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Cell Phones: Japan vs. the United States
Stirland writes "Cell phones/Connectivity: Japan and the United States: Worlds Apart on Wireless. Interesting analysis of the economic and cultural reasons for why the Japanese kick Americans' butts when it comes to wireless cell phone technology and usage."
Also the Europeans kick American's ass.
Everytime I read how behind the United States is compared to Finland, Japan, etc., it upsets me that one simple concept is rarely, if ever, mentioned..
The United States has a very, very, very large land mass compared to Japan or Finland, or any other country in Europe that has cooler cell phone technology than we do.
It's simply very, very expensive and time consuming for companies to roll out services that *might* get the public interested...
So while I would very much like to have video on my phone or simply be able to buy a Dr Pepper out of a soda machine, the sheer size of the United States makes it difficult for such widespread agreements on standards or progress in new technology...
Meanwhile, a working dad in Japan gets to watch his son grow up.
Yes, I suppose in 128x128 resolution at 1 frame per second. But in north america and europe where the working week is 60 hours a week, the father (or mother) can actually watch the child and maybe offer a helping hand. Instead of admire a pixelated version.
Perhaps this phenemonon can explain the adoption gap. If we have more time to spend with the ones we love, we don't need to purchase technological replacements for this contact.
Just a thought.
However, there are significant reasons to believe the claim is true in this case. For instance, consider electric fields. You may not be aware of this or have thought of it this way, but a microwave oven is basically just a big, unmodulated radio station broadcasting in the microwave band instead of the radio band. And what do we use microwave ovens for? Cooking things.
And microwaves, like all electromagnetic radiation, are caused by what? Electric fields. And a major source of electric fields and broadcast power is what? Cell phones. And we put cell phones where? Next to our genitals and next to our brains[1].
So, while I love my personal computer, SUV, air-conditioning and other marvels of modern life I Just Say No to cancer-causing cell phones.
[1] For me this is two separate locations, YMMV
Sure the feature sucks, but I am even willing to look past that, but that I don't like is the price of the calls in US and Canada.
Until they could lower the prices down to penny/minute, I just don't see how wireless will ever take off here.
Hey, if it's cheap enough, people will be using the cell phone whereever they are without worrying about the cost of the call.
kawai
My aunt lived in Japan for two years. From what she said, and this article mentions, is that getting a land line phone is very expensive.
The article quotes $700, but if I recall my aunt mentioned it was more than that. Additionally, the waiting list to get a telephone was months and months long.
So, to me, it's no surprise that Japanese are using cell phones for both voice and data more than US counterparts. A big chunk of people there simply can't even make a call from home. So they are used to using their cell phones more than your average American.
I think geography has something to do with it as well. Japan has a much higher population density than the US, so it's easier for the providers. You don't need to erect as many towers to cover the same number of people.
Installing and upgrading cell towers to support higher speed data services costs a fortune, so I'm not surprised it's not happening faster in the US. You'd need thousands of towers in Japan, compared to tens of thousands here.
Case
Europeans and asians have managed to agree in a standard - GSM.
Unlink the americans' networks
while I don't see anything inherently wrong here, it's just a simple matter of attitude for me: the value of personal privacy far outweighs the potential benefits of "anytime, anywhere" connectivity. That's really a personal decision, so as the article (correctly) points out, this may just be indicative of some large cultural differences.
C|N>K
It's simple: in Japan, Europe, Australia, New Zealand etc... you only pay to call someone, not to receive a call. I understand most Americans are reluctant to give out their cellphone numbers because you pay to receive calls as well.
This is stupid.
Also, the US has a large culture of pager use that just hasn't taken off anywhere else in the world. We have cellphones with SMS capability to do the same thing. Forget combining the two products - they're already combined.
There are five stages to owning a mobile phone: This presumes you've got one to make use of it, not to just so you can say you have one.
1: Buy the phone. Many people think this is the only thing they have to do. It's not.
2: Carry the damned thing with you everywhere. Most fall over at this point because they do things like only carry the phone to work or whatever - if it's not with you AT ALL TIMES then people won't get used to reaching you on it. This stage is tricky because you carry it everywhere even when it doesn't ring, and it won't for ages until:
3: Don't be afraid to give out your number to everyone. EVERYONE. Once you've done this you'll actually start receiving calls - it's only at this point you'll be seeing the benefit of having the phone.
4: Don't be afraid to MAKE calls on your phone. The more you use it the more you'll be contacted on your phone.
I am a leaf on the wind
And the "large country" argument doesn't hold water. Mobile telephony in Australia is a generation ahead of the US, and we're about the same land mass with one fifteenth the population. Ok, coverage ain't great in the middle, but you can make a phone call in Melbourne, and hold the same connection while you drive 4000km to Cape York.
I once stood on the ancient Greek island of Delos which was once the centre of the known universe, and received a mobile phone call from someone back home in Oz who'd just dialed my regular number. Awesome.
No, we are not "behind" in technology, we are RESTRICTED...
FACT...anyone can go to Japan/Europe/etc. and purchase any of the equipment, but good luck getting the FCC permission to implement it, even for a local market.
The United States is not behind in technology, be 'merely'(I say tongue in cheek) restricted in the area of what technology they are ALLOWED to use.
--Huck
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
I wonder what effect this is having on the brain cancer rate in Japan?
An engineer who ran for Congress. http://herbrobinson.us
Whenever a U.S. carrier comes out with a data service, they charge ridiculous rates to use it. Either airtime (for wap browsing on verizon) or some insane per Kilobyte fee for data. Plus the speed sucks too bad to use it for much more than text...
another thing to consider is that we really dont need all the extra crap:
"I'm very disappointed to see that the majority of phones in the U.S. are black and white and four lines (of text)," said Satoshi Nakajima, chief executive officer of UIEvolution, a Bellevue company that develops software for Japanese wireless companies. "Then you'll never succeed."
well it depends on how you define success. if you define success as video at 1fps, then yes we will never succeed. if you are trying to give people phone access, then four lines of text are enough to succeed. personally i dont want a hot pink phone, with a hello kitty theme and a ringer that playes the theme from shaft. i really dont need the aformentioned phone with streaming video.. it's simply not necessary... for me.
just because someone has different needs doesnt mean the have failed. i guess you could say linux has failed since it's not running on the hello kitty phone.. i would say it's a success since it runs my webserver very well.
-- john
the rest of the world uses 1 yes ONE way and the good ol US of A are stuck useing anouther demand that your network use GSM !
regards
john 'no its not broken' jones
Some say that many Japanese have turned to wireless phones because a residential phone line costs $700 to install. While that explains the quick adoption of mobile phones for voice calls, it doesn't explain the embrace of data services.
Umm, except that in most countries people get online and access "data services" through the telephone network. If it is prohibitively expensive to access the Internet from home, due to setup and/or per-minute/per-month charges, it makes sense that people spend more time sending e-mail and accessing information from their phones rather than from home PCs. I don't know if this is the case, but I would like to have seen it addressed in the article.
I know at $700 I would not be ready to add a second phone line for the Net and I don't know how far along the broadband rollout is over there.
"the Japanese kick Americans' butts when it comes to wireless cell phone technology and usage"
This of course would imply that being 24/7 connected to everyone and the internet is somehow a "good thing". Personally I think its a flaw. Don't get me wrong I think the idea of streaming video and web surfing is cool on a phone, its just that in the scheme of things I don't think this is some sort of great positive influence on society.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
You think 700 dollars for a land phone line is expensive?..
Anyone want to rant about the reikin system?
I have been pwned because my
The biggest reason why cellphones have not taken off in the US in comparison to Europe, at least, is simply price -- or in particular the *way* they are priced.
