Hacker News Reader

> How difficult would it be to disrupt the cell phone market?

Well, to start you'd have to do is build a couple of hundred thousand cellphone towers, at a couple of hundred thousand dollars apiece.

View on HN

You're leaving out the part where you purchase a swatch of spectrum for billions of dollars from the US government.

Well I understand that but I guess my main question can be condensed into the following: Do the big cellphone companies appear to be scummy because the industry is difficult to turn a profit in, or are they just 'poorly' run companies?

I don't think a non-evil carrier could compete against Verizon and AT&T. Human psychology is so susceptible to "pay less now but more later" and "shiny widgets that don't work" that companies cannot afford to do the right thing. Just look at how T-Mobile is considered too weak to survive by many analysts.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com