"Sam Nelson" <sam@ssrl.org.uk> wrote in message
news:15m3f5-eer.ln1@nntp.stir.ac.uk...
> In article <688e73F2r8jeaU1@mid.individual.net>,
> "Roger Mills" <watt.tyler@googlemail.com> writes:
>> Similarly - it was suggested - if you have a mobile phone with Operator
>> X,
>> you should be able to access the network via Operator Y's mast if X
>> doesn't
>> have one in a suitable place. It was suggested that this would actually
>> save
>> money for the operators - who could pay for bandwidth on rival networks
>> rather than extending their own infrastructure.
>
> You would've thought that it was in their interests from the off to at
> least
> share masts, but apparently not. That's why there are three on the hill
> opposite my house.
>
> The whole business is screwed up. They can't, between them, offer useful
> contracts, get the coverage right, do decent customer service, run shops,
> anything. Then there's the whole `phone locked to network' thing. That
> mobile phones are popular in the UK is in spite of these largely-useless
> companies, not because of them.
> --
> SAm.

They weren't always useless. Apart from Sweden (which started earlier on
450Mhz) and one or two niche places (like the Channel Islands), cellular
phones took off more quickly in the UK with higher market penetration and
steeper falling prices than any other country BECAUSE of the competition
between the companies and between the service providers (telcos were not
allowed to sell directly to begin with).

The first true hand portables appeared in the UK in 1986. By 1991 the UK
had millions of phones, 99% coverage, sensible charges and handsets were in
the few hundred pound range. In France by contrast handsets still cost
~£2k, coverage was both fragmented and patchy and charges were high.