45 a minute than support those goons.
Besides the sales assistants there have probably been brainwashed to outright refuse to sell any prepaid SIM cards they might have and do all they can to convince you to take out a 36-month contract even after clearly explaining to them you are only staying for two weeks
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Yeah, in the US, you can walk in to Safeway and get a $10 TracFone.
Try Japan:
To buy a pre-paid cell phone (you have to buy the phone, even if you just want the SIM card), you have to be registered with city hall, have the right kind of visa
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Now SaskTel has good prepaid. For $20, I can phone as infrequently as I need to, and the minutes don't expire if I make a 1 second call every 2 or 3 months (or something like that). The minutes used to expire if you didn't add another $20 card in that time, but a law change prevented that.
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It just makes you wonder why they need to do that, or why the government even cares about which payment plan you use for your wireless phone. Generally speaking, the sale of a good or of a service goes like this: you give money, you receive good or service. To insert "
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Commissioned sales reps or their manager is on commission and is forcing their subordinates to push that crap.
I am very wary of commissioned sales people at the retail level. Their mentality always degrades to a slash and burn - do whatever
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Eh, at some point the customer needs to have a spine. A small amount of preparedness (good old planning ahead, that thing that seems to have fallen out of fashion) in the form of having already evaluated your needs and chosen your product or service
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They're just leaving the market open for someone to swoop in who accepts the modest commissions on helping *a lot* of people getting what they really want/need.
Of course, it's our responsibility as consumers, when we find such a salesman, to make sure they keep getting more business than their contemporaries (unless and until they decide to sacrifice all that good will for a few quick unnecessarily high commission sales.)
Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada (Score:5, Informative)
Don't tell Rogers it's an iPhone. Just tell them you have an unlocked phone and need a SIM card. NOT over the phone - go in person to a mall kiosk or store. Get them to start doing the paperwork, THEN show them the phone, when asked. They'll make a big deal out of "checking" it to see if it really is unlocked. But since they've started the paperwork already....
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THEN show them the phone, when asked. They'll make a big deal out of "checking" it to see if it really is unlocked. But since they've started the paperwork already....
Why even show them the phone at all? Or if you must, bring in a older GSM phone that uses the same sim card. Companies have no compunction about lying to you so why should you tell them the truth when a lie will do? The real world plays hardball, so should you.
Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the ugly truth:
Rogers is a horrible company that will treat you like crap, and generally try to rip you off... they're also the best of the bunch. (Actually, I find Fido, which is owned by Rogers, but technically a separate company is a bit better) Rogers will at least work with you a little sometimes, Bell will wait until you're on a contract, then screw you, then say "oh well, have a nice day". Telus is about the same.
Here's a great example of Bell/Telus customer service; A friend of mine bought a Telus blackberry after her old phone started to die. She had frequently been disconnected for failure to pay her bill, despite the fact that she always paid her bill, so I really don't know why she stayed with Telus, but that's another bag of snakes... back to the point. So this phone has horrible issues. She takes it back to get it exchanged for a working one, which apparently she has to wait 3 weeks+ for. Next phone, more issues, exchange again. Gets HER FIRST BLACKBERRY BACK as a "new" phone. Finally when that one doesn't work, she gets a different model which she has to spend hours on the phone over the course of a week to get them to agree to. Here's the kicker; ~$40 charge every time the phone#/account was switched to a different handset. That's right they charge to switch from your broken handset, to a working one (which in this case was also broken).
And I'd STILL deal w/ Telus before Bell. Everyone's got at least one horror story with any given provider, and they're all a bunch of pricks, but having a lot of experience w/ pretty much all of the carriers here, I can't recommend anyone other than Fido or Rogers. It's a case of picking the least of the evils. Kinda like picking your personal bank. (Which is TD btw, or at least stay the HELL away from CIBC!!!)
Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada (Score:5, Informative)
Wait, you were talking about cell phone companies, right?
Rogers is a bunch of bottom feeding sharks. Telus is worse, and I've heard Bell is even worse.
Telus is so bad they had to start up a whole other brand (Koodoo) that, as their primary marketing strategy, makes fun of all the established companies (including Telus). Rogers ALSO has an alter ego (Fido) but at least they bought Fido to suppress competition rather than creating it to escape their bad reputation.
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Although Rogers and Fido appear as two separate companies, they are technically the same. Rogers purchased Fido years ago, so they are now the same company. Perhaps the rep you spoke with at Fido was new or just really didn't care to the same extent as the Rogers rep.
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Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada (Score:5, Informative)
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Really? As a Canadian who visits the US about once a month I would seriously consider using a US carrier with that type rate for Canadian roaming. It's a better deal than living in Montreal and roaming to Toronto.