In Germany (and, I believe, in most other European countries), cellphones are charged exactly the same way a fixed-line phone is charged. You pay a basic monthly fee, and you pay per second or 10 seconds for calls you make. There are no "airtime" fees or other gotchas. The rates are also easy to understand, more or less -- for a call within your provider's network, you pay a "local" call; calls within your country are "long-distance"; and calls outside of your country are international. Quite rational.
My provider also has the added perk that I can choose either five fixed-line numbers or one area code to get discounted calls. So if I choose Berlin's area code -- 030 -- I can call anyone in Berlin for a much lower rate.
In comparison, my family in the States has a blizzard of confusing fee schedules, with plenty of "gotchas" built-in.
Another problem is the lack of standards across the States. Europe has the GSM standard, and your phone will work across nearly all of Europe. The USA has no such common standard, and even if you're smart enough to get a dual-band or tri-band cellphone, you get hammered on the roaming charges in the States.
I'm actually not that much of a fan of cellphones-as-portals, though -- WAP seems such an abortion of an idea and so far navigating the Web with a keypad is just a non-starter (and, like the article says, Americans tend to drive and not take public transport, so they have less time to fiddle with the things). But it is often a nice option to have. I use it to check what movies are playing (and to reserve tix), check train times (OK, that's not too useful in the States ;-P ) and sometimes to check the news, but that's about it -- I would never buy anything with it, because the technology is so far rather insecure.
i-Mode was also recently introduced in Germany by my provider (they licensed the technology from NTT-DoCoMo), so Europe is close to Japan's level now, though it remains to be seen if i-Mode and other 2.5G technologies take off in Europe (let alone 3G).
GPRS and HSCSD are also well-established, so I can go online at 56K digital with my Nokia and Powerbook via infrared and OS X (haven't gotten it to work with Linux, tho). GPRS is *very* expensive, though -- 2.5 Eurocents per 1K of data -- but HSCSD is fairly reasonable (why the difference, I don't know -- both give you the same speed AFAIK).
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
For the record, here in Belgium people work only 39 hours a week.
They don't lay off their staff every six months.
Having someone around who actually knows how to build something is important to the empire-building, plant-watering donut list and their bonuses.
Japan in particular probably has a much better developed sense of loyalty and business ethics as well. Of course, the suits will disagree, but when was the last $4 billion "accounting error" in Japan?
*sigh*
Why do seemingly well-intentioned and intelligent people assume that distinct and different cultures should enjoy a technological homogoneity?
Is it that difficult to understand that not everything that works for Americans works for Japanese or Europeans? There are many factors that determine which technologies thrive in different countries. This article both acknowledges these difrerences and at the same time dismisses them. Why? Probably because a rationale article doesn't pay the bills for a freelance writer compared to a doom and gloom article.
The Japanese like their cellphones? Good for them. I like my broadband connection.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
If your cities were invaded and devastated by giant monsters as much as they are, you'd have a cell phone too. Think about what a giant reptile rampaging about does to the power and phone grids.
Also, VoiceStream here in the USA is using a GSM network, but unfortunately it resides on the 1900MHz band, so we all have to have tri-mode phones just to be able to use one handset worldwide. If I have heard correctly, AT&T and Cingular are switching from their TDMA based networks to GSM (part of AT&T's $5 billion dollar budget this year) because TDMA didn't have the capacity they were hoping for. (Cingular is already GSM in California and Nevada because of their acquisition of PacBell.)
Despite what the article says, I like to think that my phone is pretty cool.
Just my $0.02.
10% ain't bad
I have been pwned because my
Two years ago when I was in Tokyo, we were giving a demo with our Japanese counterparts to a financial instutution there.
The demos were given at 120k bps over a cell phone that flipped open and plugged into a pcmcia slot in our laptop.
That freakin' rocked. We (USA) didn't have anything even close.
Them Japanese is crazy!!
RaGe
We're all just noise on the wires..
But if all you want is just a frelling phone - even the Nokia 6160 I use every day has too many features that I never use.
I want just a phone - nothing else. An address book and a few call management features - all of the rest is just fluff.
If I want a data cell phone - then sell me one - not a bad music box, piss poor video, and can I say fragile - where do they test these new objects - in *pink* marsh mellow rooms - give me a frelling break.
The cell phone crowd is going to learn the hard way - too many features with a big monthly bill - no buyers - or so few, they will loose not only their shirts but their socks and underware too.
Gil
-- Where ever you go, don't complain, you went there!
Funky cell phones are popular in Japan for the same reason they have panties in vending machines- the Japanese like crazy shit! Just because you can add extra features to a cell phone doesn't mean you should.
July 2001 est. population density (people per sq/km of land):
Finland: 16.9
Sweden: 21.6
Japan: 415.0
US: 30.4
Of course, as you say, the density of major urban areas is in many ways more important than overall density. But it's still worth noting the difference in Japan -- I'd count a 13.7x difference as significant enough to have an effect.
Now we know who to watch as they grow up for signs of brain damage, though it probably won't be cancer.
he pulls the spitting high tension wires down
This article doesn't mention how much they pay all together, and what sorts of services their plans offer. All the plans here have some downfall: not enough daytime minutes, nasty long distance charges, exorbitant roaming, etc. Pick one or two of those and you have basically every plan. Anyone know?
sig.
from Microsoft with lots of pretty colors. Nevermind I guess we don't have it yet. And SourceForge ads... they don't have enough of those in Japan. And they imitate movies... see... its clever. At least the first few hundred times i saw it I thought it was clever.
And the real reason the japanese phones are so popular is because they have all these spiffy picture characters you can use.
Interactive Visual Medical Dictionary
.. are dying a slow death. Maybe I live and work in a pager-free zone, but can anyone else remember the last time they saw two different pagers in one week? Oh, and middle/high schools don't count.
-- jimmycarter
Shut the hell up, you dirty nigger
...blowing the shit out of anyone that may have *legit* problems against it. Doesn't leave much time for productive stuff does it?
US sucks cock. Always has... always will.
oh yea... and of course a stupid goatse.cx link. never once have i clicked that... but from what i've heard it's not a nice experience.
Saving my Karma, Ironmined_ironfist.
Btw. when i find who modded me down i will hunt you down and kill you. Somehow.
your page-widening post looks a little weird. oh i know why, it didnt widen my page. strange, I'm actually using microsoft internet explorer.
We have so much land it's significantly more expensive to cover the USA than an island that is only 374,744 sq km compared to the USA which is 9,158,960 sq km
Hell Europe is barely bigger than the USA at and has significanlty more people at 731,716,000 compared to 287,412,865 in the USA.
BTW we're kicking the worlds ass when it comes to wealth. Which in my opinion is a hell of a lot better than sending a Instant Message(tm) over a cell phone.
While waiting at the gate for a flight out of
Narita airport, I tried plugging in my wireless
card just on a lark. I was surprised to find that
the card saw an access point plus dhcp gave me
an address and a full connection to the net. I was
able to spend the rest of my wait doing email,
IM, and sshing back home. Investigating later, it
seems that something called the IPv6 Promotion
Council, along with assorted agencies,
is sponsoring a free wireless LAN trial at
the airport and on some trains and train stations
until July 31, 2002. (See http://www.nex.v6pc.jp/)
I wonder if we can every expect such experiments
in the US?
Japan has a much higher population density than the US, so it's easier for the providers. You don't need to erect as many towers to cover the same number of people.
So in other words, Americans have far more erections than the Japanese, but when they have an erection they do it with more people.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
It's simple: in Japan, Europe, Australia, New Zealand etc... you only pay to call someone, not to receive a call. I understand most Americans are reluctant to give out their cellphone numbers because you pay to receive calls as well.
This is stupid.
