Peter Griffin: Tech tales from the big country

If you could pick and choose the best parts of America in some real-life version of the Sim City computer game, you could extinguish the politics, drugs and guns and leave the good things, like overwhelming consumer choice and robust competition.

Little ol' New Zealand can rightly claim to be the test-bed for progressive new technologies. We've got the best damn Eftpos system in the world and are getting used to broadband technologies that other countries are years from rolling out.

But being a well-fed guinea pig is one thing. Being a well-served consumer is another.

The US is a super-sizing nation and that doesn't just go for the road diner rib servings. As far as technology is concerned, the Yanks are being spoiled for choice like we've never known and the range of deals they have to choose from is mouth-watering.

At the root of it all is fierce competition, something which in the telecoms and tech industries from a consumer standpoint we still sadly lack. Oh, and an audience of 280 million hungry consumers helps.

In telecoms alone, deals on offer from the likes of Cingular, Verizon, Sprint and AT&T are impressive.

Most of them offer free calling zones that span a number of states and allow users to make as many calls as they want within that area for a reasonable monthly fee.

A free phone or two on sign-up is the norm. Then there's "roll-over" - where your unused free calling minutes accumulate like credits.

Even in dusty Utah you can get unlimited local and long-distance calling from your mobile for US$45. Verizon will readjust your monthly plan based on last month's usage.

Standing in a stalled queue at Wells Fargo, you're just as likely to hear the walkie-talkie squawk of a push-to-talk message coming through as you are the ring of a phone or beep of an incoming text message.

Nextel, the company that attributes its rise in average subscriber spending to the push-to-talk revolution, has moved on to push-to-email, where you can transmit voice messages from your phone to people's inboxes in mp3 format.

In Australia, Telstra has kicked off push-to-talk at A$50 a month for unlimited use or 1Ac a second. Telecom and Vodafone are exploring push-to-talk here, but no word yet on availability or pricing.

Less obvious are wireless broadband technologies that are the key hope for competition here with the likes of Woosh and Wired Country. With satellite, cable and DSL providers going head to head, the Yanks don't really need wireless broadband, although it is taking off in parts of the country.

Broadband in the US has become a commodity - something added to sweeten the deal. Even the Holiday Inn will allow you to plug in via ethernet for free surfing. The second-tier hotels and motels are using free internet access as a carrot to lure customers from plusher competitors.

Wi-fi is readily available and these days you're actually likely to be able to log on to the web at a location where you actually want to be - and for a reasonable fee.

Pay TV is a competitive hot-bed, a far cry from our Sky monopoly. The cable operators battle the satellite players assembling their own packages aimed at entertainment-and-sports-hungry Americans.

Satellite operator DirecTV will install a dish on your roof and decoders in three rooms free. Then you pay US$49.95 a month for 125 channels, with other discounts thrown in.

Still, not a single pay TV operator has put out a service that allows you to pick and choose only the channels you want. There's plenty of chaff with the wheat when you get your 125-channel package.

The PC industry has virtually cut its own throat to compete. Buy a reasonably powerful US$499 Dell machine online, double your memory and get free delivery.

Traditional radio stations are receiving a challenge from the likes of XM Satellite radio, a company that beams programming directly to a satellite receiver in your car or home. From coast to coast, no matter where you are, you'll receive the same stations - the BBC World Service, MTV Radio and Playboy Radio among them. XM has two million subscribers, whom it serves with two Boeing satellites in geostationary orbit above the US.

High-definition digital TV is a reality in the States and they're selling the TV sets to receive the feeds.

The Americans understand online content and how to sell it. Need I mention the success of the iTunes online store and its lack of availability here? Ditto a hundred other online services the Yanks take for granted.

Stop off at a CompUSA, Fry's Electrical or Best Buy and see the staggering range of gadgets and gizmos on offer. We picked up a Linksys wireless gateway and wi-fi card package for US$80. It would cost twice that here.

Tech is taking a more central role in people's everyday lives as well. Over the highways of Nevada, police in light aircraft prowl with radar detectors, looking for speeding motorists. At the airports, new arrivals get to have their mugshots taken on a little eyeball-shaped camera and their fingerprints scanned. To my disappointment, they didn't seem interested in obtaining my biometrics.

Still, despite all that, the US communications system is a complex mess. Few of the carriers have truly national reach and rates vary as you travel around the country. At least with little competition you know what to expect and how much you're going to get stung for.

Customer service failings are still a major bugbear for Americans. Don't expect to be treated like anything other than a number where your operator boasts 17 million subscribers.

In the US IT industry, consolidation and cutbacks continue as tech and telecoms players continue with a formula they've whittled down to a fine art - saving money.

As you venture through northern California, the highway signs point to places that have become synonymous with technology - Cupertino, Palo Alto, Redwood City. The gleaming headquarters rise out of sun-drenched fields, but the tech companies occupying them continue their battle to stave off losses and takeover attempts.

Mobile operator Sprint slashed 1100 jobs last month as Cisco spent US$89 million eliminating an emerging competitor, buying Procket Networks which was to introduce a new router to rival Cisco's. Procket was days away from running out of money.

Red Hat, one of the biggest names associated with Linux, upped its game, increasing profit in the year to May from US$1.7 million to US$10.7 million. Anti-trust wrangling over Oracle's bid for Peoplesoft continued in a stuffy courtroom somewhere. The Justice Department is worried that if Larry Ellison gets his hands on his smaller competitor, businesses will be held to ransom in their software purchases.

Mobile pioneer and past America's Cup hopeful Craig McCaw is looking to revolutionise communications again, this time with a nationwide WiMax network. The guy who sold AT&T Wireless in the mid-90s and then put US$1 billion into Nextel wants to be the market leader in the next generation of wi-fi. If successful, he could shake up the whole industry once again.

I'm dubious about half the stuff served up to Americans on a daily basis and sitting through a rowdy screening of Mike Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 reminded me of just how scarily dysfunctional America is. Sure they've got good pay TV services, but if it's an episode of Jerry Springer titled "I pimped my mom" that's showing, what's the point?

But when it comes to choice and technology, the big country has equal and enviable measures of both. Pity we couldn't steal those good parts.

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