Thanks Peter. Sometimes I do not proof-read as well as I should. One of my old profs in the UW system had a policy that, if while reading your paper/submission he found too many typos, spelling or grammtical errors, he would write "RPR" (for Returned-Proof-read!) on the paper and not grade it until it was re-submitted sans errors.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/competitive is actually the proper spelling. You can edit your post accordingly. Thanks for posting Jeff. Unlike RG who is just complaining on a non-"Cellcom" phone.

You hit on an epidemic in this country I've been bitching about for decades, which has been going on since the Reagan administration--allowing companies to commit merger!

As we all recall from our US History/Civics classes in grade school (at least everyone but the so-called lassez-faire capitalists, who seemingly forgot this lesson), unchecked and unfettered capitalism is actually ANTI-COMPETETIVE, and leads to monopolies. See Standard Oil, Rockefellers, trusts, etc...

What happens, of course, is as soon as one entity gets a decent market share, the incentive is to engage in anti-competetive practices such as price-fixing, tie-in contracts, trust arrangements for an entire supply line, predatory pricing, etc. What this unfettered capitalism essentially does is PREVENT (or at least discourage) competition, not help more competition occur.

In response, the United States & Pres. Teddy Roosevelt enacted a series of federal laws making it illegal (and criminal) to engage in some of this behavior. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act and similar legislation was meant to prevent this, holding that yes, we want competition in the marketplace and when some companies get so big, they have a tendency to engage in behavior that is actually anti-competetive, hurting access to the markets by other suppliers. So we are putting a stop to such acts through these laws.

That system--a modified capitalism with controls on anti-competetive practices--essentially worked through most of the 20th century in America. Many proposed "mergers" were refused by the Justice Department on grounds that the merger, if effected, would result in a less competetive marketplace for that industry. Companies caught price-fixing or engaging in predatory pricing (e.g., pricing your product below cost until your competitor loses enough money to close down is one example) were cited, fined heavily, and even had members imprisoned in some cases.

All of that seemed to change at the start of the Reagan Presidency. Soon, companies were committing merger all over the place and the Justice Department started allowing them to occur, even though the end result was LESS competitors in the market. It also seemed the Justice Department started looking the other way instead of enforcing the prohibition against predatory pricing and price-fixing. Suddenly, all of the airlines puzzlingly had the same prices for flights. Suddenly, an airline that started getting competition from Southwest Air or someone, was able to lowered its fares below cost so no one could match.....at least until the competitor(s) gave up on that market, at which point the fares went back up with no inkling of any future competition.

Since the advent of the anti-trust act, no one in this country should have EVER uttered the words such-and-such corp "is too big to fail" concerning a fictcious person known as a corporation. We should have more than three or four large banks in this nation; we should have more than three or four airlines providing choices to consumers; we should stop electing half-bright douchebags who fail to enforce important federal law and think its OK to loot the Treasury and otherwise act treasonously See Reagan, Bush Jr. & Obama.

A choice between Coke or Pepsi is really no choice at all.

peace,

JJ

P.S. to A.M. Yes, I'm aware my screed rails against company mergers when, in fact, the telecommunications industry had the opposite happen--the Justice Department and federal courts actually "broke-up" the ATT/MaBell monopoly that existed from the beginning of telephones into the 1970s. So in a way, I'm a little off point. But now that ATT is broken up and we have all these "competitors," we are again seeing companies in this industry commit merger, as you are fearing with your company.

I don't rag on you on this blog, I do rag on you over the phone. The country has many kiosks, you just chose one in god's country.