which dmm do you use?

whoa whoa whoa leave Vodafone out of this!!!! :)Kevin Pierson

Whoa to yourself, wrong site Kevin, Voda always owned a large slice of Verizon, I read a story that they are talking over the rest.

I missed that line in Oldspark's post I did mention the possible takeover on FB a while ago. Actually great service in the UK, tunnels underground railways etc.

Why? I think their UK and ther networks may be good, but when with Telstra (the former Australian monopoly Telecom) I heard stories of their mobile base stations with sagging waveguides, and how their whole model was English-based and would never work in Aus. I reckon those words proved right. Vodafone was renowned for poor reception and many black spots. About a year ago they started a heavy advertising campaign about how their "bad" network was being upgraded etc etc. Vodafone is the third mobile carrier in Aus, the others being Telstra and Optus. As to the wisdom of introducing privatisation and competition of telcos to Aus in the first place... Aus is the same land area as the USA, or Europe, but then had a population of 17 million - about the same as California. (That was a LOL because one of the political excuses was that they didn't want a "big monopolistic carrier" yet the part owner of Optus (Pacific Bell) had more subscribers than the Telstra monopoly.)    Since then the Aus federal government started a plan to "broadband" Australia with a projected cost of AUD$46b. Despite a Melbourne University professor saying such stuff "isn't rocket science", the trial broadband tests have been fraught with problems and failures. (I'd much rather design a rocket than a scalable telecommunications network!) I muse how the USA would probably have been fully broadbanded (probably with hybrid-fibre to each dwelling) this year instead of the 2010 or earlier prediction of 2020 as a result of the ma-Bell or AT&T splitting. Keeping in mind Telstra (telecom) absorbed 90% or Germany's fibre-optic production in the late 1970s for some mindless idea to circle and cross Australia - something that has since proven very beneficial. Sorry, what was the OP? Phew - I was going to mention the privatisation of our other utilities. Shock horror - prices have exploded just as some forewarned. As to supply quality and future capacity... PS - other replies snuck in. I was responding to:

KPierson wrote: whoa whoa whoa leave Vodafone out of this!!!! :)

Same here, although Orange swallowed TMobile and Virgin, we still have O2, Voda and 3 networks all competing except the costs keep rising, I now get lovely data but a poor voice reception and quality. As for the (French and Russian) owned "private utilities" and the Spanish owned airports, thank God I don't have to survive on my pension.

But Howard, with privatisation the prices should have come down as the politicians said they would. Or at least remained lower than when public. And the competition negates the 10% profit they have to make. LOL!

The only way we /I made any money was to make my late Mum switch from British telecom to Voda shares in 1986.

BINGO - that's what it is all about - wealth redistribution - from the customers to the shareholders. (Also from the common shareholders to the "big" holders, but that is generally at select stages.)