Capitalism 2 and Capitalism Lab Forum

I started playing this game recently, its a very fun game for me. But when I started runing a telecom company, I found it's too simplified for a actual telecom company. In fact, a telecom company also need to develop a lot of technology to increase its service quality. Just like we used to use dial up service, but now we are using optical communication system. But this revolution is not only putting budget into the company, but also need to make many deals with other companies producing network hardware. There is a large market between telecom companies and hardware vendors and they could cooperate and compete with each others.

Sorry for my bad English, and I am very appreciated that if market would not be ignored. Thanks

If you have more concrete ideas about how to improve the telecom company, please feel free to post here and I will forward your suggestions to the dev team.

Suggestions from me to improve:
[*]Provide information about competitiveness of telecoms. Customer satisfation as a bar, Brand is important here too.
[*]Telecoms can align with mobile phone brands, mutually influencing their brand awareness.

Not telecom related, but the DLC needs a Internet guide similar to the software guide that shows me requirements in tech, available techs and highest current tech.

What will customer satisfaction be based on?

At the moment it seems from the description that they are satisfied if the infrastructure is having buffer. But customers should also get unhappy if the quality of service is spoiled by too high prices, outdated technology or weak customer service.

A telecom also offers different products, like in the 90s it was a 9600Baud connection, in Germany we had ISDN, up to 128kBit; Then came T3 connections, DSL, ADSL, VDSL, 4 generation of mobile data networks.
The current DLC says "We can serve up to so many customers" and one may ask, "serve with what". A Telecom that invests into outdated technology will find their customers not be happy.
Then came internet, and beside of having connections to soandso many households is half the problem, the other is investment into the internet backbone. A reliable and fast connection to the outer world might cause customer satisfaction.

A telecom also offers different products, like in the 90s it was a 9600Baud connection, in Germany we had ISDN, up to 128kBit; Then came T3 connections, DSL, ADSL, VDSL, 4 generation of mobile data networks.

Below is an old design draft of the Telecom. The current design was eventually preferred over it because we couldn't identify any gameplay benefits of the more complicated approach, except more micro-management. At the end of the day, it is still a budget for building the telecom infrastructure that matters. If you see any potential gameplay implications that you approach would have over the current one, I will forward it to the dev team for their consideration.

BUILDING NEW INFRASTRUCTURE
It requires:
-Research to invent a new tech for the infrastructure.
-A huge amount of capital for building the infrastructure.

-Dial-up (56K)
>this tech needs not to be researched. It is already available in the beginning. You research it to improve the tech level.

-Broadband DSL (128K to 8Mbps)
>The parent tech of DSL is 200 tech level of Dial-up

- Broadband Fiber Optics (which uses fiber optic cables)
>The parent tech of Fiber Optics is 300 tech level of DSL

In order to build the infrastructure, you are required to attain at least 30 tech level of the tech. But the speed is low at tech level 30, so a good strategy is to research it to a higher tech level before building the infrastructure.

IMPROVEMENT OF EXISTING INFRASTRUCTURE

Research an existing invented tech to increase its tech level.

Higher tech level means slightly faster connection speed.

You will have to spend a small cost for upgrading the network to take advantage of the improved tech.

A telecom also offers different products, like in the 90s it was a 9600Baud connection, in Germany we had ISDN, up to 128kBit; Then came T3 connections, DSL, ADSL, VDSL, 4 generation of mobile data networks.

Below is an old design draft of the Telecom. The current design was eventually preferred over it because we couldn't identify any gameplay benefits of the more complicated approach, except more micro-management. At the end of the day, it is still a budget for building the telecom infrastructure that matters. If you see any potential gameplay implications that you approach would have over the current one, I will forward it to the dev team for their consideration.

BUILDING NEW INFRASTRUCTURE
It requires:
-Research to invent a new tech for the infrastructure.
-A huge amount of capital for building the infrastructure.

-Dial-up (56K)
>this tech needs not to be researched. It is already available in the beginning. You research it to improve the tech level.

-Broadband DSL (128K to 8Mbps)
>The parent tech of DSL is 200 tech level of Dial-up

- Broadband Fiber Optics (which uses fiber optic cables)
>The parent tech of Fiber Optics is 300 tech level of DSL

In order to build the infrastructure, you are required to attain at least 30 tech level of the tech. But the speed is low at tech level 30, so a good strategy is to research it to a higher tech level before building the infrastructure.

IMPROVEMENT OF EXISTING INFRASTRUCTURE
Research an existing invented tech to increase its tech level.

Higher tech level means slightly faster connection speed.

You will have to spend a small cost for upgrading the network to take advantage of the improved tech.

I have an evil idea.

Breaking net neutrality.

Telecom dominated company can influence rival internet company to suffer with speed and quality.

Blocking other rival company website via network infrastructure monopoly.

Hello,

We'd need a way to differenciate telecoms. (you can MP me if needed i'm a network expert in an internationnal company for 20 years). for now only price help users to choose
Maybe a home user oriantation and a business oriantation.

I imagine something like QoL of cities for telecom (most of them based on R&D, training and investment):
- 2G/3G/4G/5G coverage (why not ISDN, PSTN, or X25 for old ones). We could invest in infrastructures for each of them (today we have only 1 global slider). like this we can specialize. Of course devices must be compatible (my old motorola phone bought in 1996 can't connect 5G, i'm angry LOL). with time users will use less 3G and more 4G, so infrastructures become obsoletes with time. Remerber that we talk about billions here
- service availability (SLAs) (user can be agree to pay more if connection is reliable)
- costumer support quality (do you like to wait 7 hours to get a pakistan holiner that can't help you at all? or do you prefer to have an instant hotliner with IT skill and speak your native language?).
- bandwidth available (good to have 4G everywhere, but useless if your core network is saturted), remember that users wants more and more bandwidth (maybe select costing by bandwidth)
- sevice availability (for exemple VoD or with own internet company, or with peering to another companie with fees), maybe rent a TV adapter for VoD like modern boxes
- is there integration with phone manufacturers (remember blackberry?) My company offer you 20% cashback if you buy my smartphone 5000.
- offer a VPN to secure your datas
- add the costing of the usage. remember when your paid 0.50 c for 1 text message? Amazing! All providers don't support unlimited communication or data. A simulation should reflect this.
- how to interconnect users of different providers? if verizon phone user want to phone to and orange phone user? what is the cost for provider? and for the user? how to garantee quality?
- add options like QoS, parental control, mail maybe (or add a new company for mails), low latency (for gamers or voice), firewalling, SD-WAN to make extra cash.
- maybe add new techs and production to build 3G/4G antennas, high speed switchs, routers ,etc

business options would be interesting to study :
- MPLS
- internet redondancy
- managed firewalls/VPNs or SD-WAN
- Mobile device management to manage all the phones of your company
- NoC or SoC etc

I think that we should consider nation population and not city population to make it viable (a telecom company should be able to build it's network in all cities but should have the choice, i mean not a global slider but one per city as i'd invest more on a city with lot of computer/phones users than on one with few users
Allow to build network between towns on world map (with high costs to motivate inter-provider peering contracts)

That's just first ideas but we could work them

Thanks for the inputs.

Would you provide more details as to how you envision the gameplay mechanics and the user interfaces would look like for your suggested enhancements for the telecom industry?