🚀 go-pugleaf

"Bill Z." <nobody@nospam.pacbell.net> wrote in message 
news:87my7c7eh9.fsf@nospam.pacbell.net...
> "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88@comcast.net> writes:
>
>> Bill Z. wrote:
>>> SMS <scharf.steven@geemail.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> Bill Z. wrote:
>>>>
>>> Irrelevant with regard to the fact that 20 cents per text message is
>>> way above what it costs to provide the service.
>>
>> Is there some reason, other than your dislike of the practice, that it
>> should not be?  The price of a restaurant meal is far above what it
>> costs to produce and serve it!  No one is forced to use the
>> service. Many of us older folks lived three quarters of our lives
>> without cell phones or texting at all.  I've been using cell phones
>> for about twelve years now and have NEVER sent a text message FROM my
>> phone!
>
> As was pointed out to you, they are using a public resource (the
> electromagnetic spectrum) with only a few companies calling the shots.
> The public can reasonably require fair pricing practices in exchange
> for giving a private company exclusive use of that resource.
>
> BTW, restaurant prices are in fact regulated in the U.S. - in (for
> example) national parks where a company is given exclusive rights
> to a location there.  The reason is that for environmental reasons
> the number of businesses are limited, so those that are there are
> required to provide a fair price, determined by comparision with
> comparable businesses outside the parks.
>
> It's really the same principle - if you get exclusive rights to a
> public resource, then you have to charge fair prices for the service
> that you are providing.

There is "room" in public wireless airspace for up to seven providers.  The 
Feds determined (rightly or wrongly) by allowing the relatively recent 
mergers of AT&T Wireless and Cingular, Sprint and Nextel, and most recently 
Verizon and Alltel, that a "quadigopoly" offers enough competition. 
Personally, I prefer regional carriers forced (by marketplace forces- not 
Federal intervention!) to offer reciprocal roaming, but we play the hand 
we're dealt.  I believe wireless is competitively priced, and while I might 
actually use texting if it was resonably priced, I don't blame carriers for 
gouging- I blame stupid customers for paying whatever the carriers ask. 
Similarly, I don't blame Coca-Cola for selling their Dansani bottled water 
product (which I jokinging call "unflavored Coke") for the same price as 
Coca-Cola.  If people are willing to pay for it, who am I to begruge 
Coca-Cola for taking their money?

What you haven't demonstrated, is that the "price fixing" ISN'T a result of 
natural free market forces.  You've been given several real-world analogous 
scenarios that explain why a la carte texting is priced far above the cost 
to provide it, examples of far smaller competitors who DO undercut their 
larger cousins, and you offer no cogent argument as to how lowing the price 
would benefit a large carrier by increasing profits or market share- the 
ONLY reasons a vendor cuts prices!


Asking the same government for some sort of relief would, on its face, seem 
misguided, (as well as ironic!)  Other than the price of a la carte texting- 
one relatively insigniifcant item, do you allege any other price fixing, 
collusion, or gouging?