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Yup, it's pretty awful. Not QUITE as bad as you paint it though. We certainly do know what unlocked phones are. I had one before getting an iPhone. Ten years ago it wasn't worth it - the contract cancellation fee was $200 and you generally got more of a subsidy than that on the phone. Now, it probably is worth it - the contract cancellation fee is $400 + $100 if you have a data plan. We also know what SIM cards are. Not that it helps much unless you go to Europe - service initiation fees in the US us
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It seems to be the worst country when it comes to vendor lock-in (firmware branding, sim locking), long contracts, high costs and craptastic prepaid packages. The one GSM network they have there (Rogers) is only GSM by technology, they use IMEI numbers to make sure people are using the right branded device for the data plan they're on. In any country where there is no CDMA that shit wouldn't fly, of course the Gubmint there don't feel like doing anything about it.
This is BS.
I moved to Canada 18 months ago and got a Rogers SIM card that I just popped into my unlocked european phone and it worked. I eventually changed over to Fido for a better plan (no contract) and bought an unlocked phone, no worries. You can get prepaid SIM cards basically anywhere and they'll never, ever ask for the IMEI.
If you only need a cheap prepaid, I recomment Speakeasy that's sold by 7-11. Credit lasts for 1 year and you can get a nearly free phone if needed.
I do agree that the cell phone m
If they were serious (Score:5, Interesting)
If they were serious about consumer protection they'd just pass a law that requires full clear standardized disclosure of pricing.
Failure should result in fines that have significant impact on shareholder value and should be grounds for terminating a contract.
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And nothing was lost
While this sounds like dishonest shenanigans on the part of the cellphone companies, I doubt it would have changed anything. Consumers are not the brightest bunch out there. As an aggregate group, we make some pretty stupid decisions based very little on long-term costs. Evidence the SUV. Many millions of (mostly) useless, overpowered, gas guzzling and expensive-to maintain sport futility vehicles were sold in the US, Canada and Australia over the past few years. Until oil hit $10
bell curve (Score:2, Insightful)
While this sounds like dishonest shenanigans on the part of the cellphone companies, I doubt it would have changed anything. Consumers are not the brightest bunch out there.
Nothing against their dignity as human beings, but by definition half the population is on the left-hand side of the bell curve.
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
-- H. L. Mencken (I'm sure this is true regardless of country)
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We also seem to be quite willing to pay $0.20 for text messages even though it has been publicly known for years that the messages are next to free for the companies to provide.
And what generally happens to free services?
Hint: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons [wikipedia.org]
In short, it's not the price of plans that attracts users to particular companies, it's the devices and services.
[Citation Needed]
Talking down the intelligence of the consumer and then appealing to common sense is not a substitute for statistical data.
Can we haz Streisand Effect plox? (Score:5, Interesting)
Can we find the algorithm of this calculator anywhere and Streisand Effect it?
Re:Can we haz Streisand Effect plox? (Score:5, Interesting)
Can we find the algorithm of this calculator anywhere and Streisand Effect it?
The calculator (as designed) relies on the cellcos to provide and maintain current pricing data. It will only work with the weight of government regulation behind it to force them to do so.
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According to an Industry Canada spokesperson, "technical limitations" were to blame.
The quote above is the "official" reason the project was canceled, and for once, only this once I promise, I believe the official line. This kind of project has been tried before by many-many people. As a software project alone, without the support of some strong coercive governmental standardization laws, it's a huge and an almost impossible undertaking.
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Out of curiosity - why is that?
I realize that finding where that information is stored, listing it, keeping it up to date (a script could notify you of plan changes on the page, though), etc. is a big initial undertaking, but after that...?
In fact.. presuming this site has all the plans listed accurately... ...what's to stop them*, or anybody, from taking that data and making a calculator? Or better, the service mentioned
http://www.cellphones.ca/cell-plans/ [cellphones.ca]
Who's your Daddy? (Score:2, Insightful)
'With public dollars having funded the mothballed project, the government should now consider releasing the calculator's source code and enable other groups to pick up where the OCA (Office of Consumer Affairs) left off.'"
That would only make sense if the government (the Conservative Party) weren't neoconservative. They aren't going to stick it to their main constituents; the business lobby and their sycophants. Of course, in these type of observations their will be neoconservatives claiming that the Conservative Party isn't Right Wing.
