[LINK] mobile carriers are evil

[Eleanor Lister]

Kim,
    you make a good, if sketchy, case.   if you want some legislature to
consider this, write it up properly, with concrete proposals, and hawk
it around the various political parties, starting with governments (best
chances are if the party is in government, or holds the balance of power))

i wouldn't bother submitting it for three weeks or so, everyone's kinda
busy right now; but after the election, anytime is good.   political
parties are always "on", so you will get a hearing.

i know this would be a well received document by the Democrats (if they
still exist), the Greens, and Labor; and possibly the Nationals, who
feel hard done by the hi tech rollout bypassing their electors.  i fear
the Liberals are too compromised by sex with Telstra over the last decade.

regards,
    EL

Kim Holburn wrote:
> I was reading this article and some of the links:
>
> <http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/10/10-reasons-to-h.html>
> <http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2004/06/63722>
>
> and I got to thinking.  I remember when Telstra, or perhaps it was
> Telecom at the time, got really upset with people using modems and
> leaving them connected for a long time and tried to bring in timed
> local call rates and people got very upset.  Telstra didn't succeed in
> getting timed local call rates or perhaps they did really ...  Now
> while I can't think that they were smart enough to anticipate how
> important mobiles were to become they made sure, like all phone
> companies, that no-one was ever able to argue that they shouldn't
> bring in timed local calls again, certainly not in any of their new
> markets.
>
> I thought it was ridiculous that the government allowed two separate
> cable roll-outs yet on thinking about it a very similar situation
> exists in mobile comms, only worse.  I always found it amazing that
> you got a lot better service when you were travelling in another
> country (except of course for the unbelievable cost) because when
> roaming you could use several networks and got a lot better coverage
> than the natives.  I always wondered why I couldn't get that in
> Australia.
>
> Why is it we accept incompatible networks, bad coverage,
> non-interoperability, non-roaming, incredible charging systems,
> apparent cartels in the mobile market?  (I haven't even mentioned
> technical problems like dropped calls, garbled connections etc.)  In
> other words if mobile telephony is the way we're all going to go why
> can't we have some basic legislation to benefit us customers. 
> Something along the lines of: interoperability, anti-competitive,
> anti-cartel, ability to roam - use other companies services (and we do
> already when we ring someone on that network don't we?) some kind of
> transparency in charging systems and charging systems that are open to
> being compared, some way of being warned when the company is going to
> charge some horrendous amount, some way of telling when we phone how
> much a call is going to going to cost.  I could probably go on.
>
> Is legislation the way to go here?  Nothing else seems to have worked.
>
> Kim
>
> -- 
> Kim Holburn
> IT Network & Security Consultant
> Ph: +39 06 855 4294  M: +39 3494957443
> mailto:kim at holburn.net  aim://kimholburn
> skype://kholburn - PGP Public Key on request
>
> Democracy imposed from without is the severest form of tyranny.
>                           -- Lloyd Biggle, Jr. Analog, Apr 1961
>
------------
Eleanor Ashley Lister
South Sydney Greens
http://ssg.nsw.greens.org.au
eleanor at ssg.nsw.greens.org.au