"XS11E" <xs11eNO@SPAMyahoo.com> wrote:
> This may have been posted before, I'm too lazy to search but if it
> has,
> take another look and read the comments, there are probably new ones
> since you last looked (if you did.)
>
> http://www.clarkhoward.com/news/home...t-mobile/n4KS/

Just my 2 cents worth ... To my knowledge the merger was initiated by
T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom, that secretly was also negotiating
with Sprint. So let's not blame AT&T for that. We can blame them for
plenty other things.

As much as I like Clark's radio show, I think he is wrong about the
following:
"And monopolies don't want unlimited use of data. Monopolies want to
regulate scarcity, with no thought to innovate or create more of what we
seek."

As much as we all would like unlimited data use (for a set *limited*
price,) we ought to be adult about it and realize that bandwidth is a
scarce resource and as such it ought to be priced as such to avoid a
total breakdown of the network, similar to the situation we used to
experience with phone service at every disaster when almost everybody
wanted to call friends and relatives to find out if they were OK.
Actually, with wired network one can increase capacity easier than with
wireless network by laying more wires or cables, but that kind of
expansion of cell network throughput is limited by the available
broadcast spectrum. You can only expand it by taking spectrum away from
some other use. So it's pretty much a zero sum game.

What do we want? An unlimited data use but with lousy throughput due to
congestion, or cost dependent limited data with satisfactory throughput?