From: "David.Callyar" 
Newsgroups: soc.culture.italian soc.culture.europe alt.politics.italy soc.culture.spain soc.culture.german uk.misc uk.finance
Subject: Re: Why so many Cell Phones in EU?
Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2004 17:09:19 GMT



Enzo Michelangeli wrote:

> "David.Callyar"  wrote in message
> news:40365700.D28A75C8@Callyarallz.com...
> [...]
> > > not any longer: see e.g., for Italy,
> http://www.clarence.com/freeinternet/
> >
> > Well, when I went to this site and first saw the little guy holding
> > the cable, I thought, oh a remake of the male version of the super
> > bowl.
> > I assume this service is a little like ICQ, that you have popups or
> > whatever so they pay their way, is that right?
>
> No, actually (if I remember correctly) the installation just downloads
> some patches to the Windows Registry to create a dial-up connection icon
> and make it the default one. The username/passord pair is automatically
> generated, and the phone number is the same over all the Italian
> territory, with calls billed as a local.

I will check them out again, I don't see how they make their
money then. I did see you had to download the software.

>
>
> > > But I must remind you that if you are looking for low communication
> > > charges, low taxes (you won't be able to escape at least the
> > > payment on your consumptions of Value Added Tax, which is in the
> > > neighborhood of 20%!) and little red tape, you shouldn't really
> > > think about Europe...
> >
> > Where else, then?
>
> Hey, I had recommended Hong Kong, remember? :-)

Hey, when you get my age if you remember to wake up in the morning,
and, take care of certain bodily functions you're doing good. {;^)


> Communication costs here
> are quite low: I have 1.5 Mbps ADSL for about USD 20 per month, a local
> wireless provider offers GPRS for USD 5 (i.e. HKD 38) per month (flat
> rate: http://tinyurl.com/2vdht#gprs ), and the Pacific Coffee cafe chain
> has workstations to access the net free of charge.

Well I heard China is not going to allow local elections, sounds
disturbing to me. And plus I don't think I am at a point (yet, hopefully)
to afford Hong Kong, and it worries me a bit as well. One of the
reasons I gave up on the idea of living in Thailand was, you
never know if you would be kick out at the whim of the King
and/or conservative right government now in power.

Seems weird that a former british colony would have a different
style phone system than in the UK, too bad the UK does not
learn from its successes abroad, well until they lost it.