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Comment by MichaelCollins | Hacker News Reader

What is the intrinsic sense in which telephony is a utility but social media isn't? The wires? Phone companies all share the wires now (thanks again to government regulation), and with VoIP it's becoming less relevant by the day.. but phone number porting still works fine. The physical infrastructure natural monopoly stuff isn't a necessary component of what makes government regulation of phone systems work out well.

The government regulation of the phone system works well because the government regulations are well designed, not because there's a limit to how many wires you can hang from a pole.

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It doesn’t work well. Telephones haven’t changed for decades and are now practically a dead technology. The wires are used for data, and phone service is grandfathered in. You can reasonably say this is the result of a lack of innovation caused by government regulation.

Edit: I say this as someone who loved the dial telephone era. I really want one of these: https://skysedge.com/unsmartphones/RUSP/index.html

I would have bought one, but then I realized that the phone is useless now.

> Telephones haven’t changed for decades

Now you're just being absurd. Do you think we had iphones decades ago? A few decades ago rotary dial phones were still common, cellphones were virtually unheard of, VoIP was a dream, nobody expected a resurgence of the telegraph (e.g. SMS), and switching was still done with in-band signaling.

Virtually everything about telephones has changed over the past few decades. It's easier to list the things which haven't changed: we still use phone numbers (kind of... because actually almost everybody uses the contacts app built into their phones.) We still pay phone companies for the service, except now there's tons of phone companies and you aren't stuck with one.

SMS isn’t the telephone. VoIP mostly isn’t done using phone numbers, and to the extent that it is, is a way to grandfather in a legacy technology.

The iPhone is not primarily a telephone. If you are going to argue that it is, you really aren’t being reasonable.

Also, if you look at the history, you’ll discover that these innovations were all held back by regulation and the fixed nature of the phone system.

> SMS isn’t the telephone.

Nonsensical distinction. The common person sends and receives SMS using their telephone, using the same phone numbers used to call people, with the same disregard for whether they and the recipient use the same phone company because, like telephone calls, SMS works across companies. When you port your phone number to a new phone company, you continue to receive SMS sent to your number just as you do phone calls.

How do you explain why landline phones can’t send and receive SMS?

Different phones have different capabilities, what's there to explain? SMS is something people pay their phone company for, use their phone number for, follows them when they port their phone number to a new phone company, and works when they send it to somebody using a different phone company. It's obviously part of the telephone system.

(And in actual fact, there are phone companies that do offer SMS service to landline phones.)

> Different phones have different capabilities, what's there to explain?

That your definition of ‘phone’ is meaningless. If phones can have any capability you like, then ‘phone’ doesn’t mean anything.

Once you are playing that game you may as well just declare that social networks can be regulated because they are a ‘capability some things that can also communicate with phones have’, and phones are already regulated.

Landline phones can often receive SMS messages, but I'm pretty sure this is a carrier feature that hasn't been standardised.

> I'm pretty sure this is a carrier feature that hasn't been standardised.

So not actually part of what it means to be a phone then.

Just enable text services on your landlines. With this said not every provider service.

> > Telephones haven’t changed for decades

> Now you're just being absurd. Do you think we had iphones decades ago?

An iphone is an implementation detail, it's not the phone system.

The great thing about phones is the longevity. My parents have had the same phone number since the late 60s. Anyone who's known them for the past ~50 years can still reach out via the same number. That's awesome.

No proprietay social network will ever match that because they come and go on the back of the controlling company revenue performance.

The only way to stay in touch for the long haul is open standards, in the case of internet that means: email

I've had the same email since the mid 90s and will have it for the rest of my life. If you've ever known me, you can still reach me on the same email now and into the future.

That’s exactly why email has persisted, without any need for regulation.

Right until Google decides to block you

Nobody is forced to use gmail as a provider. Remember it’s a free service with less commitment to you than a pay as you go mobile phone.

Anyone can buy their own domain and there are many providers who will provide email service.

Imagine having a phone number nobody can call because it's blocked from sending or receiving by your telephone company...

The vast majority of email is hosted by one of the large providers these days and if people can't reply to you the utility of your address is lessened.

> Imagine having a phone number nobody can call because it's blocked from sending or receiving by your telephone company...

Fortunately that's not at all what having a personal email is like.

First of all, you can always receive email no matter what. Nobody is blocking that.

Sending it to some larger providers requires configuring everything correctly, but it's not rocket science. Lots of people (including me) do it with minimal effort.

Finally, having your own email (domain) doesn't require self-hosting it if you don't want. You can always delegate that part to some provider. But you control the domain so you can switch providers (or switch to self-hosting) any moment. You can also do a hybrid option where you self-host receiving but farm out the sending, if you prefer. So many options, all of them work!

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