I'm not sure about that. Firstly, I don't use all of the monthly minutes on my phone. So an incoming call costs me nothing (up to a point). Secondly, cost is 10 cents *Canadian* per minute up here/on my provider, so I could talk for an hour straight for the cost of a submarine sandwich. My conversations are typically 2 minutes or so (arranging to see people in person or conveying quick information), so quantity of calls is simply not a factor.
The real reason I don't give out my cell number much is that there's a select few people who I want to be able to bug me at any minute of the day. Everyone else can just email me.
So I don't think the cost argument holds, in my location and within my peer group at least.
over here in europe you can buy cell phones with pre-paid cards (for about 70$ - card+phone) with about 30 free minutes included. then you can either recharge the card and if you choose not to you still can be called for 12months on that phone! so that costs you 0.00$! that kind of contract especially popular among kids here .
keep it simple.
Due to the sheer number of commuters that utilize public transporation as their means of getting to work on a daily basis, the cell phone companies have, essentially, a captive audience. After all, what else is there to do on a 30 - 60 minute train ride one way?
So NTT, and the others, realized that if they make their phones more feature rich (browsing the web in 65000+ colors, email, etc...) then it should be quite simple to catch on.
Japanese providers determine what sort of infrastructure they need to improve their network. They do R&D, they partner with manufacturers & share the costs of more R&D.
They guide the direction of technology to their benefit. They make sure that the latest & greatest technology is going to add capability to and will fit seamlessly into their network.
Cellular providers in the US buy off the shelf.
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." --Napoleon Bonaparte
the nips got their asses nuked in WWII. The eurotrash fags should be nuked too. What a cesspool of socialism. No wonder Americans think europeans are smelly and lazy. Godamn, the French can't be bothered to take a shower, except every two weeks and the English can't be bothered to brush their teeth, so that they look like some kind of mutants.
At least the nips aren't lazy, smelly, and ugly like the eurobtiches.
I wouldn't call it "getting our butt's kicked", I would call it not wanting to be bothered EVERYWHERE we go. I have a cell phone but I only use it for emergencies. If people want to contact me they can leave a message on my answering machine.
1. 99.99 percent of the time, it can wait.
Yeah, see the thing is, I don't want to be reached all the time. Right now, there is no reason any one would need to contact me urgently. Whatever it is, it can wait. If it's that much of an emergency that you have to get in touch with me, maybe you should call 911 first.
Thats why my cell phone sits in a drawer, and is only pulled out and activated when I move someplace where I can't get a land line. (I'm a college student, the moving every 9/3 months thing is getting old fast...)
I understand that there are certain careers where you do need to be in touch all the time, but if I'm not in one, the cell phone stays in the drawer.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Isn't it safe to say that our traditional land line service is quite good,reliable, and nearly universal?
By way of comparision, my few interfaces with Europeon phone service gave me the distinct impression of being in an old Andy Griffith show re-run.
With that as competition, I can see how Europe and Asia quickly embraced the cell phone.
In contrast, the U.S. population has had less incentive to embrace cellular technology.
Check out Largest recipe database on the web.
Back when I was in college I ran across a Russian kerosene lamp with a highly sophisticated thermoelectric generator for powering a vacuum tube radio. I was praising its virtues and cleverness until one of my professors pointed out that the reason they had such a gadget was that they had no electricity anywhere near the Siberian house it was intended for. The US was definitely behind Russia in implementing thermoelectric power but I think most farmers in the US since the 1930's appreciated rural electrification. In fact, I think the US may still be behind the Russians in the technology and lots of thermoelectric products come from there.
:-)
By the way, in the 30 years since I was in college the application of really neat technologies like that is now called appropriate technology and is helping lots of people around the world improve their living standards. (I was right 30 years ago -- just ahead of my time
I think the primary cause for the full and rapid adoption of cell phones is driven by the lack of infrastructure for land lines. If we compare the cost per hour for our teenagers to talk to each other we would doubtless find it lower. If we compared the costs of internet connectivity (wide or narrow bandwidth) I'll bet we would similarly find it cheaper. Somehow viewing the Internet through a cell phone screen (color or not) doesn't impress me when I can get online with my Linux box and have the world at my fingertips.
I live and work in Japan. I have a DoCoMo phone. But I get this feeling that the "story" is missing a big, big point. Over here, we don't really have the option of buying "just a phone". Technically we could skimp the 300yen (US$2.50) "i-Mode" charge (monthly charge for using the internet) and not have any of the fancy 'net stuff.
But most people could care less to opt out of it at that price, not to mention many probably don't even realize there's a charge for that, as it's usually the default. Another point is that I don't think you can buy a non-color screen cell phone either. They just no longer exist. Even the cheapest phones, around 2,000yen or even free sometimes, are color.
And finally... at least in Tokyo, you're probably weird if you don't have a cell phone. I know a lot of people that probably have absolutely no need for a cell phone, but friends and co-workers would look at you funny if they asked for your cell phone number or e-mail address and you didn't have one. Unlike the U.S., owning a color screen fancy cell phone (at least in Tokyo and other large cities) is the majority, not a small bunch of people.
That said, some people were asking what a realistic figure on monthly charges was like. My wife and I both have a DoCoMo phone. We have about 20 minutes of free time, and have a 1 year contract and "family" contract (2 phones) which brings down the basic fee by about 15%. We use e-mail, but rarely ever cross the line for additional packets that aren't free. We also only barely cross the free 20 minutes. Combined, our monthly bill is about 9,000yen. (About $37.50 per phone.) I do, however, know of many people who's single phone bill is more than ours combined.
- In USA there are 4-5 competing standards: that means that if you switch provider, you likely have to change your phone - anywhere else (curiously, except in Japan) there is GSM.
- Anywhere else, except in the USA, you don't pay to receive calls - you don't have to choose a monthly-fee-based plan if you don't want to, and prepaid cards have similar cost to plans (and expire in 1 year, not in 1 month!). In brief, you pay only what you use!
- In the USA you have to subscribe to a plan for a year, and if you unsubscribe, you pay huge penalties.
There are several mythes about why in the USA things "have to" work this way, but these are, indeed, just mythes. Size, density of the population, etc etc etc. are just excuses for a market which, unlike other markets, in the USA has succumbed to wrong strategies.In EU each country had its own standard so when you had to travel, your phone did not work anymore (I remember still in 1992 using an analog phone while sailing... nice, except when you reached another coast of the Mediterranean, you had no coverage anymore) . Since mobile phones are obviously useful when traveling, in 1987, GSM standard was defined and cellphone providers never looked back. BY 1993 it began to be implemented.
In any other market, similar threatening conditions would not be tolerated:
- would you agree to have your home phone service subject to a 1-yr min. contract, effectively preventing you from switching providers?
- would you like to have a TV market where you have to buy an new TV set (with a different video standard) if you move from NY to LA?
- would you like to have to pay for incoming long-distance phone calls at home?
strangely enough, people who use wireless phones in the USA are subject to such rules, unlike anywhere else in the world.With such conditions, it's not strange that the cellular phone market is in such a bad shape. It's surprising it's not in a worse one!
but whatever makes you feel superior is good I guess
that finland had increased it's surface area to the size of the united states and replaced it's entire phone system with a wireless network. tell me did you annex a portion of the former soviet union?
it woludnt work here because the financial incentive isn't there to dump our preexsisting network. it must have cost alot, especially considering that here you would have to have the gsm network available _everywhere_ for people to go for it. people here are kind of silly. see they want their phones to work everywhere. not just in the city.
see the needs of finland are different than those of the united states. the solutions that work for you might or might not work for us.
the united states is very large and spread out. we have had a national telephone system that started forming before your own. this is something that is very expensive to replace, and it is difficult to justify that expense.
i'm sure finland differs from the united states in more than one or two ways. until they are equal, you cannot compare them directly.
i'm sorry you cannot communicate with your fellow programmers using sms. i dont think sms will help you much though. if you are working as a programmer and you email someone and it takes him 9 hours to respond i dont think he will respond much quicker with the sms thing. if you still think sms would solve this communication delima, feel free to mail my government with your concerns.
