-SH> Theirs a fine line between good business practices and
-SH> sleazy. History has
-SH> shown just how sleazy and despicable all monopolies. We've
Two systems in each market, in my opinion, is not enough for true 
competition. The carriers in a lot of ways still act like monopolies.
-SH> gone through this
-SH> for the past century and we still havent learned from our
-SH> mistakes because the
-SH> cell industry is allowed to do the exact same things which
-SH> the wireline
-SH> companies have been forbidden to do after long debate.
-SH> Just as an example of
-SH> the sleaziest practice is their audacity to make people pay
-SH> extra or even to
-SH> outright forbid a second phone with the same phone number.
-SH> This utter crap was
-SH> proved to be so utterly absurd by the citizens, that the
-SH> wireline companies
-SH> were forced to stop that practice about 2 decades ago due
-SH> to public pressure.
I can understand the cellular companies not wanting the esn numbers changed, 
the security of AMPS is based on the ESN. The solution would be to have their 
switches recognize at least two esn's as valid so people who wanted an 
additional phone could do it, preferably at no extra charge.
The downside for the cellular carriers is that they love people who pay their 
20 bucks a month and who never use the phone, except in emergencies. If they 
allowed more than one esn at no charge they would lose sales as people would 
put a phone in each car.
-SH> Then we could get into discussing how crappy analog cell
-SH> technology is, and
-SH> how (in the New York area anyway) people constantly get
-SH> hung up on in the
-SH> middle of a call and you still  end up paying. In addition,
You guys have a lousy system, I'm as picky as can be and use thousands of 
minutes a month. My 6 month average with cellular one Boston was 4600 and 
some change minutes. Analog works extremely well up here. Very little noise, 
almost no dropped calls, and excellent audio quality.
We took one call two hours up into Maine, started in Portsmouth N.H. and 
continued up to Portland then to Oxford, two hours later we were still 
connected when they arrived in Oxford.
Another call went from Somersworth N.H. and continued on down to Mansfield 
Mass, that call was about 3 hours and the call started on Vanguard cellular, 
continued on Cell One Boston, and finally ended on Southern New England 
Telephone. That was a mobile to mobile call.
We have scores and scores of other calls that we've made on weekends while we 
were out that have lasted hours, many of them mobile to mobile.
The advanced mobile phone system is remarkably robust, has great sound 
quality and is a pleasure to use. At least in our market.
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