A little history... Remember, MCI went bankrupt and was eventually bought by
Verizon. MCI was in competition with Verizon and tried desparately (and
unsuccessfully I might add) to enter the LEC (Local Exchange Carrier) space.
But in order to do that, not having a local infrastructure themselves, were
reliant on leased lines from the incumbent LEC, Verizon. Verizon would stall,
lose orders, and generally not cooperate, and resort to ANYTHING to keep MCI out
of the LEC market during that time. When MCI was restructuring its debt, it was
for sale. Now, Vint Cerf used to work at MCI as I did. There was a reason Vint
worked there. It was because MCI had more global internet infrastructure than
any other company in the world and had by far the largest global network by that
time. AT&T liked to think and claim that they did, but MCI was able to force
them to withdraw those claims multiple times. But, to the point... during the
restructuring, it was rumored more than once that M$ was considering buying MCI.
Now think about that scenario for a minute. Talk about a nightmare! M$ owning
and controlling the lion's share of the Internet by buying the largest Internet
common carrier there was?... Geez! Just the thought gives me the creeps. I'd
rather eat razor blades than think about it.
My point being that common carriers using technological strong arming to secure
and maintain market space is commonplace. It won't be until somebody throws all
the switches to the "on" position and uses that to compete 'til all the others
will be forced to do the same. Like MCI did with "Friends and Family" and
including call waiting, call forwarding, voice mail, caller ID, and all the
other goodies in the package. What a lot of people forget is that all of these
features are included in the switching and routing equipment. They keep
charging people for turning them on (and charging for connection fees, unending
service contracts, stifling early termination penalties and all other sorts of
heinous junk) until one company steps out of that mold. It's just a matter of
time. And it will probably be a new start up. One day some body's going to do
it and then we will all be able to get the combinations of goods and services we
desire.
My $0.02
Tim
________________________________
From: R P Herrold <
herrold@owlriver.com>
To: Main PLUG discussion list <
plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us>
Sent: Sat, September 18, 2010 6:53:29 PM
Subject: Re: [OT] android phone, possible to get a good deal?
On Sat, 18 Sep 2010, Jim March wrote:
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16875176145
>
> To get Android 2.1 you have to spend almost $500:
>
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16875176195
>
> Wait just a bit and that should be upgradeable to 2.2?
Not being sold at at New Egg, but I see Archos 7 and 10 internet tablets, for
about $300, running Android 2.2 out of the gate, and seemingly well supported as
to following new releases at Angstrom
I have devices at older Android levels (it is not clear they have the processor
'horsepower' and ram to support later Android levels, which I imported directly
from China) being a couple of essentially unsupported, no-name development
chassis. I will be seeing about building trimmed down versions, and loading
later Android versions over the mext couple weeks, via the Angstrom builder
-- Russ herrold
---------------------------------------------------
PLUG-discuss mailing list -
PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
---------------------------------------------------
PLUG-discuss mailing list -
PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
(text/plain)