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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."
Yes, compared to Finland, the US of A have a very big landmass. But compared to Finland, they also have a lot more inhabitants. So what really counts is the population density. I don'T have the numbers, but I don't think the difference will be very big then.
I think the 3 countries in the world with the biggest cell phone usage (as by percentage of ppl owning a cell phone) are Sweden, Finland and Austria. Both Sweden and Finland are only lightly populated in their northern parts, and Austria is covered by a lot of mountains. I've been to two of these countries, namely Sweden and Austria, and the networks are great. Even at the top of some mountain, you have clear quality.
The neat thing, however, is the pricing, this is where some countries are really ahead. For example, if you are a company, some providers don't charge at all for calls within the company, all you pay is the monthly fee. That's really a big advantage for companies.
There are even similar offerings for private persons, ie, an Austrian provider let's you phone within their network for free during night hours if you've charged your prepad phone with at least 25 within the last 30 days.
Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul
ash nazg thrakatulûk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
Keep in mind that Melbourne has more people than Chicago. It is a higer density city than most in the US. I can drive 20 minutes in any direction from the CBD (downtown) and find many places where GSM coverage is poor non-existant. Australia needed MAPS (old analog) for the rural areas but they pulled it out and replaced it with a worthless CDMA system which provides much less coverage in rural areas. The population density of Australia seems to be a mix between very high (like in Europe, not high for Aisa) or none (like most of the outback). There are very few areas that have medium or low density of people unlike the midwest US where there are vast tracks of land with lots of little setlements spread all around.
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?
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.
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/
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).
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
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.