-- john
Why would you need to be reachable most of the day?
I consider it a blessing that I'm unreachable while commuting. I don't give out my cell phone number because I don't want anyone to call me.
My favorite is watching people talking on their cell phone as they walk down the street. The conversation is always like this:
"...no no, not doing anything, just walking down the street...nope, in the city. Nope, nothing going on. How about you? So, what's going on..."
Complete inanity.
I guess if you pay for 9000 minutes a month, you're going to use them no matter how ridiculous it is.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
1) U.S. is huge in terms of area. Nationwide digital, I mean real nationwide, can't be rolled out because of the cost. This is another reason why Europeans have one standard being GSM. GSM was initially rejected by U.S. operators because the cell size is so small. CDMA was promised to solve all of the problems that GSM didn't. CDMA, widely adopted in the U.S., can have larger cell sizes because it is not based on time division. If you make a GSM cell too large, it takes too long for the signal to travel thus messing up the frame of the next time slot. With CDMA, there is a tradeoff of cell size versus capacity versus quality (9.6kps or 14.4kbs). Cell sizes can be made much larger however the noise floor is raised thus reducing the capacity of that cell.
Also smaller cell sizes, as present in Japan, makes phones smaller because they don't need to output as much power thus requiring a smaller battery.
However looking back, it sure would be nice if we had a single unified digital standard like the Europeans, but does that really inhibit people here?? If I have a TDMA phone, that doesn't stop me from calling my buddy who has a GSM phone?
2) We already have an efficient land-based voice&data infrastructure that is cheap and omnipresent. Everybody, I mean everybody including your grandparents, already has land-based voice service. This isn't the case in other countries where land-based service is costly or unavailable.
3) We have the space, and the money, for computers in our households. Why surf the internet on a 2" screen when you have that Gateway sitting in your living room at home?
4) A multitude of other socio-economic/cultural reasons that are on the tip of my tongue but I don't feel like delving into. For example, I did away with my cellphone because I would rather spend my money on DSL at home. Even if my cellphone had the nifty Japanese features, I still would choose my PC at home with DSL. Some may not agree with me, but I believe that many do. If I had a little more money to spend, a cellphone with basic voice service would suffice.
Let's see, Japan is the country that invented the lovegetty, karaoke and that stupid dance thing for the PS/2. They aren't ahead of the US in technology, they're just obsessed with dehumanization.
Mark my words, direct neural interfaces to a game station will be popularized in Japan first.
Who cares about their cell phone technology? It's the toilet technology that matters!
What the article doesn't mention is that i-mode Internet access (Internet access via your cell phone offered by DoCoMo) is very limited in many way.
Sure, your phone is capable of connecting to the Internet, but typically, most regular websites are not accessible from your phone, as it is bigger than the maximum size that your phone is capable of handling. I have found less than 1% of normal websites are accessible from my phone. So, you are basically limited to i-mode only sites, which are not very accessible from your computer. I suppose this is one of the reason why many people doens't realize i-mode is connected to the Internet.
Also, as far as the e-mail goes, I have personally found it useless. For one thing, your mail has to be less than 250 characters (2 byte Japanese characters, so you should be able to write up to 500 characters in 1 byte English characters, I think), so you cannot send a long e-mail message. At least for me, it doesn't take long for me to fill up the 250 character limit!
Inputting the text is pretty bad, if you ask me. You basically have to enter it by pressing the bunch of buttons on the phone multiple times, scrolling many times, etc. It is very inefficient to type anything into that. I think most Japanese don't think it is all that bad, as very few Japanese can type, so they find that entering text in their cell phones aren't all that worse than pecking the keyboard to enter text on their PC.
I then thought maybe I could use my cell phone to access to my servers via ssh (my phone is capable of using Java applications designed for cell phones known as "i-appli"). Well, turned out, apparently there is no way of connecting standard ssh port numbers (actually, I think you can only connect to a handful of port numbers on these cell phones). So, here again, I have found it useless.
I personally don't use i-mode access very much at all for the reasons that I listed above. Why do I have that? Well, when I got the phone last fall, there was no way not to have that, and I cannot unsubscribe from it for a year no matter what I do! That's how their contract works! I would be happy to lose the ability to connect to the Internet on my cell phone.
So, the story here is, for most of you who are used to connect to the Interent via computer, you may find the model they have in Japan is very inadequate for what you use for.
I modded you down, smuckface. Come get me.
Wilderbeast X
Ummmm...
Just attended a Sprint PCS 3G conference last week.
Sprint PCS. 3G (CDMA2000.) Mid-August nationwide rollout this year.
They are rolling out the same 3G technology used in Japan in South Korea, which were their testing grounds. Got to check out the nice Samsungs and Sanyo phones in use in Japan/South Korea, that will be coming here. Including the ones with built-in cameras for sending stills to other capable cell phones. Color screens, MPEG4, mp3, midi, GPS... the Qualcomm CDMA2000 chip that's in the 3G Sprint PCS phones are Bluetooth ready as well. E-mail too. The phones will cost around the same as the current phones we're buying. Data rates will start at an avg of 60-70kbps, and peak at 140kbps. The data rates will get faster, though.
Unfortunately for AT&T, Verizon, VoiceStream, Cingular, and other GSM providers, they have to do a 4 step upgrade (costing more $$) to get to a 3G level using WCDMA technology. Sprint planned for this 7 years ago, so they only needed to do a small hardware upgrade at their POPs to get to CDMA2000 technology, costing less $$. Also, CDMA2000 is backwards compatible with CDMA phones, wile WCDMA is not with GSM and TDMA.
Sprint will also be coming out with a CDMA/GSM phone that you'll be able to use here and abroad from the U.S. where there's GSM service.
GO SPRINT!! http://www2.sprintpcs.com/aboutsprintpcs/CDMA_3g/
Yeah. Ignorance/jingostism/patriotism is funny.
I've seen such ignorance for a long time. I suppose they truly think we all want to live there? Funny, myself, with my respectable wage and decent quality of life in the tech industry, I am fine not living in the dot-bomb reigon of the world.
Trying to attach yourself to other people's wealth huh? One more accounting scandal and expect the worst. Lord forbid foreign investment stops for we would all be out of a frigging job.
or Japanese for that matter. Most of this crap is available in Europe and Australasia etc. But let's face it, most of these gimmicks are just crap. Who needs a screensaver for a phone display? The screens last longer than the actual phones anyway. Who needs to receive lo-res images of their kids on the phone when it's so much easier to sit down at a computer? As for email, if I absolutely had to use it while commuting (I've got better things to do, personally), I would use a PDA or a laptop. Typing messages on a phone keyboard is a recipe for frustration.
"...sidewalk traffic frequently crawls along because people are simultaneously walking and tapping e-mail into their phone..."
Yeah, that sounds great! They sure are kicking our butts when it comes to mobile phone usage.
I like that one.
Nazi.
if you have a cellphone.
"I was trying to call you on your cellphone!"
"It was off."
"Off!?!"
You pay to receive so as to not pass the phone cost on the the one that is calling you. Calling a mobile in the UK is more expensive than calling landline, whereas the US the caller can really tell the difference costwise on whether or not they are calling a mobile or not. I don't see it as stupid because if you want the convenience of a cellphone, then you pay for it and not charge everyone else who wants to contact you.
PhysicsGenius... a troll in all previous comments. View his history. Thanks. :)
OK, you've piqued my curiosity. Being in the US, what advantages am I missing out on by not having an ISDN line running to my home instead of my POTS service?
As an employee of the equipment manufacture with that "batwing" logo, I have a few comments.
