ken@sharkey.cc.umich.edu> (08/17/90)
I'm beginning to suspect that cellular phones have no basis in
reality, as we know it. If this country gets any closer to recession,
a lot of people trying to get rich off of cellualar are going to be in
for a rude shock.
Consider the following print ad I saw recently: A person sitting in an
airport terminal, talking to someone on a cellular phone. The blurb
below: "Think of how much more productive you could be with a cellular
phone."
Uh, what's wrong with this picture? Let's see. I could spend .60+/min
to use my cellular phone (plus roaming rates, etc), or I could pick up
the pay phone right behind me and spend .25/min or less.
Top two uses of a cellular phone based on my accidental tuning of
cellular frequencies:
1) Person A claiming that Person B doesn't understand him/her and
wondering when the next time he/she could get together with
Person C.
2) Cellular salescritters talking about the latest rate increase
and the kickbacks their getting from the carriers.
Just seems like the whole industry is built on a shakey foundation.
Ken Jongsma ken@wybbs.mi.org
Smiths Industries ken%wybbs@sharkey.umich.edu
Grand Rapids, Michigan ..sharkey.cc.umich.edu!wybbs!ken jill@midway.uchicago.edu (jill holly hansen) (08/20/90)
In article <11010@accuvax.nwu.edu> wybbs!ken@sharkey.cc.umich.edu (Ken Jongsma) writes: : I'm beginning to suspect that cellular phones have no basis in : reality, as we know it. If this country gets any closer to recession, : a lot of people trying to get rich off of cellualar are going to be in : for a rude shock. : Consider the following print ad I saw recently: A person sitting in an : airport terminal, talking to someone on a cellular phone. The blurb : below: "Think of how much more productive you could be with a cellular : phone." : Uh, what's wrong with this picture? Let's see. I could spend .60+/min : to use my cellular phone (plus roaming rates, etc), or I could pick up : the pay phone right behind me and spend .25/min or less. The poster seems to make making two statements: 1) "cellular phones have no basis in reality" 2) pay phones are cheaper than cellular phones The second point is correct, while bogus. The first point is just plain bogus. 1) "cellular phones have no basis in reality" Do you remember when hand-held calculators were introduced in the early 70s? They then cost at least $100 for units with limited functions, and many of my colleagues couldn't understand why I could pay that much when a slide rule did the job just as well. Cell phones started out at $3,000; now you can get a transportable for $100 that you can leave under the front seat of your car for emergencies. In a few years, cell phones *are* going to be as ubiguitous as pocket calculators. And that means that *someone* is going to do well if not get rich. 2) pay phones are cheaper than cellular phones Certainly true. However, when I am stuck in an airport with my garment bag, my brief case, and my envelope full of 11 x 14 documents that I *need* to refer to when calling back to Chicago to discuss changes in the client's specs, I certainly don't want to have to do all this business from a payphone in a noisy hallway. Admittedly, I would rather make such a call from an quiet office, but failing that, I can park myself in an unused airport waiting area or at a restaurant table, spead my papers out around me, and then do my business on my cell phone. Considering that a business trip easily costs upwards of $200-$400/day exclusive of air fare, the roaming fees for the cell call are a small matter. Then, when I get back to O'Hare, instead of waiting for a payphone to check in with voice mail, I can grab a cab and do business as we creep down the Kennedy. Productive? I would like to believe so. Jill Holly Hansen jill@midway.uchicago.edu [Moderator's Note: Your mention of the high prices of the early calculators brought back some nostalgia. I bought a TI-58 and a TI-59 programmable calculator from Texas Instruments in 1976. They cost almost five hundred dollars each! That included the little printer device you mounted underneath the calculator. And my very first 'home computer' was the Ohio Scientific 'Challenger', model C-1-P. It had all of 4 K-bytes of ram. I got it early in 1977, and it cost a mere six hundred dollars. I converted it to 8 K ram and installed a 'lower case chip' by bravely following the instructions in some hobbyist magazine I found. My friend bought an Apple II with 64 K a couple years later and I wondered, what do you need *that much* ram for? :) PAT]
ken@sharkey.cc.umich.edu> (08/21/90)
In her reply to my original post on the economics of Cellular Phones, jill@midway.uchicago.edu correctly points out that there are some very valid uses of Cellular Phones. I think we both agree that there must be a cost benefit trade off when using any business tool. However, based on my limited sampling of calls in one city, at various times of the day and night, Cellular Phones have a very high degree of misuse. 1) Jill's example of setting up an office at a quiet gate is a good use of the tool. However, would it be cheaper to use a desk in the airline "Red Carpet Club"? Maybe, maybe not. Cost benefit again. 2) The analogy regarding calculators is a good one. Let's look at where we are on the technology curve though. I think we're still at the beginning stages of cordless, personal communication devices. While the costs of the cellular phone are low, the overall cost of service is much higher than wireline service. It's much less expensive to run a radio tower to 1000 customers than it is to bury cable to those same customers. I suspect the novelty of the service and the lack of real competition is keeping rates much higher than they could be. Note: I realize that LA is running out of capacity, but in most of the country, scarcity of capacity is not a factor in pricing. Cellular has it's place. It's just being misused in many cases. Ken Jongsma ken@wybbs.mi.org Smiths Industries ken%wybbs@sharkey.umich.edu Grand Rapids, Michigan ..sharkey.cc.umich.edu!wybbs!ken
rich@pro-exchange.cts.com (Rich Sims) (08/24/90)
In-Reply-To: message from wybbs!ken@sharkey.cc.umich.edu (Ken Jongsma)
> Cellular has it's place. It's just being misused in many cases.
If the individual using the cellular phone is paying for such use, and
they're not using it for illegal activities or to harass and annoy
other folks, how can it possibly be construed as "misuse". If such
were the case, I'd guess that we've been "misusing" the telephone
since Day One!!