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The telcos have been fibbing about their coverage of rural areas. They do that to attract customers, but they also get subsidies for coverage. There is no ind

The telcos have been fibbing about their coverage of rural areas. They do that to attract customers, but they also get subsidies for coverage. There is no independent verification of their claims. Yet another example of government not being competent when handing out money. They're in the process of pulling out 3G in some rural areas I've been to. There's even less coverage than before.

reaperducer 7y ago
I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. It's true that wireless carriers lie about rural coverage because they don't think anyone will call them on it. The State of Vermont did, though: https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/local/vermont/2019/01/24/vermont-cell-phone-coverage-maps-dead-zone-verizon-att/2467205002/ https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/local/vermont...
- ianai 7y ago
  OP twisted it against government. I’d say it’s more a symptom of needing more government. The US has had many decades of turning government back away from market oversight to many disastrous effects. (I still upvoted them though. )
  - tomohawk 7y ago
    If we're going to have these large regulated monopolies, then the regulator had better be competent. Either set the rules to allow market forces to work or suspend market forces and regulate the monopoly/oligopoly. In the AT&T days, you couldn't own any telco equipment (not even a phone) - you had to rent it. The inventor of the answering machine was not AT&T, so you could buy one but not legally hook it up. Long distance was next town over and cost north of $2 / minute. On the flip side, we had Bell Labs and lots of redundancy and everyone had the same service.
    - rayiner 7y ago
      Nobody in this discussion is a monopoly. U.S. cellular service has less market concentration than: cell phones, mobile operating systems, e-commerce, mobile phone operating systems, web browsers, or search.
      - GauntletWizard 7y ago
        One of the hardest learned lessons of the twentieth century was that you didn't need collusion for a duopoly to become a monopoly. We have four major carriers, everyone else leases their bandwidth. They don't talk to each other, but their deals are a subtle form of signaling, and they have arrived at a monoplistic market, even with competition. Several rational actors with complete public information can still collaborate just by their actions alone. There's an entire category of "Hat Puzzles" [1] that involve extracting information from other players moves. The big four (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile) don't need to collude to arrive at a stagnant, uncompetitive market. They have found an equalibrium that benefits all of them, and would hurt any who attempted "competition". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hat_puzzle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hat_puzzle
        ianai 7y ago
        That’s a very straightforward explanation of market concentration! Thank you! I wish people better understood how monopolistic power harms everybody. It results in false scarcity trade offs, for instance. But that’s abstract.
        rayiner 7y ago
        You can’t just hand wave and say that because price coordination is possible, it’s happening. You have to tie your theory to the facts. Sprint and T-Mobile offer dramatically lower pricing, so there can’t be price coordination. There is no carving up of the market—the service area of the four carriers mostly overlap. In the LTE era, there is very little barrier to switching. (All the carriers offer big switching incentives.) Capital expenditures remain enormous across the board. What exactly is the sign of lack of competition? In the last ten years, I can think of few pieces of tech that’s gotten better faster than cell service. When the iPhone 3GS came out, you could get peak speeds up to 2-3 Mbps. On my XR, I’ve gotten 100 Mbps+. That factor of 20-30 increase is about the same as the increase in iPhone CPU performance over that time (which itself has been a stupendous success story). Maybe GPUs have improved faster? Certainly not desktop CPUs, or mobile or desktop operating systems, or web browsers, or search.
enraged_camel 7y ago
Wait, so companies are potentially not meeting the terms and conditions of the subsidies they receive, and this is somehow the government’s fault?
- cglace 7y ago
  The government not policing the deal would certainly be their fault.
  - enraged_camel 7y ago
    Is the government intentionally not policing it due to nefarious reasons, or do they simply not have the money and/or the expertise to police it?
    - notatoad 7y ago
      it's not really a question of expertise, if you don't have it you can hire it. And as long as they keep giving out more subsidies, it can't really be a question of not having enough money either.
      - enraged_camel 7y ago
        You can hire expertise, assuming you have the budget for it. And that budget is completely separate from the pot of money out of which subsidies are doled.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        notatoad 7y ago
        >And that budget is completely separate from the pot of money out of which subsidies are doled. but there's no reason that has to be true, other than "that's the way it is". The money itself is fungible.
    - 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
rayiner 7y ago
The accusation is actually the opposite: https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetwburns/2018/12/13/fcc-says-at-least-one-carrier-lied-about-4g-and-thats-not-all https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetwburns/2018/12/13/fcc-says.... The subsidies are only given for areas that don’t have coverage currently. One national carrier is accused of overstating coverage in rural areas to keep subsidies from being given to rural cellular carriers. To get the subsidy, you’d want to understate the coverage. EDIT: Previously, I incorrectly stated there is no subsidy for cellular. I forgot about Obama’s Mobility Fund. Phase 1 was $300 million in 2012, and Phase 2 was planned to be about $450 million per year over the next ten years. But that’s halted at the moment. Note that annual capital expenditures by the big 4 cellular providers is $55 billion annually. You’re talking about a really tiny investment by the government in the most underserved areas, not something big enough to really influence the coverage map.