The Japanese Market has paid for my life for the past 12 years! We provide the infra-structure equipment for KDDI (Au-*) (the number 2 wireless carrier in Japan) Starting with PDC, evolving to CDMA, CDMA-with 64K data and now CDMA-1X with 144K bi-directional data we provide the premire wireless equipment in Japan.
Our wireless data is not the proxy based browsing of NTT's service, rather it is real web browsing. In this market you don't see many of our cellular subscriber units (phones) but the infra-structure is ours. The lack of phones is due to a "buggy whip" president of the subscriber group thankfully sacked!
Japan has 3 major providers:
NTT/DoCoMo - Mom and Dad consumer's phone
KDDI (Au-region) - The phone your business gives you a businessman to use
a non-robust PDC provider for children. This is the cheapest one but is, also, implemented cheap so you can have unplanned outages and drops. The rates are very low and features are designed for kids. This product has an interesting ISDN data service with 2B's connected right at the base station to the backbone. Unfortunately the ISDN feature can't hand off a data call to another BTS. Latency is the lowest of anything on an market for this Cellular ISDN feature making it the one to use for interactive shooters such as Counter-strike
The current CDMA-1X KDDI service allows variable packet rates, depending on what you are willing to pay and what service you are using. New phones come either with a digital camera or a digital video cam built in. The negative is that it is quite expensive to use on a 256 byte billing basis. To help here KDDI has developed some amazing extensions to MPEG-4 that really reduce the bytes needed. The phone can be used several ways: as a plain phone, as a WAP phone, as a phone with High Speed features such as 2-Way video, or plugged into a laptop it functions as a PPP based high bandwidth modem.
Within a couple of years KDDI should be deploying CDMA-EVDV. This has variable rate packet data service. Depending on signal quality the subscriber can experience up to 5.5mb/second data rates.
The negative factor of all these data services is the high cost of wireless bandwidth and latency. (Governments gouged too much for bandwidth costs) Cost wise, having an expensive transmit of that special photo and cheap WAP querries maybe an acceptable comprimise. There are technical ways to improve this but as the patents are pending ... people will just have to wait for the oh so slow world patent offices. (definitely not functioning in internet time) Latency is not that important for streaming services but it is for interactive services and gaming. Latency is being attacked but it can never be as low as a wired connection. Using CDMA as an example, the typical smallest tranmit window is 20ms. [the standard allows 5ms but nobody implements it in commercial products] This time unit effects all latencies as a multiplier.
I could go on and say much much more but then I would just get laid off (7000 more to go).
Please help save the next 7000's jobs by lobbying your provider to upgrade with our services.
I have threee computers at home, a cable modem and digital cable and a phone line. My roommate has another 3 computers. At work, I have a T1 and about 10 computers. We also both have regular cell phones. Someone please explain to me why the hell I should care about a lousey image on a cell phone when I can have more bandwidth and computer power than I can possibly use?
Screw WAP and cell phones. A networked PC-Pad might tempt me though...
-James.
The reason for this is that Yanks have fat pudgy fingers and can't press the little buttons on these 3G phones. Maybe they need a special dialing wand.
Also yanks don't like the cute/sleek style of Japanese phones. They want something from Motorola that looks like it's been thru 3 wars and is so rugged you can call your mom from underwater.
I spend 2 hours a day standing in trains and without my 'keitai' I wouldn't be able to meet people without planning days in advance. Also, even when I'm underground in many stations they'll have a signal so I can write a small mail on the phone and beem it out when the train stops at the next station. By the time I reach the next one after that I'll get my reply.
The US and Canada are very spread out towards the coasts so putting service in the middle might not work. That's why NTT DoCoMo is losing big time in the US yet making tons of money in Japan.
This doesn't sound particularly difficult. Ingredients:
- One or more lines with caller ID (one per info service)
- Device to monitor line's' caller ID
- Computer that checks caller ID, does lookup of incoming number (checks for carrier, perhaps also checks for "subscription" to service and maximum message length), gets data and processes it, and sends it out.
- Internet connection for computer, of course.
The caller would just call the number, let it ring a few times, and hang up; no charge for connection.If the PBX at my office supported caller ID, I'd be sorely tempted to implement this as a free public service.
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
Promote the score on the above posting or does the truth hurt? Also, I could start monitoring your cell phone.
Whoever wrote the message above is making the typical mistake in attitude towards i-mode. It's not a substitute for the internet. The websites I access on the internet and through i-mode are completely different.
i-mode: weather, stock prices, news bites, subway train guides (useful in a system as complicated as Tokyo), ring tones, restaurant guides.
Internet: News (discussion and long articles - slashdot included), and actually that's about it. When I want information in depth I get it on the web, when I want it at once and briefly I get it through the phone.
I agree text entry is a pain through the numeric keypad. But the neat mini keyboards they sell at the phone shops help out here. But recent studies here in Japan show that young Japanese people's thumbs are much stronger and more flexible than those who are used to typing on keyboards (adaptive evolution?).
If you want a PC internet experience, go out and get a laptop and a PC card to connect it with your cell phone. If you want useful information on demand, portable email, and a fashion statement, just get the phone. They are complementary goods, not interchangeable.
scream "my god!" as he looks in on them
1. US landlines are virtually free (local calls unbilled, long distance 2 to 3 cents a minute with calling cards, or services like BigZoo). So few use Cell instead of landline.
2. US providers charge for incomming calls, so no one gives out their number, and often leave their phone off.
3. US workers tend to drive to work. So less idle time to play with phone features.
4. US system is disorganized so your services and messaging often do not work across providers.
5. US has FAR higher ratio of PC owners than Japan. So many features like email/messaging are done from PC.
6. US is a very large place, with many different providers often with incompatible networks. So access/reception is not reliable enough replace land lines.
To those who say use in the US is low because voice rates are too high here. They are not, they are often cheaper than other countries like Japan, Germany and Finland. But a fixed line is FAR more expensive in those countries than the US.
Anyway, standardize the system, make rates competitive with land lines and you will see an explosion in use (but that raises the other issue, capacity).
While trolling takes on many forms, many of them merely being nuisances (crapflooding, goat links, page widening, etc) you'll find the vast majority of trolling occurring in posts similar to posts such as your original. On Slashdot, well-thought out and reasoned posts have become indistinguishable from trolls. This is made all the more obvious by the dimness of the moderators who would mod you down -1 in a heartbeat if not for the length of your post (as if that were the measure of an argument).
I too am a troll, much along the lines as you (though perhaps you don't realize yourself as such yet). I used to post, IMO, well argued posts and was consistently modded down by the Slashdot groupthink moderators. This is not to say that I didn't eventually hit the karma cap, but that along the way it was painfully obvious that my pro-Windows, anti-GPL opinion was not tolerated here.
Upon the realization of that I had my epiphany that pearls are not to be given to swine (this seems to be the same satori experience you are having now). Pigs deserve slop, and now that is all they get from me.
In any case, I'm not one of the nuisance trolls as I listed above, but one of the provocative trolls such as yourself (please do not take offense, this is not an insult as it may first appear). The Slashdot feeding frenzy that follows any post that attempts to support Microsoft or attack Linux or posit Creationism is a wondrous thing to watch, much like a thunderstorm or a supernova. The one difference is that you, the troll, have total control over the experience, much like a god who views his masterpiece from another dimension.
This is not to say that Slashdot is void of intellectual content. On the contrary, you'll find quite a bit of interesting information in the Science and Developer sections. You will find *no* intellectual content in the YRO section.
It's a travesty that a good idea like Slashdot, allowing users to create their own content, has succumbed to the mindless pursuit of mental masturbation of FSF zealots.
So while this may be the end of your Slashdot infancy, I think you will find your maturation into a Slashdot provocateur quite fulfilling and fun. Isn't that why you joined the technology revolution in the first place?
