Completely off topic, I once read somewhere the way they allocated 2G spectrum in a few countries: US, England, India and New Zealand. Out of the 4, I think NZ was the best.

US made out different areas, called them ‘circles’ maybe, and tried getting companies to bid for them. The phone companies just made a cartel and divided the areas among themselves before the actual bidding, and maybe that continued till now and the new area you move to will have only T-Mobile. No benefit to government, none to people, unless they were lucky to be in an area with a good carrier.

India simply ’sold’ 2G licenses to a company called ‘Swan Telecom’, which was not even a real telecom company, and they re-sold/leased the licenses to different telecom companies. Government got very less benefit because of less tax due to no bidding, but the people got really, really cheap mobile connections. India has the cheapest mobile phone usage in the world, but overall this led to a lot of controversy.

England went into another approach: kind of having bidding run-ffs as they have in French presidential elections. In the end, the government there got a hell lot of money from the bidding process. I don’t remember too much about the way the English went about it.

NZ had the best approach: make companies bid, but with a rather good rider. The winning bidder would have to pay the amount equal to the second biggest bid. This meant that the companies could bid more and more, ultimately leading to benefit to the government there.

I think the small size of England and NZ made things simpler. Maybe they did not have any different circles/areas etc.

I had a really tough time helping someone cancel a CricKet phone that was on a monthly contract. She went to the store and they told her it would just cancel if she didn’t pay. Although service stopped for phone calls, the phone didn’t stop service. It began texting her about administration fees for being late and such. So she dialed 1-800-CRICKET and went through their phone tree, but couldn’t get a live operator or an option to cancel.

Flustered, she came to me and asked what to do. I started dialing the number and she was furious at me… saying “There’s NO way! You can’t talk to a person!” But I poked two numbers and then someone answered. She said “How did you do that?!?” It was easy, I just picked the number for signing up for new service. Oh, cynical me. :-/

I didn’t go straight to cancellation, of course. I presented myself as a potential new customer interested in the plan she had, and asked what I would do if I wanted to cancel it after two months. The salesperson said “you’d do that through our cancellation department.” I said: “That’s funny…because I actually don’t want service. I’m trying to help someone cancel it, and we can’t find this cancellation department. What’s their number and how do we reach them?” She “didn’t have a number”, but could connect me.

This cancellation department wouldn’t talk to me directly, just the subscriber. So I gave the phone back and they went through a ten minute script where she’s having to explain that she has a legitimate reason for wanting to cancel, or something. Finally I grabbed it back and said: “Okay, you’ve got a script. What’s on the screen in front of you. Do you even HAVE a button to cancel?” He admitted he did not. After an hour-long process of talking to higher managers and waiting the phone finally was off. But without an account on their file, there was no way to see an official “Account terminated, no balance” statement. But we’ll be stopping by a CricKet store to get a manager to write she doesn’t owe money. He may write it in blood, if he lacks a pen.

Trusting organizations like this to carry your information isn’t wise. But many people lack choice, and even if you can choose a more reputable carrier there are problems…unless the decent people remaining in the world build rockets and go wire up a new planet.

The practical option I see in the near-term is to raise the bar for education on using peer-based and cryptographic systems like FreedomBox. After that, realize that one of the most important points is that even if the providers can’t read what you write…they can still cut the wires. Which makes it ever more important to not assume silence means the rejection of a message, which means re-educating a lot of fearful people on both sides of the phone lines.

Oh well. There’s Google which seems to be doing good things…though I can’t get anyone from there on the phone either for Gmail support. Yet they’re putting information out, and with enough information available you can educate yourself to the point of having these realizations. The information is out, but the fact that people are ignoring it (or thinking the rest of the aspects of their life are more important than solving these problems), I don’t know the way to change it.

All I know is that AT&T service is fast, they care about pegging the needle at the rate they promised me, and they care about getting my name right. Guess it will have to work for me…up until I move in two months and will be stuck with T-Mobile on the tiny phone screen for a bit.

Time to re-watch V for Vendetta. :-/

I personally am weighing the prospects of data caps against the reality of unelected corporate entities colluding to act as police, judge, jury, and executioner using the same “guilty until proven innocent” drag-netting that framed a UNC copy machine for 45,000 illegal downloads.

Unfortunately, Most land-line second tier competitors like charter and earthlink STILL don’t cover apartment complexes due to sweetheart deals, despite 2007 FCC rulings banning exclusive telecom agreements.

In the near term I’ve swapped to clear, the one legitimate wimax provider, but I guess I’m stuck searching for some free-standing residence to rent, because I certainly don’t feel like providing revenue for those who help luddite interest groups bypass legislative and judicial review.