I wasn't going to join this discussion -- in fact, earlier
I suggested (along with a few others) that perhaps it
had run its course. However, I think I have a perspective
to add.
Let's imagine a planet ("Yamato") with about 120 million
people, all speaking the same language, and most of them
communicating through a single planetary telephone company.
Yamato's telephone company dictates a technically inferior
"standard" for mobile telephony that is still reasonably
usable -- Planetary Data Communications, or something
like that. PDC for short.
Aliens land. They call and complain. "Our mobile phones
don't work here," they say. "You aren't using Globular
System Medium." (GSM).
"Yes, well, we don't talk much with people back home
when we're on vacation," the Yamatoi reply. "For one
thing, the speed of light delays [*] make it a bit inconvenient.
The tiny percentage of us who are stationed elsewhere
in the solar system tend to use the mobile phones available
on those planets. Or regions thereof."
Aliens aren't satisfied. "But what about us? GSM phones
should work everywhere in the Globular Cluster. That's
what the 'G' stands for -- 'Globular'. It's part of the
inexorable process of Globularization, and the move to
Globular Standards--"
Bored reply: "I'm sorry, this is a rude question but....do you
pay taxes here? Didn't think so. Well, we don't get many
interplanetary tourists here, at least not compared to your
orbital band, so it's no big loss."
Aliens ignore this. "Besides, being relatively advanced in
mobile phone technology in other ways, you're missing out
on export opportunities, aren't you?"
The Yamatoi reply: "Well, as you know, we sell chips,
but we buy a lot of chip technology licenses; we do consumer
electronics, but we get our system software from other
planets and get it localized for Yamato.
"Phones themselves are kind of a messy, culture-bound thing.
Certain categories of electronics are like that. We have
never, for example, dominated any interplanetary computer
market except one niche -- supercomputers -- where sheer
performance overwhelms almost all other considerations.
Even that took us a while. Certain things we just don't do
well. Even our own own government-sponsored media have
beaten us up about it, but what can we do?"
"But," say some of the aliens, "look at Aerok, they
switched to GSM, didn't they?"
"Yes, Aerok....a pissed-off former colony-
planet of ours, so we can't sell much into their markets
anyway. Being a much smaller planet, economy-
wise, Aerok is naturally somewhat more export-market-
focused. If you've spent much time in this orbital band,
you will have noticed that we're in roughly similar
political relations with a lot of the other planets nearby.
"As for *your* orbital band -- well, need we remind you of
the trade wars of the recent past? Even if we could gain
a serious foothold there, we'd just be yanked right
off of it again. Better to simply sell chips -- phone
manufacturers on other planets can still write
'Made on Acirema' or whatever, on the back;
while we'll be better protected from their incursions
onto our turf, by virtue of our decidedly-inferior
local standard that nobody would want to emulate."
"Well," say the aliens, "you're .... you're just
missing out! You're leaving money on the table!
You'll be left in the dustbin of history, you're...."
"Excuse us," reply the Yamatoi, "...but we've
got some customers on the line. Will you hold?"
-michael turner
leap@gol.com
[*] this is an analogy to U.S./Japan and Europe/Japan
timezone differences, not a literal objection about speed-
of-light delays in global communications.
> >Benjamin Kowarsch wrote:
> >
> >> If the Japanese hadn't been so utterly and incredibly s-t-u-p-i-d to
> >> develop their own homebreed cellular standard, but would instead have
> >> chosen either GSM or D-AMPS *as-is* (not using any different frequency
band
> >> or reverse the uplink/downlink direction or other silly non-standard
> >> gimmicks like Japanese CDMA does), then those phones could be recycled
> >> (www.recellular.com) and help countries like -say- Bangladesh to
improve
> >> their infrastructure.
.....
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Received on Wed Aug 1 12:59:33 2001