In a restaurant, cimema etc. you can always switch your phone to "vibrate only". Then if you get what looks like an urgent call, you can go to the restroom and return it. Easy.
Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Comment aborted.
He-hah Taco-san suckee my ballee!!!!!!!!!
Watah!
AYe-on Kizzit!
Fukuisan somebody getta that sheet outta mah facee! Remind me of summer in okinawa when my ballee was soooo ballllooooooo!
Hai!
Racky time American!
I've got your picture
Of me and you
You wrote, 'I love you.'
I love you, too
I sit there staring when there's nothing else to do
Oh, it's in color
Your hair is brown
Your eyes are hazel
And soft as clouds
I often kiss you when there's no one else around
I've got your picture, got your picture
I'd like a million of 'em over myself
I want a doctor to take your picture
So I can look at you from inside as well
You've got me turning up, I'm turning down, I'm turning in, and I'm turning 'round
I'm turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think so
Turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think so
Turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think so
Turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think so
I've got your picture, I've got your picture
I'd like a million of them over myself
I want a doctor to take your picture
So I can look at you from inside as well
You've got me turning up, I'm turning down, I'm turning in, and I'm turning 'round
I'm turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think so
Turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think so
Turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think so
Turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think so
No sex, no drugs, no wine, no women
No fun, no sin, no you, no wonder it's dark
Everyone around me is a total stranger
Everyone avoids me like a cyclone ranger
Everyone
That's why I'm turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think so
Turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think so
Turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think so
Turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think so
Turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think so
(Think so, think so, think so...)
Most of the European phone systems worked okay, they were just expensive. Simple explanation - the state owned companies had a monopoly.
How did GSM beat the monopoly? Simple, the rule was that any phone line crossing a public street violated the monopoly. Cell towers circumvented this problem.
Price wars between mobile carriers got prices to an acceptable level.
If you got a $100 bill, put your hands up...
I think Japans imbrace of cell phones and widespread
use of them, is simple. They are known throughout the world
to be very conforming people. They do as the one next to
them does automatically. This has always been true on the
contrary americans do not, so starting such a trend is difficult.
Also Japanese love to spend money on useless frills even more
than americans do, they have a great desire to acquire things,
which they see as cool or trendy.
i work for one of the "said" companies... Ericsson/Sony just came out with the Ericsson t68 with color screen, blue tooth technology including a camera that attatches to the phone to send photos between certain models. okay so i admit- i was too lazy to read everyone's comments and the article closely- but for all those who are writing about landline costs- in other countries- in most countries like china it's harder to apply for a land line than a cell phone. In other countries such as germany prepaid is SAID to be less expensive because you aren't charged for incoming calls . Wireless data to your phone by far the cheapest company to go through- is Voicestream. 2.99 for 1MB, but hooking your phone to your laptop using istream is 39.99. (don't tell anyone but you can use Motorola p280/v60, samsung q105 as your modem for dial up- it's fraud though) However Verizon gets cheaper by the megabyte as you use more- and they have hotmail. Personally wireless data to your phone sucks at this point. I've used it for reverse look up and mapquest. Voicestream's i stream connection from laptop to phone- is open at 57.65 k but it transfers at about 15k. just to let you know.
in the states- for voicestream- the pc card- is your wireless connection- you don't need a cell phone. You don't even need a phone account- but the pc data card with antenna is 299.99 and the laptop connection is 39.99 a month. you can fraudulantly use your phone as your dial up. But it will eventually catch up with you.
I can enter text for SMS's just as fast as I can type with predictive text input on. I suspect that most kids in Europe are probably faster on their mobile phones then typing on a keyboard these days...
You forgot Europe! Yes indeedy, while you peeps were running around with foldable packs of cigarettes at some 1900 MHz with prehistoric services, in Europe we already had state-of-the art Nokia and Ericsson devices running at 900 & 1800 MHz. It really amazed me back then, I didn't understand how we could have such a progress compared to a continent like the USA. Oh well, you can't be the best at everything now can you? Gotte love your anshestors ;p
Oh no! Were behind the japanese! Darn those frisky japs.
Frankly I don't care if you can buy a soda with your freak'en cell phone. Maybe us Americans just are't excited by so much useless technology!
This article talks about a new system that calls/emails your cell phone when there is a break-in, fire or other emergency in your home. Selecting the link displays webcam images of inside your house.
Sure, with a lot of hacking you could set up a similar system here but nobody's put together the full package yet. (AFAIK)
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
and here in Denmark is 37 hours a week
and in france it is 35 hours a week.
In most European countries. You can get cell phones with special area codes that will charge the person more money for calling you. I don't know if this is the case in Japan, but in the US, this is simply not allowed and this policy has effectively barred the US from moving into the lower end of the market.
Houses in Japan are very hard to find. I am not kidding. Streets in Tokyo are adhoc. House numbers are not assigned according to geographical locations, they are assigned sequentially according to the time they were built. This reason alone was credited for the early ubiquitous adoption of the fax machine for giving out directions and I wouldn't be surprised if it also helped for the early adoption of the cell phone.
Stephan
... is tri-band. I bought one before a business trip to SF and it worked like a dream. I was able to text my mates back in London as soon as I stepped off the plane. The only downside was that whenever someone phoned me I got hit by the roaming charge, this resulted in most of my incoming phonecalls being greeted with "fuck off, I'll phone you when I get back to the UK".
Except when you're roaming of course. However, the convenience of leaving a plane in Barcelona, Copenhagen or London and being instantly reachable under my normal number offsets the slight cost (maybe 30-50 cents a minute).
This is what US carriers just don't get. Receiving a call in the US is ~ 1.50$ (for fairly meager GSM coverage). This leads me to not even consider to get a tri-band phone, since I rather get a prepaid card for outgoing calls and advise the carriers to fsck themselves very much for their rotten, overprized services.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Some of what you say is true some is only half-true (if there's such a word).
I'm using j-phone and can write up to 6000 characters by mail + attachments (image or sound mostly).
Inputting the text is all a question of habits. A lot of people today type faster on their phone than on their keyboards. And yes, a lot of japanese people can type very fast on their computers. At least when it's japanese.
Finally, maybe this is a trick with i-mode contracts but other companies do not have those. If you don't want net access you won't pay for it. Same for e-mail, etc... And you can unsubscribe whenever you want (at least with j-phone, tu-ka and au-KDDI)
I personally use the e-mail function A LOT (more than PC e-mail) mainly because, and it's ironic, I won't be a nuisance to the guy sitting next to me in the commuter train, at the theatre or whatever public place I am.
That's a good point about finding directions in Japan. A cell-phone is EXTREMELY useful when you're meeting someone at a train station where there are literally thousands of other people milling about, which is where you usually meet up with someone in Japan.
When I meet up with my girlfriend, even if we agree at a time and place, about half the time I end up making/receiving a call where the conversation goes:
"Where are you now?" ... oh, there you are."
"By the Starbucks"
"The one across the street?"
"Yeah, I'm crossing, now
I hate doing that, it's so silly and wasteful. (And what's worse is she's chronically late, so there's always the "I'm going to be 15 minutes late" call while I'm on the train.)
Just up from 6 month. It is paid by the state similar to unemployment, allthough some "family friendly" employers like IBM compensate up to full salary.
I'm surprised to see the attitude of some of the US-based comments. Most of the (rich) world has changed it's habits. When 80+ percent (including children) of the population have a mobile phone, you literally feel cut off without one. I wouldn't have a social life without mine as no-one would be able to find me to arrange times and places.
So why doesn't the US mirror the rest of us? Here's my thoughts.
1. Caller Pays. Until recently the major US telcos still insisted on charging for making and receiving mobile calls. BAD move... If you have to pay to get a call, it immediately puts you on the back foot - you don't want to get it when a page is free, and hardly makes you want to get a mobile - they feel expensive! (Even if charges are much higher everywhere else in the world).
