I have some sympathy with your view and I'd certainly like to see this changed. However, I have a colleague who's in the mobile 'phone business and he puts this perspective on it.
His view is that the operator has to provide the necessary very expensive infrastructure to support the transmission of data whether you use it or not. There's the cost of the equipment, basestations, cabling, rental of space to place basestations, administration, command and control, personnel etc etc.
He likens it to renting a car - if you rent a car from a rental company for a month but only drive it for two days, would you reasonably expect to be able to extend the time period of your rental beyond that month because you'd only actually driven the car for a couple of days. Of course not. OK - he agrees the analogy has many flaws but he's trying to make the point that it costs real money just to keep the network up and running irrespective of whether anyone is actually using it.
But I agree with you and I'd like to see this changed too!!
Tim
