cell phones

Are Text Messages an Antitrust Issue?

by Ryan Young on March 17, 2011

in Economy, Regulation, Tech & Telecom

Text messages cost 20 cents to send, even though they use a fraction of a penny of bandwidth. What gives? Antitrust authorities want to know.

Over at The American Spectator, I explain that it is likely a case of unbundling:

Maybe phone companies are unbundling texting from their other services. That way the only people who pay for text messages are the people who use them. If phone companies don’t have to provide texting service for people who don’t want it, they can keep costs down and charge lower prices.

This is much more fair to customers:

Why not just give all customers unlimited texting and charge a higher monthly bill? That would punish people who don’t text, such as this writer. By eschewing the flat rate and tolerating a few texts per month from family and friends who haven’t been properly trained, non-texters can save $50 or more per year.

Monopolists (and oligopolists) don’t behave that way. Companies competing against each other on price do. Trustbusters are forgetting something else, too. If a monopoly exists at all, it is very temporary.

It turns out that a young company called Beluga makes a free texting application for smartphones. Few things are as temporary as monopoly (or oligopoly) power. Since Beluga bypasses the texting cartel, you can have unlimited texting without the $5 monthly fee. Think of it as Skype for the text messaging set.

Read the whole article here.

Texting on the Stygian Ferry

by Michael Fumento on October 4, 2010

in Mobility, Tech & Telecom

“Border collie jill surveying the view from atop the sand dune.” Those were the last words of Malibu plastic surgeon Frank Ryan, best known for “reconstructing” reality TV star Heidi Montag. It’s not quite up there with “Et tu, Brute?” Yet it seemed important enough for him to text it just before driving off a cliff in August. Jill survived.

We don’t know what the message was in a 2007 accident involving the sender and her four fellow New York high school cheerleaders. But it probably wasn’t worth slamming head-on into a truck, killing them all. And the 2008 Chatsworth train collision, in which 25 people died and more than 100 were injured, was officially attributed to the engineer of the Metrolink commuter train being distracted by text messaging.

As I write in my LA Times piece, “Texters, You’d Be Better off Driving Drunk,” we don’t know what the annual death toll is from texting but all the evidence is that it’s a growing killer:

  • It’s more dangerous to text and drive than to drink and drive.
  • Most people say they do it and the number of text messages just keeps on increasing.
  • Texting is 17 times more dangerous than simply talking on a cell phone, and the number of deaths from that was estimated at 2,300 a year before texting caught on.
  • Texting is clearly addictive for many people, and as unfortunately know from personal experience with a loved one addicts will die — and kill — to sustain their habits.
  • At the same time I show that all the state bans on driving and cell phone usage are essentially worthless because they target the wrong cause of accidents. It’s not taking your eyes off the road, but your brain.
  • Finally, laws against texting are enforceable.

Is there a libertarian argument against more active law enforcement in these areas? As Gabriel Roth has pointed out, if officials were really concerned about auto safety, they’d start by rolling back regulations that make cars less safe and allowing for insurers to test and certify vehicles and drivers. What do you think?

Responding to Media Matters

by Ryan Young on July 14, 2010 · 2 comments

in Politics as Usual, Sanctimony, Tech & Telecom, Zeitgeist

Apparently the folks at Media Matters didn’t care for my July 12 article in the Daily Caller debunking the cell phone cancer scare.

The trouble is, I’m not quite sure why. They never say. Jamison Foser’s blog post doesn’t touch a single argument I made in the article. Instead he attacks me personally, as well as CEI. For all I know, he agrees with everything I said. Or maybe he disagrees. I don’t know.

His main point is that corporate funding makes arguments untrustworthy. Since CEI receives some corporate funding, we are therefore suspicious. This is not a rigorous line of thought. Arguments are either right or wrong. The presence or absence of corporate funding has nothing to do with whether an argument is right or wrong.

There is also the matter of Media Matters’ own very generous corporate donors, which Foser does not address.

Media Matters’ fixation on corporate funding is an easy way for them to avoid genuine intellectual engagement. It is a diversion. If you are unable to attack the argument, then attack the person making it.

This ad hominem attack deserves a rebuttal. The Daily Caller was kind enough to run mine this morning. I hope you will take a few minutes to read it.

Cell Phones Don’t Cause Cancer

by Ryan Young on July 13, 2010 · 1 comment

in Health and Illness, Nanny State, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Tech & Telecom

Over at the Daily Caller, I debunk the fear that long-term cell phone use can cause brain tumors. San Francisco and Maine already have warning label regulations on the books. Rep. Dennis Kucinich has introduced federal warning label legislation. Here are the main reasons they’re wasting their time:

-Activists promoting the scare only ever mention brain tumors. But you hold your cell phone in your hand. You hold it next to your ear and your jaw. Why no mention of those cancers? Suspicious.