Some comments on the Norwegian version (Score:5, Interesting)
Since 2002 the "Norwegian Post and Telecommunication Authority" has had a calculator offering much of the same for the Norwegian market. In addition to mobile phones it also covers telephony and broadband. Basically, all providers are required by law to provide their pricing structures to the authority, so that the services can be compared. For mobile phones this will involve entering your typical number of minutes (to other mobile phones and landlines), text messages, mms messages and kilobytes.
I'm sure someone will moan that this is socialism, since it is a service that could be offered by the market, or that people could do themselves, or that services such as this can never be efficient anyway. There are some arguments against this: The Norwegian market is small (4.5 million people), with lots of mountains and a low population density, and strict rules about required coverage by the licensees. Manpower is also extremely expensive, and most workers are members of a union. So, clearly, Norway should have really high prices, right?
Wrong - according to the calculator my mobile phone costs should be about 0,- every month, with a 0,- establishment fee for the contract. (About 100 outgoing text messages, 100 minutes outgoing, and 1mb. No mms messages)
Why is this? It is of course hard to find the "perfect truth", but here are some informed guesses: The market is very regulated, in order to enforce competition. Perhaps the most important (to the consumer) point of this is that you can move your phone number to any other operator, either for free or for some very small cost. While there are only three GSM licensees there are 16 or so "virtual operators", who operate by putting a box inside the switches of the GSM licensees, and basically resell their bandwidth. The authority is also able to punish any collusion between the operators, and to require changes in price structures between the operators.
Clearly, all this (regulated) competition is good for the Norwegian consumer, but is it good for the telecom companies? The biggest Norwegian operator (Telenor) has according to wikipedia 143 million subscribers, so clearly all this competition does something to the companies, which can't be all bad. Telenor used to be a state-owned monopoly, which was well known for being hugely inefficient and slow. In markets where there can only be a limited number of providers (such as bandwidth in the GSM bands) there is no natural encouragement for companies to become more efficient, if you want to make more money it is easy to just add another hidden fee. Only by allowing for virtual operators and implementing the pricing calculator the benefits of having a market was realized.
(The same system was implemented for electrical power providers, but it failed for the banking system - allowing people to move their account numbers between banks was evidently too expensive..)
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The same system ... failed for the banking system - allowing people to move their account numbers between banks was evidently too expensive..)
The UK banks won't let you keep your account number (the first half [sort code] identifies the bank, I assume they don't want to lose this convenience) but when you open a new account they'll offer to transfer over any direct debits, inform your employer for you and so on. (NatWest [natwest.com]'s explanation of this.) I assume they offer this to try and attract new customers.
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Only by allowing for virtual operators and implementing the pricing calculator the benefits of having a market was realized.
This is an excellent example of the so-called "Second Best Theorem" in economics, which is a proof that the Frist Fundamental Theorem of Welfare Economics [wikipedia.org] is completely useless as a policy tool, because an arbitrarily small deviation from ideal premises can result in an arbitrarily large deviation from ideal (Pareto optimal) outcomes.
This means that the claim in the above-liked Wikiped
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.
Does Norway have a lot of visitors, a very interesting phone/person ratio, or does Telenor provides service outside the country?
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.
Does Norway have a lot of visitors, a very interesting phone/person ratio, or does Telenor provides service outside the country?
Telenor operates over much of Europe and Asia these days, through subsidiaries and such.
My point was just that enforcing competition is a good thing in the long term, even if the companies involved will complain a lot in the short term. The operators complained a lot when the reforms were implemented, but I don't think they would have been where they are today without being kicked away from their complacent near-monopoly status. Both the companies involved and the consumers (citizens) made a profit from the
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I was recently in Norway and had to get a temporary phone due to problems with my own phone. I can attest that I got a plan that would let me call for free to other customers of the same operator. Of course, phone calls to landlines and other operators were not for free. I think I ended up paying €60 for a prepaid phone including an hour's worth of international calls within Europe.
Consumer Rights Isn't (Score:3, Insightful)
When are people going to begin to realise that as far as consumers go there is no free market. Sure you can get a better deal at carrier B than carrier C but you will never get the BEST DEAL POSSIBLE because they don't want to give it to you. Profit is paramount, but these guys are really taking it too far.
CUB Cell Phone Saver (Score:5, Informative)
Everythings a game! Taxes and health care too! (Score:3, Insightful)
Canada's other (comercial) cell calculator (Score:3, Informative)
I'm hesitant to say this 'cause I know ./ is going to crash it,
But there's actually a privately developed calculator in beta right now.
cellplanexpert.ca [cellplanexpert.ca]
It's a work in progress and txting+data is yet to come, but otherwise it's very comprehensive. You can get a feel for how complicated plans actually are in Canada (if you care to actually research) from the long questionnaire process.
