Poker Perambulation

It may happen more in life than at the poker tables. Inspiration for this is that Google looks to be bidding on the spectrum being offered by the FCC. It was expected that the Tel Cos would be the only bidders.

The Tel Cos already have a huge chunk of the spectrum from earlier auctions. Much of that remains unused. It was bought not to lower our costs or provide new services. It was done to limit competition. Google would actually use the spectrum to jumpstart other companies who have products or business proposals but can’t pony up the 4.6 Billion that’s the starting number for the auction. They see a service similar to the VOIP replacement of your landline. This would give a lower cost alternative to all those cell phone plans that are all tilted to Tel Co profit.

I use VOIP now and get good calling quality, free features that Tel Cos charge for, no long distance charges. And I do it for a fraction of the cost that service is with Verizon – the only current landline choice in my area.

We tend to allow ourselves to be taken by these ripoffs, They appears as a combination of Government and private sector working to ‘make our lives better’ and the telephone industry has benefited from that from the start. And it took a Federal Judge Green to hang that out to dry. Now we are in the telephone consolidation phase. That is a euphemism for returning to a pre-Green market.

These things are done in the name of amortizing huge build costs. When AT&T was broken up it was the biggest and most profitable company in the world. That happened on our backs with the protections of our lawmaker’s greed. That was pre-PAC and before there were political donation limits. I’m sure you would be shocked to learn that without those donations AT&T’s profits would have soured even higher.

Cable service comes from the same mold. There is great talk about unbundling. The technology is there to do it. We could get just the channels we wish. And our cost would be proportionate. But, why mess with a simple thing like bundling. Today all talk is about convergence. That may make life and it associated cost better but don’t look at the timeframe and don’t expect much heading for your side of the ledger. There business plan revolves around screwing you like the good old Tel Co. And the good old Telco is who they’ll compete with. It appears less like a saving and more like a right to pick a crook.

In fairness I should point out we’re our own worst enemy when it comes to budget and buying prowess. That’s apparent at the check counter of every supermarket. The most egregious of our sins is bottled water. Even at today’s $95 a barrel crude oil, boutique bottled water cost more than twice that price. Yes, bottle waters can sell for up to $5 a gallon more than that stuff that you pump into your SUV’s huge tank. The salvation is we aren’t as big a water guzzler as our car is a gas guzzler. That isn’t much salvation.

Don’t give me crap about health or taste either. 20/20 had them analyzed and they weren’t purer than their local tap water. Taste test consistently place their taste in the upper selections by tasting panels. The latest ‘expose’ points out that two of the most popular come from such bastions of purity as the Detroit River.

Hey, we buy the hype. We do it when we shop and we do it when we play at the tables. Like Doyle Brunson says, “You don’t play your cards; you play the players.” and that plays out as we pay the telco extra for touchtone service. It actually cost more for them to provide pulse dialing yet that does fit the business plan. Then we pay the cable company for the right to view ads designed to take more of our money through hype instead of our intelect.

If you think you deserve to win at the poker tables, why is that? You’ve got an inside straight going against the government and their buddies. UIGEA isn’t a shock; it is just the tip of the iceberg.

ADDENDUM:

IBM’s first viable Personal Computer was the 5150. It came with 16K (note this is kilo not mega of today) and a cassette recorder for storage. A reasonable unit with a little bit more memory and a single floppy drive cost over $1600. Look at what you can get today for half that price.

The 5150 came out in August of 1981. That money was in dollars that had far greater buying power. That was about the time cable TV became available in my town. I signed up for it. It cost $4.95 a month. Today, most of my neighbor’s are spending over $100 per month for the cable TV feed. My cable modem and basic cable is over $50.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 17th, 2007 at 8:18 am and is filed under Off Topic. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.