Re: No pain, no pair gain?

In article <462dg.39150$Lm5.30300@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
notthisjoergsch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx says...
Hello Keith,


Ouch! We have an antenna and the cost is, well, zilch.

Not my choice (OTOH, you get zilch). ;-)


Depends on your view pattern. Ours is: Turn TV on at 10:00pm, watch
local news, turn it off at 10:45pm. That's pretty much it.

"Our" pattern is more like, turn it off at 8:00AM (when the wife
goes to work) and on at 5:30PM (when she returns home). :-(

My cell phone is $40/month (two for $60 with taxes and...) for 700
minutes (of which in a normal month I may use 10;) with unlimited
nights and weekends. I wouldn't consider an Internet connection
via cell though.

With that low usage I'd look into Virgin Mobile. That is what I am
using. 25c/min the first 10 minutes per day, then 10c. Or 35c/day and
it's 10c for all minutes. Plus they let you switch.

UNlimited weekends and nights. Our family all lives 1000 miles
East of here so nights aren't a big problem. We can talk for hours
without paying an additional dime.


Then I guess the 10 minutes is a typo.

No, that's our normal usage, other than free times. Some months
it's less (as low as 1 minute), some higher (I worked at home a
couple of weeks ago and had an hour meeting I had to call into). I
hate telephones and simply don't use them if I can avoid it. Email
is another thing. My wife an email each other all day during the
week; far less intrusive.

But yes, for personal use those
after-hours freebie minutes are great. Again it depends on usage
patterns. I use maybe 300 landline minutes per month LD for biz, plus
international. Private use is another 200-300 minutes but mostly for
ministry work, not much for chatting.

We see my mother maybe twice a year and she's in a (semi) managed
care apartment complex, so we call her as often as possible. After
9:00 is fine, since she's an hour behind us. Weekends are good
too.

WHy would *anyone* pay roaming fees if they're not moving from
their house?


If you stay at your house, that's correct. However, often people use
their phone on a trip (that's the only time I ever use my cell) and I
know quite a few who had that "oh s..t" experience when opening their
cell bill afterwards.

Iv'e never seen a roaming charge with Verison. The phone warns of
roaming, though even then I'e never been charged. Get too close to
the border though and it may be "international", even though
neither end is. I turn the phones off if we go anywhere close to
Chanuckistan. When we cut through they're *always* off.

LD is never a problem. Thanks to MCI cards at Costco it's 3c/min here,
or everywhere for that matter. International is another issue but now
MCI has a card for that, too. Wish they had a combo card with decent rates.

Free here. When one's family is all out of state... Even my son
lives in NH, but does have a VT phone number.


But only weekends and night. Not for business during the day.

Certainly. During the business day I'm at work. It's their dime.
;-)

What analog? What over-the-air? Ok, they exist, but I know *NO
ONE* who actually receives TV off-air. They simply don't exist
here.


Lots of them out here.

The transmitters exist, but I know no one who has an external
antenna. They just don't exist, though there are at least five
stations most could get (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, and CTV).


I have a dial-up ISP for traveling and my email. But that wasn't
the issue. There *ARE* choices. Again, cable Internet service
costs $5 more per month for those without cable TV. Are you saying
that you run your business via dial up? Yes, satellite Internet
service is expensive, but is the same price everywhere. You're not
contracting with the local company. You *choose* not to buy their
service because it is too expensive. Ok.


I have DSL for biz.

Ok, why not use it for personal?

Quasi monopolistic situations arise for various
reasons. One is the "local franchise" structure where local
jurisdictions are milking carriers for fees if they want to play.

That's not a monopoly situation, unless you consider the ultimate
evil monopoly (government, particularly local hacks).

So
some decide not to play. I believe that ought to change.

Sure, vote the bums out. That's a local government issue, rather
like HOA crap. You can't blame the providers for that situation.

The other is
mergers. Our international carrier and our Missy Bell just married a few
month ago. Gone are the perks. The cable company was in bed with AT&T
some time ago AFAIK. Don't know how the equity situation is now. But,
AT&T is now also our Missy Bell.

All the missys are getting back together. I can't say I'm too
happy about that either.

Sorry, I don't see any monopoly here.

It's crumbling but there are quite a few people here who are de-facto
stuck with DSL and with their phone line. Unless they are willing to
subscribe to other services they don't really need and end up with a
grand total that was higher than before.

Defacto <> monopoly. Because you have the cheapest available
service dos *NOT* mean that you're held hostage by some evil
monopoly. You *DO* have a choice. Because that choice doesn't
make economic sense WRT to what you already have doesn't mean
you're at the mercy of some evil monopoly. The fact is that there
*is* choice, and far more than there was ten (or thirty) years ago.


No hostage feelings here. But where there is more competition there are
broadband deals under $30. And I don't mean teaser rates. Not here :-(

I wish for many things. Overall things *are* far better than they
were a decade ago. Remember the joke of ISDN?

It's almost like electricity where they charge around 15c/kWh just
because they can. There is nothing the users can do about it, other than
move.

Electricity is state regulated. There *is* something that can be
done about it but if the costs don't permit, bankruptcy isn't
pretty either. ...and voting with the feet is pretty powerful.
....my plan for beating property taxes.

--
Keith
.

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