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Comment by beefman | Hacker News Reader

There can be, in principle, very little "real competition" in the wireless space. See: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2946463

Edit: I'm curious why this comment was downvoted. I'm new here and am trying to understand the policy.

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Your argument doesn't fly - in the link you claim that wireless service is expensive because we're building multiple redundant networks when we really only need one.

It's a nice theory that works on paper, but doesn't stand up to scrutiny outside of the USA, where people do have incredibly affordable (and quality) cell service in an environment with many players.

Such as? (I'm sure you corrected for population density)

Not wireless, but broadband:

http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/28/why-is-european-broadband...

Meanwhile, the size of the U.S. may be a red herring. Most of the region between Boston and Washington is as densely populated as most of Europe and the UK. So is the California coast between San Francisco and San Diego. And so is the region of the Midwest centered on Chicago. Those areas are home to about a quarter of all Americans. In other words, we live in a big country, but a lot of it is relatively empty space.

Loop unbundling is perfectly consistent with my argument, and indeed, the FCC enacted a loop unbundling rule this past April.

The article makes several other oversights. First, the big US carriers do not have regional pricing, and so the population density of the entire country is relevant.

Second, it neglects to mention that CDMA deployment was forbidden by law in many EU countries.

Finally, it neglects to mention that NIMBYism is a major driver of cellular network cost in the US, and differences in the legal climate around tower deployment can account for large differences in costs.

How many European operators have regional pricing? There is certainly no regional pricing in Norway, where half the population lives in about 15% of the land area and the rest is pretty much empty space (a lot of empty space)

Norway (pop density 12.5), Sweden (20.6) & Finland (16), all have better wireless service and are all much less densely populated than the US (pop density 33.7).

Isn't wikipedia great?

Yes,

Beefman's argument is of the "who you gonna believe me or your own eyes" variety supplemented by an appeal to authority via some link. It's not just an argument I disagree with but an unfortunate style of argument.

Some link? It's a link to something else I wrote in this thread. I thought linking preferable to copy-and-paste.

Err, you're not new here, not sure why you said that.

When I joined, downvoting was not used as much, and wasn't used to show disagreement (and this was considered good reddiquette for a long time). The community here has changed a lot though, and I sincerely do feel new and want to learn how to best contribute.

n1ce

This isn't reddit - if you like being snarky and condescending you can roll yourself back towards that side of the fence.

I wasn't being snarky or condescending. Nor am I a redditor who has come over here lately.

Phew, good thing we're also not so petty or immature as to compare all of reddit to a person, or a person to all of reddit.

There can be little "real competition" in wireless space given that every player in wireless space competes using a government-granted monopoly on the spectrum they're using.

Now, the government has (at least implicitly) chosen to attain a degree of price rationality through creating artificial competition in the wireless market via allowing multiple carriers to operate in single area. Whatever the pluses or minuses of this approach, lets not pretend that the Att merger would involve things attaining the "natural" condition of the wireless market - such a beast ipso facto doesn't exist given the whole arrangement is artificial (created hypothetically for "society's benefit" - which would normally presume is the consumer's benefit).

You are on purpose making a weak contrarian post when it is obvious that there are strong feelings in this thread. You then immediately start complaining when people react against it. Feels a little trolish.

I came here to have a discussion about wireless infrastructure policy. I didn't know I'd be downvoted for disagreeing with "strong feelings", but I did begin by asking a sincere question and tried to maintain a non-confrontational tone.

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