The big problem in Canada is that in most provinces, there are only 2 independent networks Rogers (GSM) and "Belus" (Bell in Ontario & Quebec + Telus in BC and Alberta - the two are co-dependant on each other's network -CDMA variants). So providers and all their various subsidiaries compete on who can best obfuscate the highest prices, not who can lower them the most. This means there are a plethora of options, features, hidden rates and costs to wade through. This might change if the new carriers emerging from the recent spectrum auction actuall stay independent, and are not bought out by the big players like the last round. In provinces where there's even 3 independent players (Saskatchewan, Manitoba) it's significantly more competitive.
Full disclaimer - it's my site.
Slashdot Surreality (Score:3, Interesting)
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Remember Folks! (Score:3, Insightful)
But somehow, YOU'RE the one who's "anti-market" if you want to see this service work.
Re:Frustrating! (Score:5, Insightful)
When corporations have the ability to use government policy as a tool to protect their private interests the correct term is not capitalism - it's called fascism.
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It's corporatism, actually. Fascism goes a bit further with the State.
Re:Frustrating! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini
Re:Frustrating! (Score:5, Informative)
"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini
What I think is unappreciated or underappreciated about abominations like Mussolini is that nothing they did was a chance, coincident, or accident. They understood very well what they were working for and where it was leading and accomplished it by a series of carefully planned maneuvers, each one of which had its own excuse, its own official story. Usually that story says that this is necessary, good for the country, designed to safeguard the people, intended to stop a national enemy, or that lack of patriotism is the only reason to oppose it. Above all, there is a distinctive pattern to it and once recognized, it is easy to spot, even in its early stages.
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Re:Frustrating! (Score:5, Insightful)
And sounds a lot like what was being accomplished by Bush. Unpatriotic was the charge leveled repeatedly. The insane spending was initiated by Bush. The only howls are because a few different groups are getting the payouts and bribes than the Republicans would have given. Many of the payouts are the same under either party. The key to recognize is that the corporations don't care which party is in charge as long as they have been thoroughly bought. In fact, by having 2 and only two parties, the parties can fight over 'issues' and make voting seem important, when the (big) corporations still win. And having small companies die is great for the big corporations because they get them for a song. And it's not stockholders who make out like bandits, it's the actual bandits, CEO's, CFO's and cronies, who have the SEC in their back pocket.
Please pardon how I put this, but it's a real pleasure to hear from someone who doesn't have his head up his ass. The two party duopoly is one of the pillars of our current situation, and there is unfortunately a shortage of people who can realize that on their own as you have done. As you seem to understand, the general naivete and encouraged ignorance has become so widespread that few people personally know the sharp insight and intuitive brightness which are not only available to human beings, but are in fact our birthright.
Naturally the ability to realize your own inner genius is the first thing that must be stolen from the members of the public in order to promote the kind of stupidity that would have ever allowed our status quo to happen. That, to me, makes this a different kind of evil far beyond the mere desire to be in charge and control others.
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For lack of mod point, amen to you both.
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And sounds a lot like what was being accomplished by Bush. Unpatriotic was the charge leveled repeatedly. The insane spending was initiated by Bush. The only howls are because a few different groups are getting the payouts and bribes than the Republicans would have given. Many of the payouts are the same under either party. The key to recognize is that the corporations don't care which party is in charge as long as they have been thoroughly bought. In fact, by having 2 and only two parties, the parties can
Re:Frustrating! (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, because only aspiring dictators use bombastic rhetoric.
Are you really that shallow? Serious. Fucking. Question. Because if you can't tell the difference between that, and what I was talking about, then there's really no point in discussing this with you. For the more perceptive folks who happen to read this thread, this is an educational opportunity. This, folks, is what denial looks like. Its most distinguishing feature is that it immediately dismisses the valid points I raised while making absolutely no effort to refute it, and does so while attempting to appear superior as evidenced by the overall smugness.
There's something even more dangerous than a wannabe dictator or a government that is heading in the wrong direction. That would be the many people with their heads in the sand who want so badly to believe that "it can't happen here" that they create the excuses, dismiss the warning signs, and ridicule the aware to the point that they virtually guarantee that it WILL happen here. If it doesn't happen here, that will be no thanks to these myrmidons.
Folks, this is so simple it's absurd. Government is not a perfect institution, which we know for a fact because there are no perfect institutions. We also know for a fact that no institution lasts forever. Because it is not perfect, and cannot last forever, government has a failure mode. Be it a military dictatorship or a police state, the failure mode of modern Western government is the totalitarian state. In order to share the parent poster's naive attitude, you would have to believe that both of these are true:
God damn it, both of those are false and you know it. You know it even if you won't admit it.
