3gcommentary

I am very sad. I'm very sad because almost everyday I check the news to see if any progress has been made by the European Parliment to reduce Mobile Phone Roaming charges.

This May 2007 the European Parliment will vote on proposed Legislation which will require Mobile Phone Operators to reduce their mobile phone roaming charges. As far as I am concerned, this legislation cannot come in quick enough.

Every individual on holiday or business person travelling in Europe is robbed by the Mobile Phone operators everytime they make or receive a call. For businesses, this makes transaction costs far higher in Europe than for equivalent companies operating in other parts of the World. This is unfair and does not help the European Union compete in the global economy.

I am surprised at the amount of time, money and effort the Mobile Operators have put into fighting this legislation. They have come up with every argument you can think of:

If Mobile Roaming Costs come down, Local call costs will go up;
If Mobile Roaming Costs come down, the loss of revenue will cause their share prices to drop which will have a knock on effect to the economy;
If Mobile Roaming Costs come down, the Operators will have to remove the availability of free phones;

In my opinion all of these arguements are just trying to frighten the European Parliment to not vote for the legislation so they can keep making ridiculous profits.

Finally, I am surprised at the representatives of the British Government that are being easily influenced by the Mobile Phone Operator lobbyists, and are supporting their arguments in Parliment. They forget they are representing the people of Britain who voted for them.

If Mobile Phone Roaming charges come down, then more people will use their phones when travelling and the Operators will not loss out.

Adult channels, - Adult my ......!!!

What a disappointment these two new channels on freeview and digital tv in the uk have turned out to be.

More4 promised Adult entertainment. It gives us repeats, repeats and more repeats of rubbish. There is nothing challenging about this channel. It had so much potential, but it has failed to deliver.

I'm not expecting smut. I'm not expecting nudity (every night). What I would like is fun, adult, innovative, educational, and creative TV. I expect the viewing figures for this channel have dropped considerably from the launch night.

ITV4 is meant to be the channel for men. It's meant to be the equivalent to the ITV channel for women. So what have we had so far:
UEFA football (ok not too bad), and some rubbish kojak programme. Whatever happened to the late night men and motors programmes. Is this the age of political correctness gone mad ?

I will use this blog to air my views on the many events happening in the World that effect us, directly or indirectly. I hope you will all enjoy my future blogs, and I look forward to receiving comments, good or bad. Afterall, we live in a free society, and we can say what we want, as long as it doesn't see us in court !!

As an opening, I would like to comment on the events happening in the USA with the Bush administration (October 2005):

So what, someone may have lied to justify the USA going to war in Iraq. Why should anyone care in the UK, or outside the USA? Are we all waiting for someone to go to jail for going to war? I would be very surprised if someone goes to jail or if Bush falls due to these latest developments. I am not saying I support what has happened in Iraq. In fact, I would suggest the USA and the UK went to war on very thin grounds. I live in the real World, however, and no matter how much the media would like to stir up this problem, nobody in power will go to jail for the war in Iraq.

Having said all that, I would very much like to travel forward in time two hundred years to see how history writes about this war and Bush. It won't be good, if over time the memory of events do not become blurred.