2. Telco intransigence. It's only recently that Short Message Service was introduced across US operators... Wha? This was introduced with GSM in the 80's. As I understand it, only because the European operators make such a killing from SMS have the US telcos taken a solid look.
The US operators have taken a "we're different (i.e. American) so we'll ignore the world" attitude and ignored the developments made in the rest of the world. How do you think Nokia et al. have been able to dominate the industry? It's not exactly normal that the world ends up looking to a Finnish firm for technology leadership. They got ahead by doing just the sort of things that we hope the PC industry will do:
Agree standards and stick to them.
Interoperate and co-operate.
I think the US is just on the edge of the society-wide change that being constantly connected (by voice) brings. I can only barely remember what it used to be like to have to find a phone to ring round a variety of voicemail boxes trying to get in contact with someone.
Pimping my Karma Whore since 1847.
It's $700 to be allowed to use the damn analog phone network. Once you've paid that you can install second, third, forth etc lines for MUCH cheaper.
And Japan's broadband you can't get any less than 1.5mbps DSL with all you can eat 8mbps links being thrown around like candy starting from a paltry $30/month or so.
Don't forget the many free dialup and ISDN (YES, FREE ISDN) providers that exist throughout Japan. Also, ISDN lines don't require the $700 levy to use since they aren't on the analog voice network. And you can also install DSL only lines without having to pay for a voice connection.
At least know the 101 about the subject before you go posting half cocked assumptions.
I like my news from people who understand that of which they write.
InstantCrisis
For that to make sense, you have to believe that cellphones have not been widely adopted in the U.S. And that is simply not true.
I make no such assumption. What I am saying is that people often feel unsure about what they are actually paying for the services they use (have I exceeded my minute limit? have I exceeded my airtime limit? am I in a different roaming zone? etc.) and get sticker shock when the first bill arrives.
The system in Europe is just so much simpler, and has achieved much higher rates of acceptance (which is NOT the same as rates of deployment, which is what you're talking about).
Think about it. If you had only three different rates (in-network, local area, nationwide), no minute limit, no airtime fees (so you only pay when you call), simple and standardized fees for WAP/SMS/GPRS/HSCSD and so on, you would probably feel a lot better about using your cellphone as a real alternative to your fixed-line phone.
Cellphone use in Europe has gotten so widespread that it could really replace fixed-line phones in the next few years. There are already hybrid phones in wide use here -- while you're at home, it charges you fixed-line rates; while you're away it charges cellphone rates -- and this could lead to the subsumation of fixed-line phones. With the chaotic fees and competing technologies in the US, this could just not happen.
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
I just got a new cell (http://www.sonyericsson.se/t68i) which has got a color screen, video camera, WAP 2.0 support with e-mailing etc etc
Services like locators, news etc are easily found through WAP.
Still the phone (which is smaller than the technically equal japanese models) only costed me $50, and the rates for calling are ver low. I pay $20-$40 a month for my pretty extensive use.
This in Sweden, which has an alot lower density of people than US, and ALOT lower than Japan.
And in addition to the fact mentioned earlier, some other reasons are there as well:
:-) This idiotic system has two reasons behind it: Bells (local landline companies) don't want that their customers would have to pay extra when they're calling to a cell phone, so now they actually pay just the same local fees as they would when they call to other landline (in other countries, caller pays the extra). And this is caused / boosted by the fact that you cannot tell by the phone number if the phone is cell phone or landline -- in other countries there are dedicated national "area codes" that are reserved _only_ for cell phones and you can determine by the phone number if the phone is cell phone or not. But in U.S., if you live in NYC and have cell phone, you can have 212 area code for the cell phone, just like you can have the 212 area code for your landline.
-insane pricing models that have worked only in the UK, but not in any other country in the world (minimum contract periods of 12mos, fixed & extremely high monthly fee that has "included minutes" -- compare this to other countries' system which works like landlines; cheap basic fee of couple of $s a month and you pay for minutes (normally between $0.05 - $0.20 a min))
-locking the phones (changing to different operator and you have to buy a new handset)
-no ability to keep your existing phone number when you change operator
-"roaming costs" within the same country!! Luckily these are disappearing now, but this is still one big issue in U.S. -- if you used your cell phone outside your state/local area, you were roaming (just like in Europe when you go to DIFFERENT COUNTRY) and had to pay for roaming charges when you used the phone
...and the biggest, worst, most insane reason:
->YOUINCOMING calls
Just my $0.02, based on the fact that I lived there 1998 - 2001.
I have been using GPRS for 6 months now in the UK, and speeds are quite low - just about up to 40 Kbps if you are lucky, but not as consistent as a good 56 Kbps dialup modem connection. Generally it works well, but think 40 Kbps rather than the mythical 115 or 170 Kbps. The reference to 2 Mbit connections is completely irrelevant, that's just the size of a backhaul pipe from the base station or whatever - the bottleneck is in the radio interface to the phone.
GPRS is a very handy service, but it will be the dialup modem of the wireless world - available everywhere as a fall back when you can't get a faster connection.
I'll be surprised if US operators deploy UMTS before European ones, given that there is no spectrum yet allocated for this in the US - it may happen in patches but it will be hard to get this to work consistently across the US without new spectrum, as I understand it.
Might be sightly off topic but I-d like to add that I hate cell phones.
I do not want to be joinable. I fear that towmorrow having a cell phone would be more or less mandatory.
I don't really care about the lack of additional services that will end up tying people up in the near future (10years).
I have a Palm device (m515) connected via Bluetooth to a GPRS phone (Ericsson T68), and it works very nicely - I can install whatever Internet clients I want on the Palm, e.g. several web browsers, IMAP4/POP3/SMTP email with no size limits, ssh, telnet, SNTP, VPN clients, etc. This is probably the best solution for people who like the flexibility of a PC but don't want to be tied to a laptop the whole time. You can get mini keyboards (same width as Palm) or built-in ones (in Handspring and Sony models), or full-size keyboards for longer emails.
GPRS is great because it's always on - like a rather slow version of DSL, and you only pay for what you send/receive, not for time connected. CDMA2000 1x works in a similar way as long as you have Bluetooth on your phone.
Man, I just bought a used cell phone 2 days ago for 10 euros off someone. Sure, it's not as small as the Nokia-I can fit it in my ass and feel it vibrate while putting a funnel in my mouth to amplify the Nicolo Paganini caprice2 ringtone-phone...but it'll do the job. All it has is a phonebook...that's it...that's all I even want...I refuse to have a cell phone as a 6th limb.
GSM.
The US may find ity advantageous to join these standards.
As a mobile telecommunications engineer, I thought the US mobile network was laughably primitive.
3G is coming guys, are you ready?
Is that the phone number I'm supposed to call when I see him?
has the government to do with extorcionist roaming charges set forth by those carriers?
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
"reasons for why the Japanese kick Americans' butts..."
With butts that big, how can they miss?
europe has been using GSM from the start-- we began with analog, a protocol with very little use for expansion, 90% of USA's nationwide cellular network is now switched to digital, realizing that theres no bandwidth in it for much more other than voice, verizon and many other companies plan to switch over to GSM in the next 3 or so years..
But 20 minutes is not nearly enough time. What is the point of paying all that money for a phone that you can hardly use? Do people in Japan not actually use their cell phones for voice service? Or did you make a typo?
The working week in the banking industry in the UK is 35 hours per week.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
So Japan has more wireless users than the US. Who cares? The US produces more NBA players than Japan -- does that mean that Japan needs to feel ashamed about that, and should spend time on trying to figure out why that is so?