When a corporation can shut down a government Web site because it contains factual information that the corporation does not want people to know, that is one of your early warning signs. Go ahead and make excuses for it and tell me it's perfectly harmless; your reasoning will be limp-wristed and and your justifications will be half-hearted because you know deep down that I am speaking the truth.
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This sounds like the platform of the Conservative Party of Canada.
Re:Frustrating! (Score:5, Insightful)
This sounds like the platform of the Conservative Party of Canada.
Isn't it amazing how "conservative" once meant something like "reluctant to expend governmental resources" and has now come to mean "eager to increase the size and power and involvement of government, but for reasons different from the ones used by those who are called liberals?" Really, that's a neat trick.
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Today it seems to be more about hands-off domestic corporations, encourage private alternatives to public systems, and alter laws to support home-grown international corporations. The media spins everything into a story and you don't have a story without conflict.
These days, democracy needs to be protected from private interests, and the Conservatives are caving in all the wrong places. I don't like them.
BTW, did you send in your membership to the Pirate Party yet?
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Funny, I thought conservatism always meant valuing traditions and status quo and that's what republicans are mostly doing.
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"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini
The words "corporate" and "corporatism" had very different meanings back then. For Fascists specifically, this meant something closer to Medieval professional guilds, and not at all what we today call "corporations".
Re:Frustrating! (Score:5, Insightful)
When corporations have the ability to use government policy as a tool to protect their private interests the correct term is not capitalism - it's called fascism.
This is absolutely correct and when it's in the early stages like this, very few people recognize the danger. They don't seem to grasp that this is not a situation that can improve on its own. On its own, it can only get progressively worse and by the time it's immediately and outwardly obvious that they are living in a fascist state, it's often too late for the people to do much of anything about it other than cower and curse their lack of foresight.
From the summary:
The attempt by the cell carriers to halt this project is all the more reason to go through with it. If anything, that should result in additional effort to not only produce the calculator but also to fund a media campaign so everyone knows it is available. The failure to understand this is all that you need to know in order to realize what a bunch of spineless, useless excuses for human beings (they are puppets really) our so-called leaders actually are.
Re:Frustrating! (Score:5, Insightful)
But that's the ultimate result of all unmitigated capitalist systems. Despite what conservative libertarians believe, the invisible hand of the free market does not create an egalitarian utopia where the little guys can compete on even terms with the multi-billion-dollar megacorporations or international conglomerates.
Market forces (via economies of scale/scope) almost always push towards a single fully vertically and horizontally integrated monopoly. That's why Wal-Mart beats out little mom & pop stores. So, in order to force the reality of capitalism to reflect the ideal of capitalist competition, we have to create antitrust laws and industry regulations. But those things ultimately get in the way of corporate profits, so anyone supporting them is labeled a socialist (which is true in the sense that they care about society and social welfare over money and the economy). And if you're pro-capitalism then you must necessarily be pro-business and support deregulation.
The other problem is that, even though capitalism is supposed to be an economic theory, its effects tend to spill out into politics and other societal spheres. A capitalist society, by definition, is driven by capital. Wealth equates to power in a capitalist society. With wealth, you have access to better education, better health care, and better opportunities. Additionally, having better lawyers means you are treated better in the eyes of the law, and having powerful lobbies means you have exponentially more political influence than your less affluent brethren—and why shouldn't you? you have better nearly everything else, right? If Ayn Rand was right, and the captains of industry do carry the world on their shoulders, then why shouldn't they get to decide public policy? And if everyone's goal in life should be to get filthy rich and look out for only themselves, then can you really blame the politicians who sell out to powerful business interests?
So we shouldn't really be surprised by actions such as these. Everything from health, to education, to political influence is a commodity to be traded and sold. The economy has become an end in and of itself, and one that's more important than public good.
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That is because fascist is the least understood and most often misused description of all political systems.
Nobody has a clear understanding of what exactly it means, in theory, or in practice.
Even the all inclusive, if not overly pedantic Wikipedia admits there is no common definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascist [wikipedia.org]
"No common and concise definition exists for fascism and historians and political scientists disagree on what should be in any concise definition."
Of late, it has become the pejorative de
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In Soviet Russia is "Cell Phone Cost Calculator" a common name? For boys or girls?
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In Soviet Russia is "Cell Phone Cost Calculator" a common name? For boys or girls?
No that would be in South Africa [reporter.co.za]: "Ever since mobile phone services were introduced in KwaZulu-Natal some parents have named their children after some of the terms used by mobile services providers." My favorite is (mr. ?) Pay as you go Mfeka.