Or: Money Makes the World Go Round

The rich are preferredly served. A bitter truth, becoming clearer and more apparent also in Germany. Private patients get faster doctor’s appointments, children from financially weak families can’t afford academic studies, even the main burden of taxes is on the shoulders of middle class that is already threatened by social decline, and not on those called “super-rich”.

A trend running through the whole society, and soon through mobile phone industry, too. Actually, the technology bringing this about sounds harmless: SNAPin. But it prevents mobile phone users from getting the help they usually would have expected.

Dialing the service hotline of your provider, on your display appears a self-help menu instead of a dial-up to a call center. So, still more questions instead of an answer. The first mobile phone provider to use the new technology will be Vodafone. But other providers certainly also won’t be hesitant to squander less money because of customers from which they can’t get much cash anyway.

In the end the situation will be like that: A financially strong customer gets the direct connection to a competent customer consultant, the less money bringing customers get only help to help themselves. If that will really help them, is more than questionable.

Another quite different proposal for a more differentiated customer treatment suggests consultancy Arthur D. Little: the one with a cheap rate could have the worse connection quality and be the first thrown out off the net in case of a net capacity overload. Or doesn’t even get into, while solvent exclusive users always get the best piece of the net cake. Until now that’s only a suggestion, but for one or the other Austrian mobile phone service provider “imaginable”.

In this case, the now rarely seen call boxes would surely experience a comeback because the present advance of mobile phones, being available anytime and anywhere, would end in smoke. But that doesn’t matter to the providers. The oligarches will surely bring cash and the lower classes get inferior goods for some cents.

Brave New Mobile Phone World!