reaperducer 7y ago

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. It's true that wireless carriers lie about rural coverage because they don't think anyone will call them on it. The State of Vermont did, though: https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/local/vermont/2019/01/24/vermont-cell-phone-coverage-maps-dead-zone-verizon-att/2467205002/ https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/local/vermont...

ianai 7y ago
OP twisted it against government. I’d say it’s more a symptom of needing more government. The US has had many decades of turning government back away from market oversight to many disastrous effects. (I still upvoted them though. )
- tomohawk 7y ago
  If we're going to have these large regulated monopolies, then the regulator had better be competent. Either set the rules to allow market forces to work or suspend market forces and regulate the monopoly/oligopoly. In the AT&T days, you couldn't own any telco equipment (not even a phone) - you had to rent it. The inventor of the answering machine was not AT&T, so you could buy one but not legally hook it up. Long distance was next town over and cost north of $2 / minute. On the flip side, we had Bell Labs and lots of redundancy and everyone had the same service.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    Nobody in this discussion is a monopoly. U.S. cellular service has less market concentration than: cell phones, mobile operating systems, e-commerce, mobile phone operating systems, web browsers, or search.
    - GauntletWizard 7y ago
      One of the hardest learned lessons of the twentieth century was that you didn't need collusion for a duopoly to become a monopoly. We have four major carriers, everyone else leases their bandwidth. They don't talk to each other, but their deals are a subtle form of signaling, and they have arrived at a monoplistic market, even with competition. Several rational actors with complete public information can still collaborate just by their actions alone. There's an entire category of "Hat Puzzles" [1] that involve extracting information from other players moves. The big four (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile) don't need to collude to arrive at a stagnant, uncompetitive market. They have found an equalibrium that benefits all of them, and would hurt any who attempted "competition". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hat_puzzle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hat_puzzle
      - ianai 7y ago
        That’s a very straightforward explanation of market concentration! Thank you! I wish people better understood how monopolistic power harms everybody. It results in false scarcity trade offs, for instance. But that’s abstract.
      - rayiner 7y ago
        You can’t just hand wave and say that because price coordination is possible, it’s happening. You have to tie your theory to the facts. Sprint and T-Mobile offer dramatically lower pricing, so there can’t be price coordination. There is no carving up of the market—the service area of the four carriers mostly overlap. In the LTE era, there is very little barrier to switching. (All the carriers offer big switching incentives.) Capital expenditures remain enormous across the board. What exactly is the sign of lack of competition? In the last ten years, I can think of few pieces of tech that’s gotten better faster than cell service. When the iPhone 3GS came out, you could get peak speeds up to 2-3 Mbps. On my XR, I’ve gotten 100 Mbps+. That factor of 20-30 increase is about the same as the increase in iPhone CPU performance over that time (which itself has been a stupendous success story). Maybe GPUs have improved faster? Certainly not desktop CPUs, or mobile or desktop operating systems, or web browsers, or search.

enraged_camel 7y ago

Wait, so companies are potentially not meeting the terms and conditions of the subsidies they receive, and this is somehow the government’s fault?

cglace 7y ago
The government not policing the deal would certainly be their fault.
- enraged_camel 7y ago
  Is the government intentionally not policing it due to nefarious reasons, or do they simply not have the money and/or the expertise to police it?
  - notatoad 7y ago
    it's not really a question of expertise, if you don't have it you can hire it. And as long as they keep giving out more subsidies, it can't really be a question of not having enough money either.
    - enraged_camel 7y ago
      You can hire expertise, assuming you have the budget for it. And that budget is completely separate from the pot of money out of which subsidies are doled.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - notatoad 7y ago
        >And that budget is completely separate from the pot of money out of which subsidies are doled. but there's no reason that has to be true, other than "that's the way it is". The money itself is fungible.
  - 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

rayiner 7y ago

The accusation is actually the opposite: https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetwburns/2018/12/13/fcc-says-at-least-one-carrier-lied-about-4g-and-thats-not-all https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetwburns/2018/12/13/fcc-says.... The subsidies are only given for areas that don’t have coverage currently. One national carrier is accused of overstating coverage in rural areas to keep subsidies from being given to rural cellular carriers. To get the subsidy, you’d want to understate the coverage. EDIT: Previously, I incorrectly stated there is no subsidy for cellular. I forgot about Obama’s Mobility Fund. Phase 1 was $300 million in 2012, and Phase 2 was planned to be about $450 million per year over the next ten years. But that’s halted at the moment. Note that annual capital expenditures by the big 4 cellular providers is $55 billion annually. You’re talking about a really tiny investment by the government in the most underserved areas, not something big enough to really influence the coverage map.