People have to understand that basic infrastructure is not where you’re going to be able to add value. An excellent Techdirt article (as they almost always are) highlights how the gas companies share a common distribution infrastructure and inject “value” at the end of the chain since the good (gasoline) is a commodity.
Are Cellphone Carriers Like Gas Stations?
I’ve been trying to make this point for a while now here in France where the carriers insist on using the infrastructure coverage and quality as a selling point. I use two major carriers for my personal phone (Orange) and business (SFR). Bottom line is that they are hit and miss depending on where you are. At the office, SFR has excellent reception and Orange sucks. On a client site Orange rocked out and SFR sucked. I don’t particularly care that one is better than the other on any given day but is strikes me as silly that they are competing for coverage and doubling infrastructure investments. It would make a lot more sense to sign a sharing agreement and differentiate on services - especially since they’d be able to invest more in their service offerings if they didn’t each have to sink so much into their independent infrastructures.
I don’t care who installs the antenna in a given village. If it’s Orange, then they arrange a bill-back for usage from SFR’s clients who use their antenna and vice versa as applicable. I suspect that it will all mostly even out in the end and in all cases the customer gets a better experience which is all that we’re asking for.