On Fri, 10 Aug 2001, cfb wrote:
> So... you would be replying to this message using PHS connectivity?
No, actually, since I'm at the office now. But I could just as easily
be typing this on the laptop beside me with either the PHS card or the
Ethernet card plugged in to it. (Well, almost as easily: the laptop has
a Japanese keyboard. :-))
> The thing to remember is that it
> is completely possible to recover revenue lost to "progress"
> through volume.
Well, no. If you now spend five times as long on the phone as you used
to and you pay the same amount, that's a massive amount of progress. A
resource that was limited has now become abundant. Many years ago I
used to be very careful about long distance calling, always thinking
"do I really need to make this call." Now I call LD for the most trivial
of reasons, without even thinking about it. Even if my phone bill is not
much less (though in my case it always was, as don't do all that much LD),
that's still a difference you can really feel.
> People may be paying less, but if the background
> radiation on the phone bill goes up for everyone (but "long distance"
> appears to be cheaper)... well then, everyone is happy! And this
> has happened "local" service (again, in the US) costs twice as
> much as it used to.
Oh, this is a different matter. I'm certainly not arguing with you at all
that local service has become more expensive. As I explained, 80% of your
long distance bill (for domestic calls, at least) actually is a charge
for local service, to reach the IEC's tandem switch in the same city.
But that doesn't change the fact that, at just over a penny a minute,
LD is now fantastically cheap, between one and two orders of magnitude
cheaper than it used to be. They key is now to find a way to make local
service that cheap as well. But given that the ILECs are going to do
absolutely everything in their power to stop that, I wouldn't hold
your breath.
> > I'd disagree with that. "Free" voice service right now would be easy
> > enough to run over the Air-H" 7000 yen per month unlimited data service
> > if we only had some sort of decent interface to it.
>
> That's the point of the matter... you don't have a decent interface
> and that is by design.
That's not by design, that's by lack of anybody bothering. But I suspect
that that may change.
Right now what you need to do is buy an Air-H" card, a sub-notebook
computer, and install some VoIP software. That's not so bad, and people
do this all the time. But it's not as good as a phone.
It wouldn't be a big deal to build the software into something
phone-shaped that has a CF slot, and put the Air-H" card into that.
Or just build in the Air-H" hardware. Now you've got something pretty
close to a keitai.
The only thing I'm not sure how to deal with there would be incoming
calls. I don't know enough about the technical details of the system
(yet) to work out how to do it. But it may not be impossible, and the
other kinds of services that people will want (instant notification of new
e-mail arriving on your portable computer, etc.) will generate the need
for the technical base for that capability, if it's not there already.
> I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for the wireless telcos/carriers
> to open up their networks to the point that it's equivalent to the
> average internet connection....
No, don't hold your breath, because it's too late. This is a done deal. Or
is there some big difference between 64K PHS data and an ISDN line or
modem that I'm missing here?
> > At which point the telcos may have to come to their senses and impose
> > some sort of limit on (or even drop) the all-you-can-eat plans.
>
> They'll do it when they dominate both data and voice markets...
Which they already do at the "local loop" or "last mile" level. This
has always been, on a per-person-served basis, the most expensive part
of the network to provision, and has the least competition. I'd wanted
a dedicated Internet connection since the very early 90s, but it was
seven or eight years before I got an affordable one.
cjs
--
Curt Sampson <cjs@cynic.net> +81 3 5778 0123 de gustibus, aut bene aut nihil
"The chain which can be yanked is not the eternal chain."
-- G. Fitch
[ Need archives? How to unsubscribe? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
Received on Fri Aug 10 04:47:26 2001