Adam Back wrote: [...snip...]
> Another example would be having to give a deposit to get mobile phone > for people with poor credit ratings. Also in Europe pay as you go, > cash only mobile phone usage is popular due to credit elegibility > reasons also I think. You can plunk down a 10 pound note and walk out > with a mobile phone with air time on it, you can buy more air time > similarly.) Slightly off-topic, but credit eligibility isn't the main reason for prepay. A lot of well-off people like it because it is easier to administer. I know people with jobs and credit ratings who chose to move to prepay, but I can't think of anyone who went the other way. You walk into the shop and buy airtime, which many people find easier than having yet another "relationship" with yet another boring company. Incidentally what they actually sell you is a card with a number printed on it, which you then send to phone company - there would be a lot of money for anyone who found a way to predict the numbers - this is cypherpunk technology - millions of people all over the world are paying cash money for large random numbers. They are also popular with parents who give them to their kids & don't want to have to bankroll a serious teenage phone habit. And some people even like anonymity. The airtime numbers are available more or less anywhere, supermarket checkouts, every little corner shop, sometimes even bars. There is also a new breed of phonecard shops, sometimes doubling up as small Internet cafes and/or the more traditional copier shops. For some reason many of them are run by Africans (high-tech retail in UK is usually dominated by Indians). Their main business is in long-distance discount phonecalls. You get a certain amount of long-distance or international phone time through a local number. If you'd asked me 15 years ago I might have guessed that reselling bandwidth would be a big business in the first decade of the 21st century, but I wouldn't have guessed that it would mostly be over-the-counter in corner shops. Actually selling bits of plastic with numbers printed on them (most of them don't even bother with mag stripes) seems very low-tech and physical! Ken Brown
