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I must assume that you built your own cell phone, erected your own service towers, wired them to the rest of the grid, and have service agreements with other pr
by magashna 7y ago
I must assume that you built your own cell phone, erected your own service towers, wired them to the rest of the grid, and have service agreements with other providers allowing you to connect @josteink's homegrown phone network to everyone else.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoHow is a natural monopoly comparable to a free email service that you have a million alternatives to? No one is stopping anyone from paying Fastmail or using a slew of other services than Google, other than people’s unwillingness to pay for things.
- ben_w 7y agoWhat natural monopoly? I have a choice of mobile phone service providers, so you can’t have meant that. If any of the phone companies had made themselves free, I’d ask if they really had a viable business or if they were instead trying to undermine any potential competitors in order to create a monopoly.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoThe US has 4 mobile network providers. Sprint is useless, Tmobile is okay in certain areas, but really, the 2 with nationwide coverage are ATT and Verizon. In my experience, Verizon coverage is more solid than ATT, but in general these are the 2 networks that provide the most comprehensive coverage. A natural monopoly exists anywhere there are extremely high infrastructure costs, such as running pipes and wires to every home. The same thing exists with mobile networks, as it requires towers everywhere.
- ben_w 7y agoThe towers can usefully overlap, in a way that pipes and cables don’t, so I disagree with you about it counting as a monopoly. And that’s without roaming, which I don’t understand, as it means I have cheaper mobile minutes/texts/data in the USA and Germany than most locals.