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Comment by jtchang | Hacker News Reader

The author of this article feels that he would be happy to see T-Mobile die trying.

I personally have nothing but respect for T-Mobile. It is hard to change fundamental things such as pricing when you are such a large corporation. Doubly hard if your competitors have successfully proven contract pricing works.

I hope T-Mobile continues to innovate. The telecom industry is overall a dinosaur. What keeps them alive is their infrastructure and rights of way. If we ever get a wireless alternative that is as fast as fiber (and easily deployable) we'd see the end of traditional telecoms as we know it.

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I don't think the author specifically wants to see T-Mobile die trying as much as he enjoys the benefits of T-Mobile's aggression on the entire industry, even if T-Mobile itself is not financially strong enough to survive its attack.

I think it was worded poorly, but I think the author was hoping T-Mobile would fight as hard as they could, not holding anything back, regardless of the cost to themselves, because of all the good it's doing the rest of us.

They shouldn't be loosing that much.

I mean some of their policies like paying the early termination fee for the customers is a bit too aggressive but most make complete economic sense and they shouldn't incur a loss by applying them.

If they are they probably need to take a second look at their organizational structure.

The author isn't rooting for T-Mobile to die. He's pointing out that playing this game is capital intensive, and not making a lot of money is a long term liability when it comes to having capital to invest in your network.

He's probably not wrong. T-Mobile got a huge boost in the short term from all the cash and spectrum they got as part of the breakup of the merger with ATT. It was a whole year of CapEx ($3-5bn). That let them build out a kind of competitive LTE network. But that's a one time thing. If they continue to lose money, they won't have the capital to play the LTE+1 game.

> If we ever get a wireless alternative that is as fast as fiber (and easily deployable) we'd see the end of traditional telecoms as we know it.

Like every Google Fiber set top box being a wireless access point accessible to other Google Fiber customers, as well as free to Android users? And Google using their fiber right of ways to deploy 802.11ac or picocells?

Only in my dreams sir.

It would be neat if they offered a discount for them being wireless access points accessible to other Google Fiber customers.

I'm not sure about the Android part, just because it would be almost impossible to prevent someone from running all connections in a house through an Android device and get free internet.

I don't know, I've used my phone as an internet hub, and the sheer heat from pulling that amount of data through the antennas while charging seems like a great way to drastically shorten the lifespan of a phone.

Granted, I did this with an old Galaxy S (it ran upwards of 80°c), which has its antenna and power supply right beside each other.

Yeah, but if Google started offering free high-speed WiFi then someone would make a "DIY Android Hub" which had a better antenna, better cooling, and possibly even ethernet ports.

> Like every Google Fiber set top box being a wireless access point accessible to other Google Fiber customer...

There's a provider (Shaw) doing this part in Canada: http://www.shaw.ca/wifi/

Much of the same in France. Many semi-"public" hotspots set up for subscribers.

Portugal is blanketed with Fonera hotspots, from the homes of the clients of our biggest ISP. The nice thing is that you can buy a router from Fonera and use the network without having to be switch ISPs :)

This is exactly what http://fon.com/ do across large chunks of the world.

If I could meet the person who invented termination fees for month-to-month service, I would break their arms.

A provider who can cut your service off immediately for non-payment and charge you to cancel your plan, BUT which cannot be penalized for shitty/failed/falsely advertised service is lead by criminals.

Contract pricing, with termination fees and terms which do not allow for reciprocal credit for failure to provide the contracted service (i.e. without an SLA) should be fucking illegal.

This is absolutely right. But remember the most powerful way to speak to a company is with your dollars, so switch to T-Mobile.

And you would have to repeal several of the core laws of physics to get wireless to be as fast as fibre.

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