-Most phones only emit one watt of energy. The human body generates about a hundred times that much energy during normal, everyday activity. Adding a single watt to that baseline does nothing to contribute to the DNA damage that can lead to tumor growth.

-Cell phone photons are so weak, they fall short of DNA-damaging energy levels by about a factor of 500,000. So you might have something to worry about if you strapped half a million cell phones to your body. That would be getting crushed to death, not cancer. Phones don’t operate at cancer-causing frequencies.

Cell Phone Cancer Scare Refuses to Die

by Ryan Young on June 16, 2010

in Health and Illness, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Tech & Telecom

Some people are scared that cell phones cause brain tumors. There are enough of these bedwetters that San Francisco just passed a new law to “require all retailers to display the amount of radiation each phone emits.”

For most phones, that’s roughly one watt; the legal limit in the U.S. is 1.6 watts.

Studies have yet to find a link between cell phones and brain cancer. The main reason is that it is physically impossible; one watt of radiation just isn’t enough to cause any tissue damage.

The human body naturally generates about 100 times as much energy at rest, and 1000 times as much during exercise. One measly watt isn’t enough to affect anything.

One wonders why the bed-wetters are only worried about brain cancer; cell phones are held in the hand. And unlike the brain, which is shielded by hair, scalp, and skull, the hand is completely unprotected from cell phone radiation. If cell phones did cause cancer, activists should be at least as worried about skin and bone cancers in the hand.

But they aren’t. One reason is that those cancers don’t sound as scary as brain tumors do; it’s harder to get people worked up and frightened.

The other reason is that cell phones don’t cause cancer. Not in the hand. Not in the brain. Not in the face, the, jaw, or any other body part might take the brunt of the single watt of energy our cell phones emit.

Regulation of the Day 96: Health Warnings on Cell Phones

by Ryan Young on January 6, 2010

in Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Regulation of the Day

The state of Maine and the city of San Francisco are considering requiring warning labels for cell phones.

Perhaps some warning labels are in order. After all, few things are more annoying than people SPEAKING AS LOUDLY AS POSSIBLE INTO THEIR PHONE ABOUT WHAT’S FOR DINNER when a normal tone of voice will do.

But these warning labels have nothing to do with letting people know that their phones can make them look like jackasses.

No, the labels warn the credulous that their phones emit electromagnetic radiation. Otherwise known as light waves. Some people believe that this causes brain cancer.

Brain atrophy, maybe. But cancer? Most studies have found no correlation, let alone causation.

Something else to consider: the demographic group far and away most prone to brain cancer is also far and away the least likely to use cell phones – the elderly.

Hmm.

Cell Phones, Cancer, and Certainty

by Ryan Young on November 10, 2009

in Nanny State, Precaution & Risk, Tech & Telecom, Zeitgeist

CNN reports: “Last summer, Dr. Ronald Herberman, then director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, issued a warning to about 3,000 faculty and staff, listing steps to avoid harmful electromagnetic radiation from cell phones.”

“Electromagnetic radiation” is a fancy way of saying light waves.

Herberman has been on his cell phone crusade for a while now; I diagnosed him with a severe case of The Certainty last year.

Still, let’s assume he’s right that cell phones cause tumors. What actions should be taken? I present the following CDC data on leading causes of death as a way to guide our priorities:

Heart disease: 631,636
Cancer: 559,888
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 137,119
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 124,583
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 121,599
Diabetes: 72,449
Alzheimer’s disease: 72,432
Influenza and Pneumonia: 56,326
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 45,344
Septicemia: 34,234

Deaths from cancer attributable to cell phone use? Zero. There is an important lesson to be learned here.

Think of it like this: every dollar and every hour of researchers’ time spent investigating cancer risks from cell phones is money and time not spent curing heart disease. Or cancer itself. Or stroke. These “big three” combine to end more than a million lives each and every year.

Which is a better use of limited research resources? Herberman, by bringing funding and attention to a non-issue, is quite possibly costing lives that could otherwise be saved.

The Certainty has very high costs. In Herberman’s case, measurable in lives.

Policy Translated: Special Access Reform

by Richard Morrison on July 29, 2009

in Culture, Regulation, Tech & Telecom, Video, Zeitgeist

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQO84UjQ2Fg 285 234]

Crews in the News: Consumer Choice Doesn’t Come From Regulation

by Jack O'Connor on July 8, 2009

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Regulation, Tech & Telecom

CEI’s own Wayne Crews is quoted in the Boston Globe this morning, explaining why real competition — not government-mandated ‘openness’ — is the best way to promote consumer choice.

Wayne takes issue with Ben Scott of Free Press, who describes cellular data access as “a classical net neutrality issue.’’ Apparently placing legal burdens on any new web platform is Mr. Scott’s strategy for encouraging the spread of mobile internet access…