For all I know this article could be a corporate shill -- The Seattle Times is in a joint operating agreement with the Hearst Coroporation, which seems to own a company called Mobility Technologies. Mobility Technologies "product" is a service so that "Travelers can access [Mobility Technologies] data on demand via the Internet or wireless media at www.traffic.com, and they can register for personalized data unique to their route." Hmm, look at this line in the article:
If someone developed an application where a user pressed one phone key to get the traffic report on Highway 520 and another to get conditions on Interstate 90, a decent number of commuters probably would pay 50 cents a month for that service.
Sounds exactly like what Mobility Technologies can offer as a service, doesn't it?
Bottom line -- a lot of companies bet on this so-called "wireless revolution", and lost. I don't know anyone who is experiencing a pain in their life that could be solved by typing things on a phone keypad. So it doesn't matter that this took off in Japan and Europe -- it's a waste of time here, and people know it.
Ralph
Once upon a time, my friend, Americans took great pleasure in making and getting the latest toys and fads and the world followed. You know, things like cheap and generally affordable cars, radios, TVs, computers and other "fads".
And that, my friend, was a long, long time ago. Now Japan leads and Americans grumble, just like Europeans did when the US was leading the way. Funny thing, history.
There are many interesting comments on tech and culture and how they affect current state of affairs. All in all an interesting set of threads.
Too bad then that the moderators keep modding up what they consider "funny" and not what is truly insightful thus burying the gems in the manure. The moderators appear like tey have the intellectually level of maturity of a 14-year old. Please grow up. Now.
Why is it that /. is always comparing Japan and US with cell phone technology? What about Finland? I mean, Nokia *is* in Finland. And Ericsson (Sweden)? Nokia and Ericsson are probably the top two (or damn close) cell phone manufacturers in the world. The phones they've got in their home countries are much more advanced than the phones they market to the US. I've always been under the impression that the Norwegian countries lead the cell phone market. Correct me if I'm wrong..
geek n performer who performs morbid or disgusting acts, as biting off the head of a live chicken
So unless there's good content, there's no reason to buy a $125 phone.
$125? Hell, I'd buy a $125 color phone in a heartbeat. It's the $500 tag on the T68 that's holding me back.
Who wouldn't buy a $125 phone? Those people who use the free Nokia 5200 that comes with their plan?
Domestically, you may be able to tell what is a cell phone and what isn't, but make an international call to a cell phone and it hurts! No discounts, either!
I really cannot understand why these articles keep popping up saying, "Why are cell phones so popular in Japan and Europe when they are not in the US?"
The reason I am so sick of this is that the reasons are basically obvious to anybody that does not have a business degree. There are two main categories for this problem: Greed and marketing stupidity. And these problems are also pervasive in the US broadband market.
The first problem, greed, should be obvious to any customer or individual who has even inquired about cellphones at any store. Every company has their own proprietary cell phones and will not allow customers to use their service without buying a new phone. This was covered in this slashdot article.
This practice essentially creates a monopoly where the customer must deal with a large expense to switch service providers. Companies might think this is good for business because it protects their customer base, but it, in fact, harms their business because people do not like to commit like that. In this case, the cellphone becomes disposable, and who is going to shell out 300+ bucks for a disposable phone?
The other aspect to this greed was pointed out by Linus himself in his book Just for Fun . He said the fact that all of the service providers had proprietary systems instead of agreeing on a standard, like GSM, caused the market to be stagnant. I agree with this point. In addition to the fact that it would alleviate the problem stated above, it would also have avoided a lot of the other problems encountered by the cell phone industry. The biggest of these problems was the problem of building cell towers. Without a common standard, the companies all had to build their own system of cell towers, so the service varied greatly from place to place. Service was bad, so customers were annoyed.
In a common system where companies would be using compatable equipment, they could just pay eachother for bandwidth usage and compete on price and service. However, they wanted to spend all that extra money to attempt to create monopolies. I really do not see the point of having a monopoly over a small number of customers, though.
The other aspect was stupid marketing. This article talks about what American consumers are doing in their cars. It says that they might want a wireless app to give them a traffic report. This is typical of the marketing decision that was made by some brainiac way back in the early days. Some genius thought that the people who would use cellphones the most would be businessmen. The cellphone industry should find and castrate this guy. He has not only made cellphones bad for business but for the consumer as well.
Why was this guy stupid? Because businessmen know how much work they do for their dollar. They are not going to spend one more second on the phone than is necessary. They also do not care about aesthetics (unless they are in sales, but even then, most business men have notoriously bad taste, and it is often quite entertaining to watch yuppies feign artistic appreciation). Therefore, businessmen are not going to use their cellphones excessively, and neither are they going to pay top dollar for the prettiest phone on the market.
Who is going use their phones a lot and pay for the most expensive ones, then? The article has a clue. It says:
The author (obviously someone who has been in the business world too long) talks about "a phenomenon driven by teenage girls." This is not phenomenon. Think back to when you were a teenager and dating. How many times did you get into a serious fight with a sibling over phone usage? How many times did you get into a fight with your parents restrictions on the phone? How many times did you stay up most or all of the night whispering into the phone so that your parents would not hear?Teenagers are the key to cellphone market. They always have been. Teenagers will talk until the battery dies. Teenages will carry an extra battery. Teenagers will buy extra accessories for their phones. Teenagers will use their phones as status symbols to their friends.
But who pays for these cell phones? Well, the parents, of course. The parents will buy cellphones for their teenagers because they want their kid to be safe. They will want to check up on the kid now and then.
Now, we have a responsible group (the parents: those businessmen whose money everyone wanted) funding the excesses of an irresposible group (the teenagers who have a hormonal imperative to generate big bills). A phenomenon? I think not.
As obvious as this may sound, it did not occur to the author of the article or the businessmen she interviewed. Cell phones have always been ugly in the US. I will not buy Motorola products because they always released ugly products to the US market (although their cellphones are quite pretty in Asia). I think this attitude that Americans have no aesthetic taste is quite insulting.
In any case, I am sick of this whining about the consequences of stupid business decisions. It sounds like GM in the late 70's blaming Japan because American consumers did not want the big cars that GM could make greater profits on. Did any of these people read Adam Smith? The market cannot be forced to accept a product (unless of course you are Microsoft).
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Not GSM.
But come on, if all US providers started using GSM tomorrow, what would be different? Text messaging and roaming would work a little better, that's it.
With Verizon, I can use my tri-mode CDMA phone anywhere in the US without paying for long distance or roaming--because of my calling plan, not the technology. The price structure is why cell phones aren't more widely adopted.
I have 300 "anytime" minutes and 4000 "night and weekend" minutes. How often do I really need to make a call during "night" hours of 9 PM to 7 AM? If I gave out my number and got calls during the day, I'd be paying an extra $50/mo for overusing the daytime minutes.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Gamera is a friend to all children!
He let us mount cell phone relaying equipment on his back so that as he flies through the sky, he provides cell phone coverage to children all over tokyo
Unfortunately, there are always those that get shafted. Some of them get paid well for their time (like upper management), while others (such as low-income families) need to work more to get enough money to sustain their family. In both of these cases, it means less time with the kids.
That said, work-weeks shouldn't continue to be as long as they are. With all the technology in the world, the working week should be significantly shorter.
[insert witty comment here]
Fewer....people....drive.
Jesus!
Here in Germany we have a 37.5 hr working week.
Actually, the number of cell towers is almost entirely a function of subscriber numbers, not distance. Each 'cell' can handle a certain number of users/bandwidth, and the more users that sign up in a certain area, the more it has to be subdivided into smaller and smaller cells to accomadate them (with each tower generating less power).
The number of towers per area is really only an issue in very sparsely populated areas, where the providers are not allowed to jack the power up high enough to reach their quota of users per tower.
What you seem to be ignoring is that Americans work longer hours than any other country in the world, including Japan.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak