Need 4G _ now

Need 4G _ now

Talk of launching 3G has been going on in this country for almost a decade now. Yet, as of October 2012, the bidding process for 3G hasn't even started while several countries are shifting to 4G. (Even iPhone 4S, now considered obsolete by many, supports 4G).

Does this mean we are going to have to wait until 2027 before we have 4G in Thailand, assuming 3G will be available here by 2015?

Forgive me for sounding naive, but why can't we just skip 3G altogether and leap-frog to 4G now?

ANDY COLMES


Clean toilets impress

Edward, in his letter ''Get minds out of the toilet'' (PostBag, Oct 7), is right in every aspect but one. He misses a very important point. Impressions.

The first impression a visitor gets of Thailand might be a very clean, hi-tech bathroom upon getting off an aircraft after a long flight. The last place a person might want to visit is a very clean, hi-tech bathroom before boarding a long flight back home.

I'm sure Edward, like most of us, has raced through a department store, an arena, a gas station, a public place, in search of instant, much-needed relief, only to find a stinking, grimy ''hole in the wall'', where one has to hold one's breath to carry out a much-needed bodily function.

I swore many times not to return to many of these places no matter how much I wanted to visit, buy a product, or stroll about, simply because of a non-attractive bathroom.

An attractive toilet facility might not be important to a Thai, but it is of paramount importance to a westerner or European, and they are the ones who bring in the tourist dollars.

Besides, it recalls an image of a certain minister's son in his Super Toiletman costume flying from toilet to toilet, giving the facilities a final spot check.

JACK GILEAD


TV debates irrelevant

As an activist associated with and involved in American politics for over 40 years I can certify that Eric Bahrt's comments in Postbag of Oct 6 are absolutely correct and factual.

Televised political debates are indeed merely entertainment for the masses and have no discernible effect on the voting behaviour of the American electorate, which is, in the aggregate, ignorant, narrow-minded and emotional. The debates serve the purposes of the old Roman ''bread and circuses'' concept of amusing the masses.

They also provide opportunities for ego-driven television talking heads and nitwit academics to arrogantly pontificate, speculate, lecture, evangelise, moralise and otherwise hoodwink the public into thinking that they know what they are talking about.

American democracy is a great fiction: the buzz phrase ''one-person one-vote'' only exists in the imagination of a mundane, disinterested and non-involved public that superciliously engages in a periodic presidential election by being couch potatoes staring at televised debates, while sitting in their underwear, swigging beer and flipping pretzels.

The founding fathers most likely understood the general malaise of the broad public and created the Electoral College which actually elects the president, using the polling results from their several states as an advisory onl

I disagree with Mr. Bahrt's assertion that ''... I don't think that debates usually serve much of a purpose''. The purposes they do serve are advertising revenue for broadcasters, an opportunity for a news celebrity moderator to superficially look grave, serious and involved, revenue for caterers, entertainment for the hoi polloi, ego enhancers for second-rate news anchors, name and face exposure for the candidates, and smug superiority for big-ticket political dollar contributors.

FRED HARVEY


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