You and I live in a 7th tier country when it comes to advanced telephony.

We're being beaten by a large margin in both our level of sophistication and the installed percentage of advanced 3G hand-sets. Countries like South Korea, Taiwan, Finland and Japan do better in both categories.

So why should you care?

You should care because both Asia & Europe are where our jobs are going and at least one of the factors is the efficiencies they gain from their more advanced telephone systems. All of this reflects through their labor rate.

I picked the following snippet off today's CNN news feed.

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CNN

New-wave cell phones arriving in Europe

Monday, March 1, 2004 Posted: 3:05 PM EST (2005 GMT)

CANNES, France (AP) -- Now that a new wave of "3G" cell phones equipped for streaming video and multimedia content is finally arriving in Europe, the industry is focusing on the next big unknown: what services users will pay for, and how.

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Again, why should you care? Your mobile phone works most of the time in most places. Isn't that enough?

The reason you should care is the competitive deficit carried by American businesses for not leading the world in this important and ubiquitous technology. As the world installs video telephony many tasks are simplified (just show me tasks) and many more are greatly enhanced (good seeing and talking to each one of you).

What I can't get my mind around is why there hasn't been a hue and cry about this short-fall.

Part of the problem is this administration's FCC policies that favor huge companies and restrict competition. Part of the problem was the knee-jerk break-up of ATT when the Justice Department couldn't get to first base against IBM. (Have you noticed, the RBOCs are once again aggregating? If it was bad then, why is it good now?) And a lot of the problem comes from the regulatory and competitive squabbles over who owns the "last mile," connection.

Just cut the squabbling and get on with it, guys!

The only group that is really effective in breaking this log jam is you the customer.

You might want to email the FCC:

Chairman Michael K. Powell: Michael.Powell@fcc.gov
Commissioner Kathleen Q. Abernathy: Kathleen.Abernathy@fcc.gov
Commissioner Michael J. Copps: Michael.Copps@fcc.gov
Commissioner Kevin J. Martin: KJMWEB@fcc.gov
Commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein: Jonathan.Adelstein@fcc.gov

OR

John Chambers - CEO
Cisco Systems, Inc.
170 West Tasman Dr.
San Jose, CA 95134
USA
(408)526-4000
(800)553-NETS or
(800)553-6387

OR

Verizon Communications Inc.
1095 Avenue of the Americas
New York, N.Y. 10036

Free 800-621-9900
P 212-395-2121
F 212-869-3265

Just write or and let them know how great you think it is that the USA ranks 7th and ask what they're doing to get us back to first place. They are have well prepared answers but where are the solutions?

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