Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I'm 100% convinced that all telecoms are bastards.

Fortunately, regulation seems to help at least a little bit, but you kinda have to be prepared to wage some war - or eat your losses.

(Just lost a phone number that has been my primary for over 7 years; that's after losing another one that I held on to for 11 years... Not to mention all the smaller stuff, like how contracts/extra packages are structured once you go over the month's limit.)



Competition is what helps even more. The Sprint/T-Mobile merger should never have been allowed to happen. Mergers are never good for consumers, despite Chicago School propaganda that says otherwise.


Preventing mergers is regulation.


Chicago School?



> I'm 100% convinced that all telecoms are bastards.

The one I use literally just increases how much data is included with my plan, rather than increasing the price. I quite like it. (I don't think it's available outside of austria though)

https://www.hot.at/


This is one of the reasons I get annoyed at services that require a phone number for an account.

As such, I am never going to switch to Telegram or Signal unless you let me have an account that's not tied to a number. I've lost shit in the past because of this, a phone number is only a temporary identifier.


Signal supports usernames now.


It is still tied to your phone number though.


Went to Signal to sign up and it is requesting a phone number. How do I give it a username instead?


You don't have to limit that first statement to telecoms.


Not for nothin, but it is not an uncommon opinion that regulation is the root cause :

Regulation = high barrier to entry in industry = monopoly/oligopoly = all telecoms are bastards.


Isn't there kind of a fundamental issue here that spectrum is a limited resource? How many competitors can there be when youre initial investment has to be a massive amount for a usable section of it


Regulation isn’t the root cause, and it usually never is the root cause as regulations are always made in reaction to, not usually proactively.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: