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."

Comments

There's a reason for all of this...

[IronTek]

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...

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[LeftOfCentre]

I would think cell phone usage is relatively similar throughout the EU. If I'm not mistaken, the population density of the US is about one third of that of the EU which is a big but maybe not a huge difference. I think you're on to something, but I wonder if it's really a significant reason for why the US has lagged behind in this area.

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[Heghta']

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.

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[knuu]

YHBT.

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[IronTek]

Well, most of you bring up interesting points about population density, but don't forget...in many parts of the country, the population isn't all that dense...yet to get nationwide coverage, you still have to build cell towers/stations every couple of miles...thus, we're back to the sheer size of the United States being a large problem...

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[EvilNTUser]

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.

IMHO that's not the issue. First of all, Finland has a population of roughly five million with a density of about 17 people per square kilometer.

Why's that important? Because if these services can be rolled out (profitably) in Finland, then the following technique could be used in the US:

1. Define one single national standard.
2. Try it out in one city that has an insane population density.
3. If it's profitable, start expanding to other places based on the already defined national standard. Each and every company could compete using the same standard.

Instead, this is what I think has happened:

1. Company A decides to implement a standard of its own for voice calls. Company B does the same.
2. Very few people buy phones because of major interoperability issues. (This is not the case in Finland, to continue using it as an example. A Finnish GSM phone will work anywhere in Europe, and around most of the world. Virtually everyone has one.)
3. Because of the slow growth, a mobile phone culture hasn't yet formed in the U.S, slowing down the growth even more. Thus operators have less resources to implement new features, and even if they did they'd probably be proprietary, worsening the already bad situation.

What we need is a worldwide standard that everyone would adhere to. What we have now is a bunch of companies trying to out-Microsoft each other. And yes, I do realize that's easier said than done, but it should at least be given some thought.

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[rcs1000]

There is another reason (and a half) too.

In Europe we have one digital cellular technology: GSM. This means that I can use my phone on any network. The R&D cost per phone is lowered and the competition is increased.

To some extent, I believe, the same is true in Japan, with J-Phone and DoCoMo sharing the same technology. (And with DoCoMo being, by a mile, the largest cell phone company in the world.)

If, in the UK, I wish to change my operator, I can go to one of the other three 'real' operators or one of a couple of virtual ones (which lease capacity off the real networks.) This has created price and service competition. That I can take my number with me between operators helps too.

And the 'half'... easy, I don't pay to recieve calls. There is no incentive, other that avoiding my ex-girlfriend, to turn my phone off.

*r

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[ywwg]

except now the entire rest of the world -- asia, europe, australia, have better phone systems than the US. So while individual countries may be small, the sum is a much much larger landmass with much much better phones.

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[MisterBlister]

Because nobody wants a cellphone that only works within a single city, jackass. They want a phone that works anywhere in the US.

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[kevin lyda]

that's crap.

mobile phone technology hasn't succeeded in america because american wireless operators have failed to understand the benefits of a standard. the fact is that my gsm phone will work around the developed world (and some days i feel the need to explicitly include the words "and here in ireland..."). if i see a good deal on a newer mobile phone i can buy it and take my gsm chip out of my old phone and stick it in my new phone. i can easily send text messages to my friends with no concern as to who their network provider is. i can take a call without worrying about how much it will cost me.

mobile phone technology is archaic, fractured, poor, and a national disgrace. the wireless companies in america were short-sighted and greedy. the best thing that could happen to them (at least for the american people) would be for european and other wireless providers to come in, buy them, and sort them all out.

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[orangedude]

Quite frankly, as someone in Japan, the main reason that we won't have al these funky features in the US is that we drive everwhere (Major cities excepted of course) whereas in Japan, they take the train. Can you imagine trying to type in a love letter to some girlfiend on the New Jersey Turnpike at 80 mph??

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[IronTek]

yes, this might be true, but I'm fairly sure you can't get very good cell phone reception for the parts of Australia where there isn't anyone!

Further, Europe as a whole might be larger, but their are many nations in it, all largely responsible for their own success with cellular technology...that and they only have one standard for the whole continent!

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[gimpboy]

do you think all these other countries instantly built a nation wide coverage?

some nations are wider than others.

also consider the benifit/cost ratio in countries that don't already have a nationwide coverage with land lines compared to those that do.

if a country starts with little infrastructure, it makes sense to pop up a wireless network. if you have a huge country that already has landline service, it's just not that financially feasible to construct a nationwide wireless network.

couple that with the nonstandard services and you are where we are today.

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[Skorpion]

This is not a problem. Similar problems were experienced in Poland about 8 years ago when GSM networks were deployed. Standard procedure was to first cover the most populated and rich areas - this would be Bay Area and New York. DCS (GSM 1800) system is used - it needs more base stations but has more network capability. Then after generating some revenue, suburban areas are covered using GSM 900 (less base stations needed). The phones are compatible with both frequencies. Rinse, lather, repeat. Area is not a problem.

,p>The second solution to area problem is internal roaming (roaming is a GSM term for using phone in other network that the one the phone is subscribed to). A few companies divide the area and roll out networks, then they deploy roaming so one's phone may work equally in all the networks (in GSM this works seamlessly and except of another network prompt and a small raming icon on the display, there's no difference). Obviously the companies would have been forced to do so by FTC, but such solutions work in Sweden very well.

Also, you don't roll out a service then wait for the people to come. You advertise it. It works in much poorer countries like Poland. Cell phones are big here.So why won;t USians want to use cell phones? I have no idea.

I consider my cell phone one of my basic tools. I talk to people with it. My servers report status via SMSes so I know if they are OK. I can pay for things with it (with cooperation of my bank and my GSM provider).Not to mention Internet access for use with my notebook and Palm. And it is not a bleeding edge phone - it was when it was new (it is a US design - Motorola), but now it lacks Bluetooth, multimedia messaging and some cool customization options. It isn;t expensive. It works everywhere in the world, even in some areas of US, where GSM 1900 is avaliable. Since it is private, I can switch it off when I'm not at work, so my employer can;t reach me everywhere. Since I can switch caller ID on and off, it won't advertise my pnone number when I don;t want to. I can't imagine living without one. Why americans don't want to use them is a mystery to me.

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[Daetrin]

Someone didn't read the article. They said that usage logs showed that peak times were not actually during commuting hours, but rather late at night or "between tv shows."

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[quintessent]

Very interesting. Add this cultural difference to population density difference, and you have huge incentive for wireless networks. I've read that the Japanese tend to be more enthusiastic about new and different technologies. This might also play a role.

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[Simon Peters]

Too true on the Australia part.. If there isn't anyone, you _might_ get CDMA coverage, otherwise it's a Satellite phone for you.

However, even in/near smaller remote towns you can be pretty certain of getting Telstra coverage, though Optus is a different matter :-(

The phones there are at about the same level as they are here in the UK, ie. pretty good. Just don't go on Optus if you're leaving the big cities!

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[psavo]

also consider the benifit/cost ratio in countries that don't already have a nationwide coverage with land lines compared to those that do.

if a country starts with little infrastructure, it makes sense to pop up a wireless network. if you have a huge country that already has landline service, it's just not that financially feasible to construct a nationwide wireless network.

I fail to see how that would be related to Finland then. Finland has had nation-wide landphone infra from 1950. It costs about $60 to get a land-phone. and then there's localphone rate at about 1 cent/min (or less, i dunno, haven't had landphone for 7 years).

AFAIK GSM network doesn't have to be very dense. It's sensible to make it dense only in areas where there are many talkers -> even cheaper. Areas woth popoulation of under 5ppl/km2 can be handled by small 'power'. (I mean antenna in cellular would show up small, dunno the right term). It would take more juices out of phone, but it would _at least_ work. More than you have now.

Frankly, At the moment I can SMS fellow programmer in Latvia, former USSR resp. I can't do that to our subdivision in US. That mean I must either phone (9 hours difference..) or use e-mail, and the asses won't answer in another 9 hours. That's so lame.

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[DrVxD]

> The phones are compatible with both frequencies
[...]
> So why won;t USians want to use cell phones? I have no idea.
Simple they want to wait until the whole of the rest of the world has a common standard (GSM900/1800), so they can be incompatible (and, because of that, I have to buy a more expensive tri-band phone because I need to be contactable whilst I'm in the colonies...)

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say the US has the densest population by far...

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[ocelotbob]

So why won;t USians want to use cell phones? I have no idea.

Well, I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I've found that Cell phones simply aren't worth the money. First off, they're much more expensive than a landline phone - it costs forty to fifty dollars to get a phone line in the US. Once you get a line installed, local calls are usually free, and good long distance plans are about 5 cents a minute. On top of that, the basic phone bill is about $15 per month, compared to about $30 per month for a cell phone.

Though most of the merits of cell phones are available over here as well. As you mentioned, we can get GSM phones, which is the way I would be going, were I to get a phone. Additionally, I could roam just fine, if I stick to a fairly large provider - as you mentioned, most networks use standardized technologies, and I could make the 3,000 mile (5,000 kilometer) journey to New York and have pretty good coverage if I so desired.

Now, if I did more travelling, then a cell phone would probably be much more useful. As it stands now, it would just be an expensive little toy with very little usefulness. Though if I were to get a phone, I would go with one of the prepaid providers, as I doubt I'd use the phone for any more than 10-15 minutes a month.- landlines are still far more useful, in my opinion.

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[xenolon]

It has nothing to do with population density. It's about infrastructure. In a relatively small country, like Japan for instance, the amount of cell towers and communication relays is vastly reduced by the small size of the country. In the US, it takes many more of these installations to cover the distance. (So whereas a handful of relays could cover the whole of Japan, it would require much higher numbers to provide the same wervice in the US) Also, in the US the curvature of the earth is an issue. A wireless call from New York to Seattle must go from the phone to the relay tower, to a satellite, to another relay tower, then to the recipients phone. In Japan, a wireless call doesn't necesarily have to leave the earth. A call could go from a phone to just one cell tower and back to the recipient's phone. So as you can see, the logistics of covering a large landmass create a multitude of problems.

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[xenolon]

It has nothing to do with population density. It's about infrastructure. In a relatively small country, like Finland for instance, the amount of cell towers and communication relays is vastly reduced by the small size of the country. In the US, it takes many more of these installations to cover the distance. It's an issue of cost to the developer. And yes I agree that a worldwide standard would be an ideal way to begin solving these problems. (kind of lofty though, isn't it? worldwide standards are merely pipe dreams. Imagine if someone had thought of creating a standard with power, and every device/appliance you had would work in any other country without converters and adapters. Or if everyone drove on the same side of the road,or if every CPU fit the same slot/socket, or if railways across the world were consistent in width and gauge. This would just never happen, everyone always thinks that their own method has it's advantages over the other options, and agreements on these matters are hard to come by. The world has a tough time agreeing with itself, and thus why we have war. ) the fact of the matter is that settling on a standard halts development to improve on what is already existing. If perhaps we had a worldwide standard, why would anyone bother to develop a newer, possibly better technology? Progress would grind to a halt and stagnate.

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[psicE]

Don't we wish. :D

The largest cellular phone company in the US is Verizon. It is owned in part by various companies, but mostly by Vodafone Group (UK), which is the largest cellular company in the world, bigger even than NTT DoCoMo. Vodafone's wireless companies use GSM exclusively... except for its holdings in the US, Mexico, and China, where it uses CDMA. Sprint PCS is the other CDMA company in the US, probably soon to be bought out by Verizon.

VoiceStream/T-Mobile is the largest GSM-exclusive company in the US, though it also has the smallest marketshare of the six national providers. It has GSM in almost all major markets, California being a notable exception. To make matters worse, in the US, we use GSM 1900, incompatible with the rest of the world; one of the best features that GSM could advertise, "Free world roaming, one phone #", therefore doesn't work quite so well.

The second largest cellular phone company in the US is Cingular. SBC has a controlling stake in the company, and BellSouth owns the rest. Unlike Verizon, therefore, the entire company is American. In most markets, Cingular uses TDMA; that's as much digital (pardon my analogies) as Windows 95 is 32-bit. But GSM is available nationally. Any market where VoiceStream doesn't have a network, Cingular does.

Cingular is gradually converting its entire network to GSM, and will hopefully be providing all new customers with GSM by, IIRC, January 2003. Also, Cingular convinced VoiceStream to enter into a European-style shared network agreement, so that VoiceStream could provide service in California/Nevada, and Cingular could provide service in NYC/Northern New Jersey, without building any new towers.

There's also AT&T Wireless; there is a rumor that ATTWS will soon buy Cingular, and keep its 100%-GSM strategy for the new company, and all evidence (mainly financial) suggests that the rumor is true. And finally, there's Nextel. It uses a custom technology (iDEN) and caters to business users who use their cellphone enough to warrant a $150/mo plan and want to-the-second billing. It is essentially a niche carrier, with very loyal customers, and as many of those customers travel the world, it may soon switch to GSM itself.

Vodafone has repeatedly pressured Verizon to switch to GSM; its efforts have been unsuccessful so far.

So much for Europe coming in and making things better.

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[bluetoad]

These comments are spot on. Australia and America are similar in size.

Another thing is that the Americans even use a different frequency for their limited GSM. So the rest of the world needs a tri-band phone for when they visit the US.

Australian carriers are also national. Sign up for Verizon GSM in California and you can only use it for CA and NV and little else.

US Fl Oz, US gallons, slightly different OSI standards...

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[bluetoad]

meant cingular there...

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[xenolon]

So why won;t USians want to use cell phones?

The truth is, cell phones are fairly widespread in the US. And we have all of the wireless internet, SMS, and whatnot that you speak of. The problems are ones of logistics, land area, cost (both consumer and developer), and yes the lack of the so called "standard" (which would have disadvantages as well as its advantages: i.e. halt in progressive development).

Also, I don't know if NexTEL is even known outside the US but it has a great advantage over regular wireless phones. Which is the digital two-way radio, which is a free phone to phone call without dialing any numbers (you basically use your phone as a walkie-talkie, but its use is unlimited and free) or using any airtime, no long distance(which is something we have a lot of in the US) no roaming. When the patent is up I'm sure it will be pretty widespread.

Personally, I know a few dozen people (including myself) that use their wireless phones as their only phone. But in the US we have excellent and very inexpensive landlines, and until wireless technology can compete in cost and performance, may people just won't bother with it.

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[hqm]

You are sooo right..

WAP is such a disaster because it is not a standard at all. Each phone and each service has
enough random incompatibilities that the chance of
successfully reaching a given WAP site is about 30% or less. In Japan, all imode sites are
essentially compatible, plus cHTML is a much better page description language than WAP for phones. WAP has basically torpedoed the entire
cell phone industry in the US. Thanks guys!

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[bromba]

It works in much poorer countries like Poland. Cell phones are big here.

I'll tell you why mobiles are big in Poland: because if you don't talk much it's easier and cheaper to get one instead of a landline.

my mother was (still is) waiting for a landline for 20 yrs, and not in some outback but in a major city (Poznan). Admittedly she's got bad luck - normally people get it much faster there... but her application seems to be ignored by our shitty TPSA (Polish Telecom)... So when GSM was available she just went and got one immediatly for about 10% of what installing a land line costs in Poland

BTW, the cost of a new landline in Poland is about 3 times as expensive as in Germany, a country with a few times higher average income per inhabitant. Go figure out

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[Alan Partridge]

he meant the stupidest, and you just proved him right, Homer

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[Bender_]

In a relatively small country, like Finland for instance, the amount of cell towers and communication relays is vastly reduced by the small size of the country

As noted in several other posts, the population density of finland is even lowerthan that of the US. This is the only important figure!

I think GSM phones never really took of in the US because there were many successful alternatives, as Pagers and Analog cellphones. Neither did really have success in europe.

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[Lars Arvestad]

I think GSM phones never really took of in the US because there were many successful alternatives, as Pagers and Analog cellphones. Neither did really have success in europe.

The pager presence is a good point; Analog mobiles is not. Sweden and Finland, two of the most GSM dense countries since the start of GSM, both had a very successful analog mobile net called NMT. In fact it is still in use in the northern parts simply because of it better range.

I am not sure why GSM so quickly replaced NMT, but I think the GSM phones were smaller right away.

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[sab39]

that's as much digital (pardon my analog-ies)

Classic - although probably unintentional...

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[troc]

Yes, that's true, but.......

Where there is a higher popultion density, you need MORE cells in a given area to serve the higher population density - city cells are often smaller than 1 block in size whereas out in the countryside they can be many miles apart. So Japan (or Holland where I live) need cell densities over the whole country that are similar to those used in the cities in otehr parts of the world.....

Ok, they are still close together so connecting them isn't so hard I guess but I reckon a few cells in Arizona somewhere would be cheaper than setting up a few in manhatten (assuming the locals didn't fill 'em full of buckshot on a Friday night ;)

Troc

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[MyAss]

I would say Japan is behind. Late at night and between tv shows (which doesn't really happen since I have a TiVo) I use my laptop with 802.11b. This way I can do all the same crap they do (and much, much more) all at blazing speeds. And the cost is cheaper, my cable modem is flat monthly unlimited fee.

And if I really want to play stupid little games while I'm away from home, I just use my palm pilot.

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[Mathness]

I am not sure why GSM so quickly replaced NMT

NMT only allow one communication per channel, where GSM fits 8 communications per channel.

Secondly GSM is digital, which offer more and diffently services other than voice, including encryption.

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[Beliskner]

A wireless call from New York to Seattle must go from the phone to the relay tower, to a satellite, to another relay tower, then to the recipients phone.

All telcos use point to point microwaves and buried cables (copper or fibre) to span large distances. SONET and SDH are used as the central "backbone". The telcos decide whether it goes over a satellite or not. Are you saying all calls from LA to NY go over satellite? Only if the telco is too lazy to lay cable or decides satellite would be cheaper.

Satellite has advantages over cable - cable is a big investment, and when you eventually finish laying the cable the city might have moved or become a ghost town like Atlantic City. The telcos use actuaries to make these risk assessments.

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[Cato]

It IS about population density - with enough population density AND a suitable standard, it's easy for a number of operators to deploy compatible networks. This is exactly what happened in Europe.

And by the way, there is already a world standard for mobile phones - GSM has over 70% of the world market by number of subscribers, and it works in virtually every country you can name, including the US and Canada as well as most of Europe, Asia, Middle East, Africa and Australasia.

Another example is TCP/IP - there were many competing network protocol stacks in the 70s and 80s, but IP has won out, resulting in a hugely competitive market for equipment and networks.

Standards don't necessarily impede development - for all its benefits, GSM will soon be superseded by W-CDMA, a 3G standard that will be implemented by most GSM operators.

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[Cato]

This isn't how mobile networks work - they consist of a huge 'backhaul' network linking cell towers, which finally terminates in a fixed-line network, usually optical these days. Calls within a single country or within Europe are very unlikely to use satellite, due to the added latency - there is already some significant latency due to the way voice is chopped up into small frames by the mobile phone's radio interface, and by transcoding between various voice-compression regimes.

The curvature of the earth is of absolutely no significance - what matters is latency, bandwidth and costs, and for everywhere outside the radio access network fixed lines are superior for these factors.

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[hype7]

It has nothing to do with population density. It's about infrastructure. In a relatively small country, like Finland for instance, the amount of cell towers and communication relays is vastly reduced by the small size of the country.

sorry, but that's simply not true. It ALL comes down to population density.

Say Finland only had one person in it. May be a small country, but suddenly it's very expensive to roll out advanced cell phone infrastructure throughout the country for just one person.

It's why the services offered in cities (I think some big US cities had Richochet, the wireless internet service) are always going to be superior to those in less populated country areas.

We have the same problem in Australia; most of our population is distributed down the eastern seaboard. Most new competitors will generally only target that, and leave the rest without. The reason? The investment won't generate a halfway decent return, because there's not the population density to support the necessary infrastructure development.

From our point of view, this is self-perpetuating because people move away from other regions to where the services are located; meaning it's even less economically viable for country and other regions. And so the cycle continues.

But it all boils down to one thing - having the population density to support the investment. It may appear to you as size of the area you're trying to roll out infrastructure in, but that's only part of the equation.

-- james

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[Cato]

Coverage targets are based on population not area - the operator claims something like '95% of population covered', which lets them focus on large cities and towns while leaving very sparsely populated areas uncovered.

The size of the US is simply not a factor in the lack of mobile usage - China already has *more* mobile users than the US, with 90% of the land area but much more population density.

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[Hast]

And I'm sure you're a representative part of the population. It's not as if laptops/802.11b doesn't work in Japan. You just need to bring your base station for the wireless.

OTOH if you brought your neat phone which can take pictures from Japan to the US you couldn't even use it as a door stop. (They are generally too light.)

Here is Sweden over 50% of the population has mobile phones, when over 50% of the population in the US has laptops and 802.11b then call again. (And Japan has an even higher market penetration of phones IIRC.)

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[xenolon]

it's not that the earth isn't curved everywhere...(Your sarcasm and lack of scope intrigue me though) it's just that it is more expensive to creat a larger network due to the loss of line-of-sight (due to the curvature of the earth) and also...signal quality can be degraded when passing through the atmosphere, which it doesn't have to do if it only bounces off one tower.

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[Saige]

And finally, there's Nextel. It uses a custom technology (iDEN) and caters to business users who use their cellphone enough to warrant a $150/mo plan and want to-the-second billing. It is essentially a niche carrier, with very loyal customers, and as many of those customers travel the world, it may soon switch to GSM itself.

The iDEN system is already in a number of countries - Nextel has a number of them covered, but there are also a significant number of other companies using the same system. MIKE in Canada, for example, and assorted local companies. There are iDEN phones available designed for being used around the world - the i2000plus. There are iDEN phones available that have embedded Java for app development, and the i95cl has been introduced recently with a color screen.

They've moved beyond targetting just business users, though there's still a large percentage of their userbase made up of that demographic. That's why they are coming up with a bigger variety of phones with more interesting appearances.

There is also NO consideration of iDEN or Nextel moving to GSM. Nextel has been looking at going to a CDMA variant, and Motorola has offered some solutions to that end.

Trust me, I work on iDEN.

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[fredrik70]

believe the NMT band (900MHz ???)was reserved for other purposes, which would render all NMT phones useless after a few years, remember the first year GSM had a bit of a failure feel around it, but boy, did that change. the (even older) NMT 450 MHz (?) is still around in the north...

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[Saige]

Also, I don't know if NexTEL is even known outside the US but it has a great advantage over regular wireless phones.

Yes, Nextel does have a number of operations outside of the US. However, the iDEN system it uses has a number of other customers around the world. I'm not sure where, but there are a number in Europe and Asia, including Korea.

I'm not sure what services and pricing plans are offered outside of Nextel's US plans, however.

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[Skorpion]

It depends on a localization a lot. In the city where I live, there are two telcos competing so it is very easy and fast to get a landline, ISDN, ADSL (SDI or Neostrada) etc.

Re:There's a reason for all of this...

[Hast]

We don't need cell phones when we have our land lines. If you break down in a city, walk to the nearest house and ask to use their phone. 9 times out of 10 the person will let you, usually hand a cordless through the door crack.

Yes, but when I said that the mayority of people have cellphones I didn't mean "To call when their cars break down." If that happens and you're out of battery for you cellphone I'm sure you won't have any problem borrowing a phone to call for help.

But it's a bit harder to go in and say "Hi! Could I borrow your phone? I need to let my friend know that I won't make it to the movie." Not to mention having to call complete strangers who live close to where you desided to meet your friend and say. "Would you be so kind as to give a message outside by the busstop that I'll take the train instead - thankyouverymuch."

Cellphone networks should today be taken for granted just as landlines are. Having good landlines (And there's nothing wrong with the Swedish telephone system, it's just too expensive. ;-) is not an excuse to have insufficient cellphone covering. (Well, it's an excuse, just a rather poor one.)

Let's make a distinction

[Joel Ironstone]

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.

Re:Let's make a distinction

[jxg]

You do know that the average work week in the United States is the highest in the world, even longer than the Japanese, don't you?

France in particular has a mandatory 35-hour week.

Re:Let's make a distinction

[squiggleslash]

But in north america and europe where the working week is 60 hours a week...

You work 60 hours a week? Luxury! Here in Florida, we work eight day weeks. And every day we have to get up before we go to bed, lick office clean, work four 25 hour shifts a day, and then when it's time to go home our bosses kill us, bury us, and dance on our graves.

And you tell the Europeans of today that and they won't believe you!

Re:Let's make a distinction

[Zuke8675309]

France in particular has a mandatory 35-hour week.

That explains quite a bit.

Re:Let's make a distinction

[jdubois79]

60 Hours a week? In the US?

The work week in Japan is only around 45 hours, + around 2 hours for drinking or "after work" activities. Granted, each job is different, but still.

But as far as your comment about "the father (or mother) can actually watch the child and maybe offer a helping hand," I'm glad that you're always able to be around 24/7 to help the children learn and grow, but sometimes people NEED to go to work to pay the bills, no matter how much they want to stay with their children. And, important events don't generally wait till the end of the work day, in Japan OR in America.

Re:Let's make a distinction

[Rovaani]

Don't know about anywhere else but here in Finland the standard working week is 40 hours.
So we win either way, we get the fancy phones and we get to see our kids grow (with a paid maternal/paternal vacation).

Re:Let's make a distinction

[stephanruby]

You do know that the average work week in the United States is the highest in the world, even longer than the Japanese, don't you?

And since we're on the topic of breaking stupid stereotypes. I do hope that the original poster realizes that contrary to popular media belief; we as, Americans, have a much higher rate of suicides than our Japanese counterparts.

Re:Let's make a distinction

[stephanruby]

Please specify the duration of your paid maternal/paternal vacation. Here in the US, it's four weeks for the mother, although I am not sure it's paid.

Re:Let's make a distinction

[CProgrammer98]

Not in the UK it aint mate. The average is 37.5 A lot of "manual labour" types work 40, financial industry seems to 35 and a lot of other people work 37.5.

There are some professions (catering and hospitals for example) that do work long hours but on the whole most UK citizens work far less than 60. In fact, we have a law that restricts how many hours we can work (something like an average of 45 per week averaged over a 12 week period, but that's from memory and may be wrong)

Re:Let's make a distinction

[CProgrammer98]

cool! nice comment dude.

Echoes of Monty Python's "4 Yorkshiremen sketch"

People, If you haven't heard this before, check it out, it's VERY funny.

To forestall any comments

[PhysicsGenius]

I always see a ton of trolls talking about how cell phones give us cancer and I'd like to post some real, science-based information to forestall the inevitable tide. We are right to be skeptical of outrageous claims like "my cell phone gave me cancer" and I applaud the many geeks who, in this story and others, have stood up to suspected pseudo-science and brought to bear a modicum of scientific knowledge.

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

Re:To forestall any comments

[DrVxD]

> For me this is two separate locations
Left breast and right breast?

Re:To forestall any comments

[Fembot]

Actualy if you think about the eneries involed a simple calculation reveals that the chances of even one molecule being ionised is so slim unless you press your head next to a base station.

Re:To forestall any comments

[Nos9]

Um yeah, so you proclaim to be forstalling these, yet you put forth the same claim?
Yes cell phones emit energy waves, you know what else is an energy wave? Light and Radio waves. Don't forget microwaves, nor Infrared and Ultra violet and radiation...
You are contestntly bombarded by these waves, the proof is in the fact that others can see you. How do they accomplish that? They have specialized organs that detect specific frequencies of those waves nad translate them into and chemical/electrical pulse that is tranmistted to another organ (to put it simply, they can see you). Any elecetrical current running through a wire (powrlines, your walkman, your digital wristwatch) generates a magnetic wave, its just a fact of life.

Price Price Price

[kawaichan]

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.

Land line costs are insane in Japan

[case_igl]

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

Re:Land line costs are insane in Japan

[ObviousGuy]

If someone in your family has a land line and dies, you can continue using the land line contract and have a phone installed in a new location. You can end your contract at any time and get some percentage of the 70000 yen "deposit" back, but many families opt to keep the contract open and give it to their kids when they finally move out of the house.

Re:Land line costs are insane in Japan

[BJH]

Your aunt was slightly misinformed, I think...

A land line in Japan used to cost ~65000 yen (around $US540) if you bought the line right from NTT; however, most people buy their line right from a broker at a discount - 55000-60000 yen ($US450-500).

In addition, these days NTT offers a deal where your monthly fees are higher, but you pay a lot less for the line right (I haven't had to buy a new line right for the last twelve years, so I don't know how much it costs for that option).

As for the 'months and months' you have to wait to get a new line... figure about five days normally, two weeks max.

Re:Land line costs are insane in Japan

[SparkyMartin]

And you don't find these costs insane?? I shudder to think what the montly rates are!

Re:Land line costs are insane in Japan

[BJH]

Since I got my ADSL line installed, I pay about 3000 yen for the phone line basic fees, plus 4000 yen per month for the ADSL line, plus 2000 yen for the ADSL provider.

Before I got the ADSL line, I used to spend about 9000 yen a month on call fees (Internet usage, in other words).

Re:Land line costs are insane in Japan

[jadrakey]

Just some comments from someone who lived in Japan for 3 years.

Yes it costs a lot to get a land line. A major consideration is that you own that number. You're not just buying service.

All calls do cost. I was there from 7/1995 - 7/1998, at the time 3 minutes were 10 yen. After 11pm you got 4 minutes.

So I don't see daddy calling NTT for a second phone line for the KID, like often happens here in The States.

Luckily the Board of Education owned the number and just changed the billing responsibilities over to me. But my monthly phone bill was USD100.00 - 200.00 per month.

This very seldom include any International calls. I used the internet via a BOE account ( so I only paid for the phone call ) and used IRC-chat to communicate with friends instead of calling.

The article mentions business men using the phones but that isn't their main customer. It is the young people. They get spending money like you wouldn't believe. They can't go and sign up for the phones on their own ( unless the law has changed ). Also many schools ( at least through junior high where I taught ) have rules against the kids even bringing phones or pagers into school. I've seen them confiscated from the students.

And what they offer as after-market accessories makes our stores look pathetic. People there don't carry around big key rings with interesting nick-nacks hanging off them, thats what their cell phone is for. And everyone can see it while you are either talking to someone or getting gamer's thumb from entering those little messages to everyone and their brother.

I did have a cell phone while I was there. At the time I had 3 types to choose from. Cellular, PHS and Portable. The cellular and portable were had stronger signals and could be used while in a car or train but the band width if you connected it to a computer was only 9.6K. On the other hand the PHS was not as strong. You lost signal if someone were driving over 40kph. But the bandwidth was 32K. I used it for checking email and a very little surfing when not in class teaching. It was a very nice little phone that connected via a pcmcia card modem.

Topic Jump:

Diverging to a comment made in another message: That Americans don't like getting charged for phone calls, and that its Stupid. If you haven't seen "The Minority Report" yet take that to heart. I can see getting video adds from the book store, grociery store, oil change shop etc. I through away junk mail. But I don't pay a fee to take it out of the box first.

Done rambling.

Re:Land line costs are insane in Japan

[really?]

Obviously not a true geek. :-)

NTT has had for ages special calling plans for people who want to use computers to connect to the net. Before I got ADSL - by the way, always at or slightly above 1.5M and uncapped - I used to have that. The catch? It was from 11:00pm to 8:am. No complains here though, as I was/am a night owl.

cell phones

[inode_buddha]

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.

Re:cell phones

[DrVxD]

> the value of personal privacy far outweighs the potential benefits of "anytime, anywhere" connectivity
How on earth does carrying a mobile phone cost you anything in the way of personal privacy? MoPhos have "off" switches. You can ignore them when they ring. You can turn off the ringer. So you've lost nothing, but gained in that if a family member needs to contact you in an emergency, they can.

Five rules to successfully owning a cellphone

[Audent]

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.

Re:Five rules to successfully owning a cellphone

[kawaichan]

With 33cents a minute, who on earth would try to make a call unless it's absolutely necessary? problems with US and Canadian wirless are:

1) Cost - If calls are cheap enough, then more and more people will have phones.
2) Availability - If it's cheap enough, more people would have cellphones with them then I might need one too (domino effect)
3) Cheaper data services, more flexable service plans etc. might help too.

Re:Five rules to successfully owning a cellphone

[GrandCow]

You forgot rule #5: Talk on the phone while sitting on the crapper, drop phone in toilet, curse loudly.

Re:Five rules to successfully owning a cellphone

[thopo]

jesus christ! 33cents per minute! sounds like you live in alaska :)

Re:Five rules to successfully owning a cellphone

[DrVxD]

You forgot rule 5...
5: Junk your landline - it's no use anymore.
I don't have a landline in my house - everybody who needs to call me has my mobile number, so they can reach me regardless of my being at home or elsewhere. Anybody I need to call I can call from my mobile, regardless of my being at home or elsewhere. So why do I need a phone at home? (Doubtless someone's thinking "internet, dood"). Not a problem - that's what broadband's for.

Re:Five rules to successfully owning a cellphone

[kawaichan]

no, I live in Canada.

sucks eh?

Re:Five rules to successfully owning a cellphone

[Jucius Maximus]

"With 33cents a minute, who on earth would try to make a call unless it's absolutely necessary? problems with US and Canadian wirless are:"

I am using Telus pay&talk right now and I am paying 29c/min for local calling ... I don't use it enough to get a 'plan' so this only costs me $10+tax per month which is the minimum you have to spend to keep the lowest pay&talk rate. You might want to look into it.

Also with telus if you want wireless web (note: sms comes free) you just pay a flat fee and use it as much as you want ... there are no per use charges for it.

Re:Five rules to successfully owning a cellphone

[Jucius Maximus]

" You forgot rule 5... 5: Junk your landline - it's no use anymore."

That's assuming you can get internet access that is not based on the phone line! Where I live in rural Canada you can only get dialup and we actually have 2 phone lines so we can multiplex 2 x 28.8 connections and get something half-decent to share over the 5-machine LAN. (Yes, only 28.8 is available where I am on this ultra-long phone loop with no ISDN/ADSL/Cable/etc.)

Re:Five rules to successfully owning a cellphone

[shepd]

>Yes, only 28.8 is available where I am on this ultra-long phone loop with no ISDN/ADSL/Cable/etc.

You're lucky. I'm stuck with 21.6 (on a good day) that once hung up every few hours (seems to have gone away lately). The worst part is trying to get Bell off their ass to do something.

BTW: Try satellite internet for some extra speed. And look South for your service, it's about 10x cheaper (literally).

Re:Five rules to successfully owning a cellphone

[Jucius Maximus]

"You're lucky. I'm stuck with 21.6 (on a good day) that once hung up every few hours (seems to have gone away lately). The worst part is trying to get Bell off their ass to do something."

Try unplugging other devices (phones, fax, etc) that use that line. I have seen a connection speed jump from 19.2 to 28.8 after a few phones get unplugged. Also the latest modem firmware often does wonders. Currently I am looking into the price of getting a T1 and sharing/selling it via WiFi to my neighbours to pay for it.

What american satellite internet service are you thinking of? Starband? Do any of these offer up and downstream through the dish?

Re:Five rules to successfully owning a cellphone

[shepd]

>you only pay to call someone, not to receive a call.

This is a question I asked someone else who said a similar thing once before.

If this is true, why not buy two phone lines at home (in N.A. $40 installation each, $40/month for both) and simply build a device that you can call, that will call you back when you hang up and conference you with the number you want. This way you don't have to pay to use your phone.

Or, better yet, why not just phone the person you want to talk to and say "Call me back now" and hang up?

Both ways in N.A. would accrue no charges (assuming you mostly talk with people in your own city).

I'm guess its because in every other country you have to pay by the minute to call your next door neighbour, whereas here it's free, and we here would rather give up cell phones than give up the privledge of making those 2 hour calls (I once read some stats that Americans talk on the phone more per person than any other country).

Just my guess...

Re:Five rules to successfully owning a cellphone

[shepd]

>Try unplugging other devices (phones, fax, etc) that use that line.

:-) Tried that.

Heck, I've tried various modems plugged straight into the demarc jack. Same results, but with the (very) occasional 26.4k connection.

That's what 15 km of copper will do to ya (it was like pulling teeth to get that out of Bell, I'll tell ya).

>Currently I am looking into the price of getting a T1 and sharing/selling it via WiFi to my neighbours to pay for it.

I did that once too, but it turns out too many people (not all, just a lot) in the area think that rural high speed internet should cost exactly the same as urban prices. Some even think that because a co-op service would likely be a bit less reliable, it should be cheaper.

From all my calculations, it worked out to about $80/month CDN (assuming a minimum of 20 customers) to make it break even. That's if they'll run a T1 to where you live. Bell refuses to do it for me, even though I'm a registered business. The only place here with high speed is a local school (covered by the WRDSB, which is just slightly more restrictive of their internet than China [nintendo.com is firewalled]) and that came from 35 km away.

The only company that could make it happen (a wireless internet company) didn't want to bother, which was strange since one would have thought a small company (at the time) would be gung-ho on such ideas.

>What american satellite internet service are you thinking of?

www.nebulink.net (two way and one way, with one way being affordable :-) For most of Canada (if you're inside the EIRP map -- if you're out, forget it) you'll have to use a BIG big dish.

Not that the other systems are all that bad (okay, yes, they do suck, but compared to the $100/Gig Bell charges, a pigeon carrier looks like solid gold).

AFAIK (but IANAL), subscribing to US data services is 100% legal, except a silly Canadian law requires you to stop browsing Canadian websites when you're using American service in Canada.

Re:Five rules to successfully owning a cellphone

[stephanruby]

Or, better yet, why not just phone the person you want to talk to and say "Call me back now" and hang up?

The person calling you back will have to pay an outrageous surcharge to reach you. That's the difference. In the US, carriers are not allowed to surcharge the people calling someone on a cell phone, so they charge the person receiving the phone call instead.

Re:Five rules to successfully owning a cellphone

[really?]

That's why you have a "G-shock" phone. You pick it up, dump it in the sink, wash it off ... carry on the conversation ... if you can, as by this time the person at the other end has already passed out from laughing.
(No, it didn't happen to me, but, it did to my freind more than once - much easier to drop it in when the crapper is "Japanese style.")

Re:Five rules to successfully owning a cellphone

[ross.w]

Here in Australia, Orange used to have a plan where you could use your mobile phone within 5km or so of home and you would be billed as if it were a landline. I have a contract like this with them, but they mustn't have made any money out of it, because they don't offer it to new subscribers.

They do, however have a plan that lets other people call you on a landline style number when you are in your local talk zone, but you have to use caller ID to get the number, because Orange won't tell you what it is. (They get a cut when people call your mobile at mobile rates)

Re:Five rules to successfully owning a cellphone

[pauljlucas]

Don't be afraid to give out your number to everyone. EVERYONE.

There are some people that I don't want to be able to contact me at any time -- they can wait.

Re:Five rules to successfully owning a cellphone

[Jucius Maximus]

"www.nebulink.net (two way and one way, with one way being affordable :-) For most of Canada (if you're inside the EIRP map -- if you're out, forget it) you'll have to use a BIG big dish"

Thank you!! I am definitely going to look into this. We are definitely in the EIRP area. Also, you might want to look at www.look.ca because their policies for getting T1's might be more friendly/cheaper to you. Btw, do you know of any other such inexpensive satellite internet services?

Re:Five rules to successfully owning a cellphone

[stephanruby]

When I was in London three years ago, I called a friend's cell phone from a pay phone and I had to pay about a pound a minute. In the US, around the same time, the rate for calling a cell phone from a pay phone was 35 american cents for ten minutes (now it's 50 cents for ten minutes).

Don't get me wrong, I do like the option of making the person calling you, paying for the call. With a number like that, I wouldn't be afraid of giving out my number to potential telemarketers. ; )

Re:Five rules to successfully owning a cellphone

[red_gnom]

"There are five stages to owning a mobile phone..."

There are three kinds of people: Those who can count, and those who can't.

Re:Five rules to successfully owning a cellphone

[shepd]

>the rate for calling a cell phone from a pay phone was 35 american cents for ten minutes (now it's 50 cents for ten minutes).

Wherever you were, you were ripped off!

I pay $0.25/CAN (about $0.13/US) to make a call from a payphone of any length to any local exchange (including cell exchanges).

Re:Five rules to successfully owning a cellphone

[shepd]

>Btw, do you know of any other such inexpensive satellite internet services?

I did a lot of research on this stuff before buying so...

Here's the pricing/policies of all the ones I know (might be inaccurate, $CAN):

• Bell Expressvu / 1-way / $50 for 60 hours, or $50 for 4 Gig ($100/Gig after that) / Vague FAP / Sells to Canadians / Very few usenet flames
  
• Direc* (anything owned by Hughes Network Services) / Didn't bother to get pricing after seeing the tens of thousands of usenet flames (these guys get roasted worse than Microsoft). Also refuse to sell their service to Canadians.
  
• Starband / Bankrupt. Refuse to sell service to Canadians.
  
• Fast@XS / Now Nebulink.
  
• DirecWay Canada / $150 a month / Vague FAP / $1500 minimum equipment cost / 2-way service.
  
• 2-way Nebulink / $3000 equipment cost (may come down) / $300 a month / Didn't get details on their TOS, but I'm sure its similar to their 1-way.
  
• Nebulink / $55 US / 8 Gb a month, $15 US/GB after that / No FAP
  
• Wildblue / Not Available / Site gets updated yearly to say it'll be available next year.
  
• Starchoice / They've said "soon" for the past 3 or 4 years.
  
• LookTV (since you mentioned it) / Last time I looked they quit selling wireless to residential areas because the demand was too high (yup, that is literally what their website said!).
  

You'll see the term FAP a lot when shopping for satellite. It usually defines terms for the satellite provider to slow down / cut off your service whenever they think you're using it too much. Metered accounts don't normally require a FAP, and I find them preferrable.

Well, that's all I can remember from the top of my head.

Re:Five rules to successfully owning a cellphone

[Fluid Truth]

There's only one other problem. There's a reason why so many Verizon customers DESPISE the recent "Can you here me now?" ads: the coverage isn't quite that great. I can't use my cell phone inside my house. There's no coverage. I'd have to go outside and get into one of my vehicles and put the phone in the handsfree kit, which has an external (gain) antenna.

If I could use my cell phone in the house, I probably would stop using the landline for all long-distance calls. Until then, I have to give people both my cell phone and my home phone.

Re:Five rules to successfully owning a cellphone

[horza]

It's simple: in Japan, Europe, Australia, New Zealand etc... you only pay to call someone, not to receive a call.

That is true for 99% of people. The exception is when you start roaming around the world with your mobile. When abroad, the person calling pays their standard mobile rate and you have to pay the difference.

In the UK most operators now offer flat rate fees so you can stay on the mobile all day long and not pay an extra penny. On the plus side it cut my phone bill down by a factor of three! On the minus side you no longer have the excuse to get off the phone, "Got to go, this call is costing me a fortune".

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.

Totally.With all the advance screening features on today's mobiles there aren't the same privacy problems as on the old fixed lines. I screen all my calls these days, and with the answerphone built into my Sony Z5 I can decide whether to pick up whilst the caller is leaving a message (or decide to call them back later).

Phillip.

The rest of the world

[waimate]

Ignoring glizty features like clunky video, and just talking about the ability to make and receive phone calls, pretty much the whole world is way ahead of the US in mobile telephones.

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.

Re:The rest of the world

[thogard]

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.

Re:The rest of the world

[SN74S181]

If I was on the ancient Greek island of Delos I most certainly would NOT want anybody who dialed my regular number to be able to reach me.

Sorry. Some of us value our right to privacy more than others of you.

Re:The rest of the world

[alizard]

Anybody in the US who hasn't figured out that the Libertarian cult argument that "if we get government completely out of the marketplace, everything will be wonderful" is bullshit need only look at the US inferiority in the area of cell phones to get the point.

There are certain areas where government regulation to protect corporations from their own short-sighted stupidity and the public from the consequences is a very good idea.

EU regulation forced the national (later private) carriers to standardize on ONE cell phone technology.

As a result, there is effectively one cellular network in EU that the different carriers build towers for, and as a result, an EU mobile user can get dial tone practically anywhere. SMS works everywhere. An EU user who wants to change carriers can do so by swapping the SIM card. EU users don't have to pay for incoming calls.

Meaning that just about everyone has a mobile in the more advanced parts of EU, and the same phone that works in Holland works fine in Spain. I have a close friend in Holland. I take it for granted my SMS messages will get to her no matter where in the EU she goes.

"Let the market decide" has put the US a generation behind the rest of the world for mobile services. The major RBOCs got exactly what they paid for, and not only did the public get screwed, but they are not profiting off cell phones the public can't be bothered to buy. Isn't it wonderful having the best elected officials money can buy?

Re:The rest of the world

[CatPieMan]

USA isn't all that far behind for some of this stuff. I have a New York based cell phone and can recieve calls/SMS/voicemail in Sydney, Melbourne, Bangkok, Paris, London, Munich, Athens, etc no problem (although not Tokyo, but, the Australian mobile phones don't work in Tokyo either -- yes, tried it 2 weeks ago). Of course, the cost is insane, but, SMS prices are much lower.

Australia also picked up on cell phones a lot faster than the US did -- and with a huge installed base, they could justify upgrades to the system, etc.

And, sure, you can drive from Melbourne to Cape York on the same call, but, what about Alice Springs to Perth? That's about the same distance. The problem with your original comparison is that you would be driving up the east coast of Australia -- where more than half the population lives, and, the area that has the best coverage in the whole country.

It is just as easy for someone in the US to drive from Florida to Maine and keep coverage. But, the US has a many more providers and also a lot better coverage in the 'middle'.

-CPM

Re:The rest of the world

[wowbagger]

I might point out that the US started building its cell network before the rest of the world did - as such, the rest of the world got to learn from our mistakes and benefit from our discoveries, while we got to live with our mistakes and make our discoveries.

Hence, the rest of the world had an advantage in being able to build with newer, better tech than the US.

Re:The rest of the world

[kzharv]

Just to point out you can get a phone that works in OZ and Japan ( I have had one for about a year and I am pretty sure it works in the US as well) KDDI's CDMA phone has roaming with Telstra.

Just fyi.

Re:The rest of the world

[stephanruby]

Anybody in the US who hasn't figured out that the Libertarian cult argument that "if we get government completely out of the marketplace, everything will be wonderful" is bullshit need only look at the US inferiority in the area of cell phones to get the point.

The US government is the one preventing the networks from surcharging callers that want to call a cell phone. This move has prevented the lower end of the market from taking hold. The marketplace is anything but free.

Re:The rest of the world

[stephanruby]

That's why you have caller id and you can preprogram your phone to ring for some numbers and stay silent for others.

Re:The rest of the world

[Cato]

According to this history of US PCS networks - http://www.gsmdata.com/es53060/history.htm - the first cellular network was in Japan in 1979, followed by Norway. The US was some years later.

All the early phone networks were analogue, so there was little advantage in copying each other when it came to building digital networks, which happened at roughly the same time in the early 1990s. The initial US TDMA standard may have been a bit earlier than GSM though, so you could be right on that one.

Re:The rest of the world

[retsamxaw]

Anybody in the US who hasn't figured out that the Libertarian cult argument that "if we get government completely out of the marketplace, everything will be wonderful" is bullshit need only look at the US inferiority in the area of cell phones to get the point.

This would only be important if the end were in sight. We are NO WHERE NEAR the end of the development of the "cell phone". Don't say the US is inferior. This is not about who scores the first point. It's about who scores the MOST points.

There is much more innovation now possible in the US because of the LACK of "standardization". Compare it to DOS. Imagine if the US government mandated that ALL PC's ran DOS. We would have gone through the last 20 years at a much slower innovation pace due to this sort of short-sighted standardization.

There are certain areas where government regulation to protect corporations from their own short-sighted stupidity and the public from the consequences is a very good idea.

Such as what? We have government regulations that "standardize" certain aspects of automobile building. This raises the price, and it mutes the ability of the auto builders to innovate with new types of engines, body shapes, etc.

EU regulation forced the national (later private) carriers to standardize on ONE cell phone technology.

Some sort of interoperability might be important. However, the network is the phone. I think standardization is silly. Local number portability is coming through regulation already. Before we stack regulations on the carriers, I think we should see what effect this has.

Once you create regulations, it's difficult to get rid of them. De facto standards emerge.

Re:The rest of the world

[dachshund]

"Let the market decide" has put the US a generation behind the rest of the world for mobile services.

I don't much like the current situation in the US, and I wish I could use a roaming GSM here and abroad. However, I think that Europe's actions will come back to bite them. For one thing, a lack of international standards can be made up for by the market. What's the difference between GSM and the US's TDMA-based networks? Frequencies and protocols. All things that can be modified on the phone side. As chips become more and more advanced and capable of communicating on a variety of networks, single unified standards may become as much of a barrier as as file formats are to a program like Photoshop.

Furthermore, Europe's headlong plunge into the morass that is GSM-based 3G will leave them out billions of dollars and stuck with yesterday's technology. The future of ubiquitous data communications is not hyper-expensive TDMA networks, but something more like 802.11. I imagine that thanks to the US's stubborness and failure to adopt standards, we will have an advantage in this area. It may take us a few years to fully develop the technology, but don't count the US out right now. One need only look at Japan's abandoned analog HDTV system to see what government standardization can buy.

Re:The rest of the world

[dxroland]

I don't see a major drawback in being behind the curve on mobile services. The fewer cell phones there are, the better. Talking on a cell phone in public is rude and disrespectful to the people around you. Most people who think they need to carry their phones everywhere just have an over-inflated opinon of themselves. There are very few of us (ex. emergency workers) who really need to be on call 24/7. I'm no luddite, ubiquitous cell phones I can do without.

Re:The rest of the world

[stephanruby]

"Let the market decide" has put the US a generation behind the rest of the world for mobile services.

Fourteen years ago, the US was a generation behind France in e-commerce. France had given away free network computers to every household in the country. They had furnished every school child with a computer in the classroom. They had a national standard for their own version of the internet. At the time, it really seemed like the US was behind the times. I wonder what happened?

Re:The rest of the world

[oob]

One day at dawn while calling my grandmother on my GSM cellphone it displayed this message;

"ANZAC Ceremony"

Every other day of the year the cell site identifies itself as "ANZAC Cove."

I would guess that Galipoli is the most remote cell site on earth. Thank you Turkish Telecom.

Behind?

[huckda]

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

Re:Behind?

[mesocyclone]

This is exactly backwards. The problem in the US is that the FCC allowed the phone companies to implement any standard they wanted as long as it met spectral density requirements. Most of the rest of the world (Japan excluded, btw) required one system: GSM.

Charges for Data suck

[weave]

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...

Re:Charges for Data suck

[pcardoso]

slightly off-topic, but....

As it is, Wap is worthless. It would be useful, if the prices weren't ridiculous ( 0.18/minute in vodafone/portugal), the content wasn't so scarce and I could access wapsites that are not in vodafone's domain.

I'm using a new nokia 8310 with GPRS, and there is a campaign about GPRS that let's me use wap for free.. It's something nice to have, but I wouldn't be using it if I had to pay those 18 cents.

Now for something stupid: I can make data calls using a laptop or a palm with this phone, and the price is 1.5 per hour. Ok, so it's only 9600bps (or 14400, I'm not sure), but I can access real websites, ssh/ftp home, use IRC, and even download mp3s (well.. If I really had the need to), on a real computer, with a big screen and a keyboard...

WAP: A fraction of the content for 10 times the cost.... The operators sold wap extremely overpriced, and it hasn't caught on. Had they priced accordingly to the content, and it would caught on...

Now the craze is all about MMS (multimedia messages).. I wonder about the prices for that, because if they treat this like wap, it will soon go the same way.

i would have to agree with you...

[gimpboy]

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.

Re:i would have to agree with you...

[handsomepete]

"just because someone has different needs doesnt mean the have failed."

I agree with that completely. The whole tone of that article is that the U.S. is failing to keep up with Japan when in fact we don't have the need to keep up. Our phones work just fine. We don't need LCD displays that can show DivX movies downloaded from ph0n3.l33t-pr0n.net. I don't own a cell phone only because I don't need one, but I know that they can be very useful in emergencies and for business. People tend to forget that there was a time not very long ago when there were no cell phones. We still got along fine. I would argue that anything beyond standard phone/pager functionality is extra and not necessary for anyone. Just my opinion.

Re:i would have to agree with you...

[handsomepete]

"What a dumb ass argument. We got along just fine without computers too. Yet we both used one to post these messages."

What a dumb ass argument when replying to a post about the necessity of cell phone features. I didn't need to post that message or this one. It didn't make my life any better, especially since I got a response that was less than life changing. That comment had nothing to do with mine. Besides, it wasn't even an argument. It was a statement of fact. We *did* get along fine without cell phones. I don't remember any mass suicide because of a lack of portable communication devices in my lifetime.

"Gee, could it be that people just like to communicate with each other. Technologies that enable more communication, easier communication, new forms of communication become popular."

Congratulations, you told me that technology that enables people to communicate more, easier, or differently becomes popular. Now explain to me how that new technology (feel free to reference the article) is necessary to communication which was, of course, the point of my post. Then, for extra credit, feel free to tell me how the U.S. lacking any of your referenced technologies is hurting the country (or yourself in particular) in any way, shape or form. Not having as "neat" of stuff as the Japanese doesn't count. Here are some choices:

Hello Kitty screensavers

an endless variety of ring tones

the video camera in a phone

send e-mail

play games

Everything I found in that list I could do at home or through any phone book/gas station and I can't think of any important reason why I would have to be able to do it anywhere in the world. Once again, I've got no problems with cell phones and their usefulness. My original point was simply that not having all of those extra features does not make any country lesser than another because they are unnecessary to the services that cell phones provide (mobile communication/notification).

If you feel like being stupidly insulting and sarcastic, at least go to the effort of backing it up. Or log in. That would substantially raise your ability to communicate.

Re:i would have to agree with you...

[SN74S181]

It was enough for over a decade. It didn't cease to be enough until long after Unix was a reality.

But anyway, back to copying the same canned multimedia crap from one hard drive to another all around the world. Whee, we're so advanced!

Re:i would have to agree with you...

[Milican]

Well a cell phone is one way to write e-mails or messages, but I would rather write e-mails on my computer with a full sized keyboard. Cell phones will do in a jiffy, but writing messages on them is much less efficient. I don't want to be pecking away on buttons smaller than my fingernails. I'll just use those keys on the cell *phone* to call them ;)

JOhn

Re:i would have to agree with you...

[handsomepete]

"Now I travel to the US. Oops. Doesn't work. I'm isolated from the whole civilized world because you can't keep up with the technology. You suck."

No, you're cut off because you refuse to use a perfectly good functioning land line phone. Don't want to spend money on an international phone call? That I can understand. Prefer to send a message? I have yet to visit a public library that will turn down computer access to someone with a passport or at least some valid form of identification, but that may have changed drastically in our now assume-everyone-is-a-terrorist-that-isn't-American culture. Not going to be near a library during your stay (or don't want/know how to use a computer)? Well, I'm out of options. But you're still making the choice to be cut off. There are lots of other ways to communicate in the U.S. than your own personal cell phone. Regardless, I'll have to continue to think that making you feel less home sick is a necessity. I'll completely concede that the situation that you pointed out is a very valid, good reason to own a cell phone and to have a more functional cell phone network. That is very neat. But blaming the U.S. for your decision to only want to communicate in that fashion is silly and hardly the cell phone manufacturers' problem (side note: not defending cell phone companies. Don't care about them one way or another).

Re:i would have to agree with you...

[Issue9mm]

I don't mean to be nitpickity here, and certainly don't mean to come off as that "other poster" you were conversing with... but a couple of things I don't agree with:
- You're referring to the necessity of cell phone features, and, while you're right, cell phones themselves aren't necessary, they certainly do make things more convenient.

- While we "got along without" cell phones for a great deal of time, we also did okay without many vaccines and medical treatments that we'd be likely lost without today.

Accustomization is something that everybody (except the Amish) pretty much succumbs to. The penetration of society with little trinkets like cell phones and pagers, while not at all necessary, certainly does make things easier, and does improve the quality of life in certain instances (think 911 calls or roadside assistance calls made from a cell phone).

That said, I'd very much like to send email from my (hypothetical) cell phone. (Hypothetical because I don't actually own a cell phone, but a two-way pager... company provided. :-\)

I was down in St. Louis the other day, at the Vans Warped Tour, and while I was getting sunburnt to a crisp, because I forgot sunscreen, I was emailing my wife, then 200+ miles away, asking her to have some sunburn remedies and treatments available for me when I got home, so as to soothe my pain.

Granted, that was by no means a necessity, but it was certainly a convenience. Another convenience was when the boyfriend (I assume) of the girl that passed out from heat exhaustion called for an ambulance to take her to the hospital to get rehydrated. I'm not saying she would have died, but in the 8 hours I spent at the UMB Pavilion in St. Louis, I didn't see a single pay phone (but I could be wrong, since I wasn't really looking... after all, I had my pager), and it was pretty damn handy to have medical assistance waiting for them by the time they got to the gates of the pavilion, etc.

Anyway, I've already rambled on, and I'm sure you see my point. I can't deny that cell phones and increases in technology are unnecessary, but you can't deny the conveniences they afford us. I'm sure there are plenty of people that will come up with a use for any feature offered, though I do agree that we could probably both do without the Hello Kitty screensavers. :-\

-9mm-

Re:i would have to agree with you...

[handsomepete]

"The fact of the matter is that I do feel quite cut off whenever I have to travel to the US."

Well, there's just not much that I can really say to that, because after all is said and done, I live here so I'm apparently accustomed to whatever "limitations" we have *and* I don't have a cell phone. I could probably sit here and bicker until this thing is archived but what would the point be? I'm obviously in a completely different situation than you without the advantage of being able to experience the very thing I'm arguing, whereas you claim to be able to experience every single thing you're talking about (not doubting it, but this *is* the internet). And besides, this has gone from me saying that the extra features for cell phones in the article are unnecessary to you talking about how you feel when you travel to the U.S., and arguing about feelings is just about as ridiculous as it gets.

And I won't argue against convenience. Who the hell would? Convenience is great!

Re:i would have to agree with you...

[handsomepete]

"and certainly don't mean to come off as that 'other poster' you were conversing with"

No problem. It's just internet conversation. It's not like any of you guys stole my wallet or anything.

As a broad response to everyone that has responded to what originally was just a lame "I agree" post, not once have I said that cell phones are inconvenient. They're very useful tools and lifesavers in emergencies (I would like to buy one of those disposable ones just for that reason - and for the record 9mm I agree with your response completely). I'd personally prefer that people be a little more courteous with them in public places, but whatever. I've got no issues with the phones or the techonology. All I was trying to say that was just because our cellphones can't play freaking Doom 3 != U.S. is a failure. That's it.

*sigh*

I'm going to go do something productive now.

Re:i would have to agree with you...

[Milican]

Thats a good point. In that case these guys look pretty cool :)

JOhn

Re:i would have to agree with you...

[stephanruby]

(I would like to buy one of those disposable ones just for that reason...

Don't hold your breath yet, the company that was promising us disposable phones for less than $30 was a complete scam. They were using the inwards of $200 Nokya phones for their so-called prototypes. Their management had no technical expertise whatsoever and they were already wanted for stealing million of dollars from investors who invested in their previous venture (an online casino).

It kind of makes me wonder how many other investment scams have received free publicity from Times magazine.

Re:i would have to agree with you...

[CProgrammer98]

LOL!!!

There was a time when we didn't have computers. We managed just fine.

There was a time when we didn't have electricity. We managed just fine.

There's a term for people who think like that - Luddites.

The point is that technology improves the quality of life. Sure I could do without my mobile phone, just as I could manage without a car, or a computer or a music system. I have one because it's CONVENIENT. People can speak to me and I to them without having to ring several numbers to try find me or leave a message on an answering machine that I may or may not reply to.

Here in the UK, the market for ringtones and cute cases is largely the teenagers. They spend huge amounts of money on personalization, and also on text messaging. The mobile phone operators make billions out of texting.

They can then use the money they make to improve the services they offer. I just signed up last week for a service where my bank texts me whenever a transaction over a certain amount is made. I don't NEED that service, but I do find it USEFUL (if only so I can see when my wife is taking money out of my account!!!)

Re:i would have to agree with you...

[fredrik70]

Or he could do what the rest of us do.. buy a dual- or triple-band phone.

Re:i would have to agree with you...

[Telemakhos]

There's a term for people who think like that - Luddites.

There's also a term for people who think they have to one-up the next guy by being the first kid on the block to have the latest technological trifle -- egotists.

Luddites oppose all modern technology. That's a silly point of view, however, because some technology presents man with a genuine benefit and augments his standard of living in meaningful ways. Genetic manipulation may lead to a cure for cancer, electricity brings light and heat in the midst of winter, and man rejoices that he has bettered his life by using technology for noble ends.

Running a Hello-Kitty first-person-shooter game while playing DivX videos and surfing for pr0n simultaneously on my hot pink cell phone does not, however, represent the noble usage of technology or a meaningful increase in man's standard of living. Rather, it demonstrates that man has been conditioned by vested commercial interests (the telcos and manufacturers of cell phones, in this case, not to mention the pornographers) to regard possession or use of this technology as "cool."

And who can resist being labeled "cool?" Certainly no one who's been raised with the massive inferiority complex American manufacturers and service industries try to impose through advertising: "Your dick's too small, buy herbal Viagra; you're too fat to wear this bikini, join Jenny Craig (or go bulimic)." Spending a few bucks to look "cool" seems a good deal once it seems your sexual appeal depends on it -- hence why teenagers are such an easy market. The vested commercial interests use man's ego to compel him to consume, to buy these trifles or pay for use of them. It's not the same as curing cancer.

Someone who refuses to take advantage of the benefits conferred by electricity in the deep winter may indeed be a "Luddite." Someone who decides he doesn't need the latest cellphone equipped with 3-d gaming technology, on the other hand, is not necessarily a Luddite. It may be that his ego is satisfied, that he doesn't feel false material "needs." At one point, such people, who didn't feel the need to look "cool," were instead called "mature." Calling them "Luddites" instead merely serves the interests of advertisers.

Re:i would have to agree with you...

[class_A]

Running a Hello-Kitty first-person-shooter game while playing DivX videos and surfing for pr0n simultaneously on my hot pink cell phone does not, however, represent the noble usage of technology or a meaningful increase in man's standard of living.

The uses you illustrate may not be a meaningful increase in man's standard of living, but if gimmicks such as those you mentioned attract new users to the service then this can only improve the case for further investment in the underlying technology.

It's the technology I'm interested in using. I don't want streaming video to my phone's screen, but a fast, wireless, always-on connection for my laptop is what I've been dreaming of for years.

In this respect, most markets are lagging behind Japan. GPRS clocks around 28kbps here in the UK. There's still a long way to go before mobile data becomes useful.

Re:i would have to agree with you...

[darc]

Carmack's .plan on phones.

February 11, 2002
-----------------

Last month I wrote the Hello Kitty Phone II support for Doom. The bottom line is that it will be a fine phone for the game, but the details are sort of interesting.

I had a pre-production phone before Siggraph last year, and we were discussing the possibility of letting NTT DoCoMo show a Doom demo behind closed doors on it. We were all very busy at the time, but I took a shot at bringing up support over
a weekend. I hadn't coded any of the support for the custom SMS extensions yet, but I ran the game using only standard OpenGL calls (this is not a supported path, because without bump mapping everything looks horrible) to see how it would do. It didn't even draw the console correctly, because they had
driver bugs with texGen. I thought the odds were very long against having all the new, untested extensions working properly, so I pushed off working on it until they had revved the drivers a few more times.

My judgment was colored by the experience of bringing up Doom on the original Hello Kitty phone a year earlier, which involved chasing a lot of driver bugs. Note that NTT was very responsive, working closely with me on it, and we were able to get everything resolved, but I still had no expectation that things would work correctly the first time.

I have mixed feelings about the GSM / 3G extensions.
Japanese extension seems more "right" in that it automatically handles synchronization by default, and could be implemented as a wire protocol, but there are advantages to the VAR extension being simply a hint. It is easy to have a VAR program just fall back to normal virtual memory by not setting the
hint and using malloc, but NTT's extension requires different function calls for using vertex objects and normal vertex arrays.

Initial performance testing was interesting. I set up three extreme cases to exercise different characteristics:

A test of the non-textured stencil shadow speed showed a GF3 about 20% slower than the Hello Kitty. I believe that Nvidia has a slightly higher performance memory
architecture.

On the topic of current US Phones:

Do not buy a US Phone for Doom.

more like GSM vs U.S. fsck up

[johnjones]

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

Re:more like GSM vs U.S. fsck up

[Vegeta99]

hmm.
http://www.voicestream.com/
http://www.attw s.com/mobileinternet/
http://www.gsmworld.com/roa ming/gsminfo/cou_us.sht ml
http://www.cingular.com/

There's a LOT of GSM in the USA.

Re:more like GSM vs U.S. fsck up

[evilned]

One small problem, it is GSM, but its not the same frequency as the rest of the world. I have heard of dual frequency GSM phones that can do both US and the rest of the world GSM, but I havent seen them myself.

Re:more like GSM vs U.S. fsck up

[Vegeta99]

world phones. T68i. There's a LOT of em. The only reason we don't use the same frequency as the rest of the world is the damn military.

Re:more like GSM vs U.S. fsck up

[ywwg]

most of the world uses 1800/900 GSM, you just have to find a phone (marketed abroad as "world phones") that also work on the 1900 GSM system -- the US version. www.gsmarena.com has a bunch.

Re:more like GSM vs U.S. fsck up

[BJH]

Er.... that's kind of strange, because Japan doesn't have any GSM phones at all... ;)

Re:more like GSM vs U.S. fsck up

[mikewas]

We got one to share at work, for travel. You ain't SEEN roaming charges until you take one of these things overseas. It's way cheaper to just rent a phone at the airport.

Going the other direction is just a bit better. Our British sales rep came to the states with his cell phone. Outgoing rates are still through the roof. His service did include free incoming calls, even in the US, so he was able to stay connected with his UK number. He used a landline or one of our US-based cell phones for outgoing calls.

Re:more like GSM vs U.S. fsck up

[Sycraft-fu]

We have plenty of GSM service. VoiceStream, Verizion, Cingular and AT&T all offer GSM service. AT&T also offers GPRS service (not sure about the others).

Re:more like GSM vs U.S. fsck up

[Sycraft-fu]

Well the rest of the world isn't quite as one frequency as you'd think. Most of the rest of the world is GSM 1800, but there are still parts that are GSM 900. The US is GSM 1900, so different from the rest of the world. No problem though, it's still GSM and all new GSM phones like the Motorola v60 support all 3 frequencies.

Near as I know the reason the US went with a new GSM frequency is because the military makes use of the 1800 bands (and 800 doesn't offer good quality).

Re:more like GSM vs U.S. fsck up

[kzharv]

PDC is based on GSM so it is sort of correct....

Sort of incorrect.

how expensive is home Internet?

[ryantate]

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.

Re:how expensive is home Internet?

[BJH]

Um... ADSL works fine on the same line as your voice phone, and Japan's ADSL adoption rate is massive at the moment.

Re:how expensive is home Internet?

[ilbrec]

Internet access isn't all that expensive in Japan. ADSL costs something like $35 - 50/mo typically (depending upon the ISP, you may be able to get less than $30 in some cases). Dialup internet connection typically cost something like $20/mo or so for the unlimited access. Anyway, internet access isn't any more expensive than the US.
I personally find that $700 for the phone line hard to believe. I currenly live in Japan, but I don't own a phone. I only use my cell phone for my phone usage, and use either ADSL or cell phone modem to connect to the Internet.

Re:how expensive is home Internet?

[SN74S181]

It works fine on your voice phone if you live crowded into a sardine can neighborhood.

I like going out at night and looking at the field behind my house that I own. These past few weeks there have been fireflies dancing in it.

All I can get here in this rurual area is dialup internet access, so I paid a $35 additional one time charge to have a second line installed, and pay for an additional line monthly.

It works out pretty well, considering the paucity of worthwhile content that can be downloaded online. (I can download all the NetBSD packages source code that I will realistically need at 56K)

I go to friend's houses where they have DSL and all it means is they're lost in a sea of unlabeled CDR media full of porn.

Re:how expensive is home Internet?

[BJH]

Well, I've got mosquitoes dancing above the field out back of my apartment... ;)

I used to be on dialup (14.4Kbps -> 28.8Kbps -> 33.6Kbps) before switching to ADSL, and now I can't imagine ever going back.

Re:how expensive is home Internet?

[jdubois79]

Internet's pretty cheap in Japan, actually. I think it was comparible to here in the US for Cable modem (40 bucks a month).

Besides the cost of actually installing the line in the first place, the phone pay rate is pretty similar to NYC. 10c per call locally, and a small fixed rate for sub locally, then standard long distance.

Re:how expensive is home Internet?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Umm, except that in most countries people get online and access "data services" through the telephone network

Back to Japan - you don't actually need a PC for email and browsing. The phones themselves are sufficient to the task.

Re:how expensive is home Internet?

[ryantate]

So your argument is invalid.

It might be invalid, but not because of this line in the article =)

If you start with among the lowest adoption of broadband in the world, it's not hard to create a very high one-year rate; ie go from 300 homes to 30000 and oh my god it's growing 100x per year. I'm not saying that's the case, but I couldn't tell from the article. Also, "equal to Germany's"?? I didn't know Germany was the benchmark for wired-ness, nor that being more wired than France and Italy meant anything.

Anyway, as I said in my post, I have no idea what the broadband adoption rate in Japan is, and the excerpt you provided doesn't tell me that. Still, based on other posts here, they might have plenty of home Internet.

Of course, there was a question mark in my subject line =)

Re:how expensive is home Internet?

[kzharv]

You did hit the nail on the head there... home internet maket penatration is arrount 30 - 40% but cell phones are about 80 - 90% (figures off the top of my head but I work in the mobile industry here in Japan)

The US market I think is pretty much the reverse.

Also you tend to spend less time at home when you live in a place the size of a dog house :) (not quite that bad but all my places in Tokyo have been about 30m2.

That $700 is usually for an ISDN line in the bigger cities (2 B channels) so you do get 2 lines.

Re:how expensive is home Internet?

[really?]

I am not sure where in Japan you live, if, indeed, you live in Japan.

I have been here for a number of years, and have travelled all around the country. I have yet to see a place where ISDN was not available - although, there could well be.
So, with FLETS ISDN there is no reason for anyone to pay NTT extra for anything.

Re:Not only the japanese

[bashibazouk]

There is a reason for this. It's because the US has a good, working phone system. Something most european countries (hell, most countries worldwide) have never had Untill the cell phone. I'm not sure if it is the same way with the Japanese phone system or they just love gadgets (both most likely).

Sigh

[bogie]

"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.

Re:Sigh

[Bob Kronkel]

the point he was making was that it would be bad for society, not him. It wouldn't matter if he used his phone or not, its the rest of america that is.

70000 yen, Japan, and fees

[ObviousGuy]

You think 700 dollars for a land phone line is expensive?..

Anyone want to rant about the reikin system?

Re:70000 yen, Japan, and fees

[sekicho]

I'd say just get other people to give YOU the reikin, and there's no problem at all. Remember, Japan is an eminently hackable country.

There are other reasons not mentioned

[Ethelred Unraed]

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

Re:There are other reasons not mentioned

[sheldon]

I guess I'm somewhat confused by the fee schedule.

I have a Voicestream phone... er I mean Deutsche-Telekom... er I mean T-Mobile... here in the states. For US$40/month I get 600 minutes during the work week and unlimited on weekends.

I get free long distance, and if I stay within GSM providers I get free roaming.

Now, yes... the US is a large country and we don't have 100% coverage on any given standard. Generally only in the major metro areas and along connecting interstates.

Re:There are other reasons not mentioned

[mah!]

see my other reply to this topic.

Re:There are other reasons not mentioned

[puto]

I have two cell phones. A Kyrocera tri-mode with Verizon that a client gave me for dedicated support that he charges with minutes. Pre-paid and he is assured he can get me anywhere in the US. The phone works anywhere in the us and any call is a local call even though the rates are 10-20 a minute. I am allowed to cruise on network and have yet to experience a roaming charge.

My other is a Cingular wireless with 500 anytime minutes and 4500 night and weekend. 39 a month. No roaming charges and I have been all over with it as well and it works great.

Voicestream has some features but the coverage and roaming sucks.

I do agree we need to agree on a standard though. My phones are tri-mode because I need total connectivity.

PS, both phones were free with the plans and are small and work well.

BUT I would love to have some of the bells and whistles Japan has. They simply do it better than us in those countries. Our government should step in and just say no to all the different standards and agree on one. But alas, we are driven by money.

Puto

Re:There are other reasons not mentioned

[Sangui5]

Besides being confusing, they're nonsensical, too. It is actually cheaper for me to call somebody up and tell them my short message than it is for me to use the text messaging feature ($.25 for text messages vs $.1 for 1 minute over my allotment). However, it costs my provider a lot less to send the text message than my voice message . You'd think that they'd at least price them the same, to encourage people to use the text messaging. I can get a lot said in 1 minute, and I don't have to mess with the tiny keypad. Even if the text messaging was easier, it's more expensive. Until the price drops, I'll never use the text feature.

It makes absolutely no sense at all. I'm glad I'm not a shareholder of my cell provider--it's a really stupid pricing model.

Re:There are other reasons not mentioned

[swillden]

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

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.

A very large percentage of people have cellphones, and among people in their late teens through early thirties, *most* people have cellphones.

What hasn't "taken off" is the newer cell technologies, which is caused more by the plethora of inconsistent standards and the mistaken attempts of service providers to lock their customers in and make it difficult to switch. It's also related to the sheer size of the country and the fact that the population is so mobile. It's impossible to deploy a new infrastructure all at once nationwide, and few people want to sign up for a service that has limited area. The adoption of digital PCS caused companies to resort to abominations like my phone, which can communicate on three different types of networks.

PCS deployment is actually still rolling out; large areas of the country are only covered by analog cells. That being the case, it's hard to get cell companies excited about dropping yet another large pile of cash into new infrastructure that covers territory they've already populated with at least two kinds of networks.

Re:There are other reasons not mentioned

[Jucius Maximus]

"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."

This is yet another reason why mobile phones are not nearly as popular in north america compared to europe/asia. In Canada and the USA all landline phones have a 'local' calling area (usually your city and a bit of the surrounding area) where calling costs exactly $0.00/second as long as you are paying the monthly charge for basic phone service. This means that for dialup internet, you can stay connected for as long as you want and you don't run up big phone bills unless for some reason your are dialing long distance to an ISP (which is insane.)

The landline networks in Canada/USA are extremely reliable and cheap to use so we have less motivation to switch to mobile phones.

Re:There are other reasons not mentioned

[Jucius Maximus]

"In comparison, my family in the States has a blizzard of confusing fee schedules, with plenty of "gotchas" built-in. "

I challenge anyone to count the number of phone service 'plans' in Canada and the USA. Some like you say have many 'gotchas' while others were made for the purpose of being simple - you just pay $x.xx/month for so many minutes plus extra $0.xx/minute for long distance. No nonsense. The same situation exists for landline phone service. except that local (non-long distance) calling is not limited in any respect.

Basically I'm saying that there is great variety in north american landline and mobile phone plans.

Re:There are other reasons not mentioned

[Alan Partridge]

what is an "oz"? my ericsson T-29 is 82g - if it were much smaller and lighter it would blow away.

Re:There are other reasons not mentioned

[Ethelred Unraed]

...you just pay $x.xx/month for so many minutes...

You're missing the point. The German plans don't have a minute limit. It works exactly like a fixed-line phone -- you pay for the time you call someone, and that's all.

The minute limit is just one "gotcha" I'm talking about. I pay one monthly fee for unlimited time, and I don't pay any airtime fees (so I don't pay if someone calls me). This is the standard way of doing it over here -- the providers compete on price on only two areas: monthly fee and per-second fee. Nothing else.

Which, as I said, is precisely how fixed-line connections work. So why not with cellphones?

Cheers,

Ethelred

Re:There are other reasons not mentioned

[Cato]

Mobile phone penetration in the US is significantly lower than all European countries - check the statistics.

Re:There are other reasons not mentioned

[stephanruby]

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.

You're wrong. I lived in London three years ago, and the widespread use of cell phones in San Francisco still has not caught the level of London three years ago. All your friends may have cell phones, but until you see a lot of bums carry cell phones, it won't even come close.

Re:There are other reasons not mentioned

[Cryonics_au]

I live in Australia, and pretty much everyone has a GSM phone. It's the accepted standard in the country. We got rid of our crappy analog AMPS netrwork years ago.

The main telco in Aust also introduced CDMA, but virtually no one uses it. It's crap in comparison to our GSM network, and the only reason CDMA was brought in was to appease the farmers seeing as no telco is going to waste money by putting a cell in the middle of nowhere to cover a paddock of sheep.

The way my phone plan works is this:

I pay a minimum of $33 a month. With that I get $33 credit in my choice of voice calls or SMS or a combination of both.

Most plans are like this or are quite similar.

I can call anywhere in the country and i'll pay the same ammount. I don't pay long distance rates. I can also use my phone anywhere in the country and still pay the same rates.

Our network coverage is pretty damn good. Depending on which GSM provider you choose, the level of coverage is between 97% and 98% of the population. [Note: Population, not land area].

After 8PM at night and until 12AM, I can call anyone, anywhere in the country on the same network that I use, and talk for FREE for 20 minutes, and when i've reached that, I can simply hang up and dial again.

No one in the country pays for incoming calls, whenever I tell anyone that they have to in the US, they think it's just stupid, and no one is surprised that cell phones haven't taken off in the USA.

The land line system in Aust is also very good and very cheap. My land line provider - Optus has a HFC (Hybrid Fibre Optic Co-Axial) network that i'm connected to.

The US has got to realise that they can not set every standard and simply have the entire world follow them. GSM is the standard. Adopt it. The rest of the world is not going to revert back to AMPS just for you.

I know that some places in the USA have got GSM networks, but they are not widespread, but once again, the US has dropped the ball and is not using the same radio frequencies as everyone else.

I've got a dual band phone that operates on 800MHz and 1800MHz. I can use my phone just about everywhere in the world with those frequencies, but the US has decided to use a different frequency. Sorry I don't know which it is off the top of my head. Maybe the spectrum wasn't available in the US. Eventualy, even if the US does get GSM widespread, you'll have to have Tri-band phones, and wait for the rest of the world to also get tri-band GSM phones.

Oh how much the US cell phone system sux.

Re:There are other reasons not mentioned

[twinpot]

But like I said earlier, New Zealand has free local calls, and cell phone use is high. Damn, we've even got two standards too.

Re:There are other reasons not mentioned

[Jucius Maximus]

"You're missing the point. The German plans don't have a minute limit. It works exactly like a fixed-line phone -- you pay for the time you call someone, and that's all."

OK, I see. If you told someone over here about mobile phone service that is unlimited for a flat rate they would think you were trying to trick them because as you said it does not exist here. It is a totall foreign concept. Clearly it makes much more sense to have a cell phone in europe just as it makes good sense to have a landline in canada. It does not work that way here for a multitude of reasons - I think it is mainly that society communications here are completely built around free local calling - imageine how things would change in Germany (and the chaos) if overnight everyone had free local landline calling but expensive cellphones.

Offtopic: working 60 hours a week

[Mister Proper]

Joel Ironstone wrote:

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.

An Anonymous Coward replied to that with:

Actually, in most of Europe, it's under 50 (40 in some countries).

How the heck do you work 60 hours per week? Concidering a 5-day work week that would mean working 12 hours a day.

For the record, here in Belgium people work only 39 hours a week.

Re:Offtopic: working 60 hours a week

[Joel Ironstone]

In Japan and Hong Kong it is very common to work at least half a day on saturday, and many people don't return home from office jobs until 8:30.

Re:Offtopic: working 60 hours a week

[Vegeta99]

and it's 40 hours in north america, 44 tops, then it's overtime.

Re:Offtopic: working 60 hours a week

[BJH]

The 'handon' (half-day) concept went out of fashion in Japan in the early 80s. These days, almost all companies give the whole weekend off.

Re:Offtopic: working 60 hours a week

[Alan Partridge]

working time directive says the same thing for Euros. 40h per week is normal, some professions are exempted (like doctors) and France is trying to lower the number to decrease unemployment (?)

Re:Offtopic: working 60 hours a week

[stephanruby]

and it's 40 hours in north america, 44 tops, then it's overtime.

It's overtime unless you're exempt, and lots of people are exempt. But still 60 hours is a bit of an exageration. Only young professionals and small business owners might work this much.

Re:Offtopic: working 60 hours a week

[zericm]

In the financial services sector (where I have worked for 12 years), the average work week is easily 50 hours, with many folks getting up to 60 hours with no problem. In fact, it has gotten much worse since the dot com bust. We went through a number of rounds of layoffs, but we did not decrease the amount of work being done. My normal work day is from 8:30 - 6:30. I know some folks who work for several hours from home, in addition to the normal work hours.

Simple

[The Cat]

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?

Re:Simple

[The Cat]

Bad loans are not accounting "errors."

But thanks for playing.

Re:Simple

[darekana]

I think you must be referring to the Japan of the 80s. They screw over their employees quite well here too. In fact, the average salary for a starting programmer here is half that of the US. Factor in the cost of living and its not pretty. (at least in Tokyo)

Stock options? What are those? Maybe if you started the company... you might get some. :)

Not sure about 4billion, but the banks in Japan have been said to have around 400billion in unrecoverable bad loans.

Re:Simple

[money_shot]

Guess you haven't noticed the banking and political scandals in Japan... I don't think they have much on us as far as ethics or loyalty to employees.

- James

Re:Simple

[Galvatron]

They are when you refuse to write them off, as Japan does. When it is obvious that a loan is unrecoverable, a company must account for it as a bad loan, take the expense, and move on. Japanese companies tend to keep these bad loans listed as assets.

Re:Simple

[really?]

Err, dude. How much time have you spent in Japan? Of that time, how much did you spend hanging out with the people in a position to make said "errors."
I am no expert on the matters, but ... let's say that so far the Japanese have been MUCH smarter at covering up.

Re:Simple

[Syberghost]

Of course, the suits will disagree, but when was the last $4 billion "accounting error" in Japan?

We'll never know, because they don't have a free press.

Not This Boring "Story" Again

[tealover]

*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.

He's got to, got to, go -- Godzilla!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Well actually....

[EvilDrew]

Yes, Europe and most of the Asian land mass are using GSM as a standard on either 900MHz or 1800MHz, however Japan didn't go with GSM. They opted for PDC (Personal Digital Cellular) waaaay before any of us had digital cell phones becuase of the staggering population density. They needed to be able to get more calls onto one channel than analogue could provide.

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.

Broadband in Japan

[ObviousGuy]

10% ain't bad

Data point...

[march]

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.

Re:Data point...

[BJH]

These days, there's a service called Air H" that offers a compact flash or PCMCIA card for 128Kbps data service at 5000 yen a month (around $US40)... with unlimited usage.

Re:Data point...

[BrookHarty]

I work for AT^H^H^H Telco.. running the SGSN/GGSNs (main transport) for the GPRS data network. Currently we have multiple products to give you faster speed, most is used for tethering, if you use a gprs modem or a phone in gprs tethered mode, you can use compression software to get better speed. 56K(115K) is a nice notch up from the 1.2k+ of cdpd. With the compression software installed, windows (sorry, ive only seen a windows client) takes the fat inet pipe and converts it into a compressed format that downloads text in 768K speed, re-images pictures to make them faster for download. This solves the short term problem for speed. UMTS is already being deployed, (WE are talking FULL GSM people..) This is why most everyone went the GPRS method(TDMA), the hardware is easily upgradeable, just swap out part of the nortel hardware, and boom, Full 2mbit GSM. We already have multiple T1's going to base stations for the bandwidth. Yes its shared bandwidth, so is cable modems.

Its funny, we use the same hardware as the UK Telecoms, the same phone vendors, but we are 6+ months from deploying (or trial) UMTS that will put the UK telecoms to shame. American pricing is all you can eat, unlimited service. I will have high speed wireless to my apartment, before Verizon gets me DSL. (Verizon has some messed up lan lines in seattle/bothell areas)

GPRS is an easy mod for GSM phones, this is why your seeing UK style phones with color displays now. Nokia, Ericcson only has to modify a phone, not re-invent it.

6 months till 2003, it will be an Interesting year...

Re:Data point...

[ObviousGuy]

Air H? Is that like the Mile High Club?

;-)

Re:Data point...

[BJH]

Heh... you missed the ". It's read as 'Air Edge', not 'Air Ecchi'.

Re:Data point...

[ObviousGuy]

Doesn't stop me from laughing out loud every time I see the racks! :-D

H. Racks? Where does the laughter end?

Re:Not only the japanese

[throwaway18]

Indeed, until it broke reccently I could happily read slashdot on the bus to work on the half-vga screen on my my nokia 9110. I used the built in browser for that as the charges go from E0.03/min to E0.40/min at 8am. Off peak I telnet (with s/key one time passwords) to my home PC and use lynx, IRC from the pub etc. I not sure wether to get it repaired to to pay less for a second hand one off ebay with no guarantee. I can't manage without an electronic organiser/nagging device to tell me I should have bee somewhere five minutes ago but I'm not going to carry one and a phone.

When I was in the states last year I was amazed to find I could not buy a pay-as-you-talk mobile for less than USD200. I wanted one to use for ten days then bin when I left. Here they are E45 from newsagents. Amazingly in the USA you have to pay
for incoming calls to mobiles!! The mobiles have normal numbers mixed in with landlines so you don't know if you a phoning one or not.

Them's Crazy!

[OutRigged]

Them Japanese is crazy!!

If you want cute - they do kick our ass

[Gil Da Janus]

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

cell phones

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

your numbers

[mattdm]

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.

Recent studies

[MagPulse]

Now we know who to watch as they grow up for signs of brain damage, though it probably won't be cancer.

How much do they pay TOTAL?

[httpamphibio.us]

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?

But but... we have the smartphone...

[darekana]

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.

Pagers

[jimmyCarter]

.. 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.

Re:Pagers

[BJH]

They're already dead in Japan. Last week, Docomo announced that they're dropping their pager service.

Re:Pagers

[DrVxD]

> can anyone else remember the last time they saw two different pagers in one week?
Well, since you ask, yes. One of my major clients is a large financial house in London, yet all of their key management and tech people carry pagers, mostly in addition to GSM phones. The reasoning is that there is zero mobile phone coverage on the London Underground, but some of the pager networks have (apparently) paid to have "repeaters" installed in some of the stations. Thus, if it's necessary to contact someone urgently, they can page them and catch them at the next station, rather than trying to SMS them and catch them when they get home. (And yes, this is a very unusual case)

Re:Pagers

[SmittyTheBold]

It's you're underground, you're unreachable on the cell network. With the pager net, you're not necessarily.

His point was you can still be reached in a relatively quick manner (with a pager) while a person carrying a cell phone would not have any contact until they were above ground again.

Re:Pagers

[DrVxD]

> In America, you usually get voice mail with your cellular service
You do in the UK, too.
> if you're in the subway for 5 minutes and someone can't reach you, you'll see that you missed a call, and can call them right back.
And if you're underground for half-an-hour (VERY easy in London), you'll not know about it for half an hour. On the other hand, if your pager can alert you in the tunnel or at a station, you can get off the train and call the office, and you'll probably know about the message in a few minutes. The difference between a few minutes and half an hour (or longer) can potentailly be literally millions of $$$.

Free WiFi at Narita airport

[saw]

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?

Re:Free WiFi at Narita airport

[nurikabe]

Content experiments are also under way for WiFi Hot Spots scattered throughout Tokyo. I helped to setup some of these.

DoCoMo is looking to establish services that can be accessed from its phones as well as wirelessly connected PDAs and laptops. Their aim, I'm sure, is to setup another "walled garden" (which has helped to make i-mode a success) that encourages consumers to purchase additional DoCoMo hardware to access the latest DoCoMo-branded content.

We can expect to see a number of interesting wireless services that push curent Japanese technology even further along.

Tradeoffs

[Ilan Volow]

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.

Cell phone use.

[Christopher Thomas]

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.

terrible

[thopo]

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.

you must be joking! that doesn't make any sense at all. why should you pay when you receive a call? that really has to be changed.

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 .

Public Transporation

[jark]

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 invest in R&D

[mikewas]

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.

Re:Brain Cancer

[glitch!]

I wonder what effect this is having on the brain cancer rate in Japan?

It is probably too low to measure. Yes, it is true that the cell phones would tend to block background ionizing radiation and cosmic rays simply by virtue of its mass, but I think it would be hard to prove that cell phone usage reduces the cancer rate enough to be significant.

More American bashing, hmmm...

[stubear]

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.

One rule to keep your sanity

[dfenstrate]

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.

Re:One rule to keep your sanity

[CaptainZapp]

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.

The big misconception is that cell phone owners are slaves that have to be reachable all the time.

Personally I should be able to be reached during office hours, since I'm an independent contractor. When you call my office the call is diverted to my cell phone and you won't even realize that your call gets diverted.

For all other times there's voice mail if I don't want to be reached.

Actually my main reason for having a cell phone is to have a 120gm heavy high tech phone booth at my disposal throughout Europe and most of the world and not that I can be reached at all times.

Re:One rule to keep your sanity

[yelligsc]

I find your argument strange....
I am a college student as well, and I love my cell phone so I can move 3 times a year and still keep the same phone number.

Re:Not only the japanese

[squiggleslash]

Telephone service throughout Europe is generally modern and up to date. Virtually all the systems there are digital, and in many counties ISDN has replaced POTS as the dominant home phone system. (Yes, ISDN, the rich flexible multi-facited system that for some unearthly reason was marketed in Britain and the US as a cool way to connect to the Internet, arguable the only thing it was ever bad at.) As a general rule, the average European has a more advanced network at their fingertips than an average American - a large swave of the US is still toiling under 30 year old analogue exchanges. Though most Europeans and Americans have roughly equivalent systems.

If you want to fault the land line systems of Europe as helping the cellphone markets, you'd better try the marketing. The US has that rather nice system of unmetered local calling and per-minute usually-flat-rate long distance. Most phone companies in Europe, with the exception of that of Kingston Upon Hull, Great Britain (!), charge per-minute rates for every phone call (800 numbers to the receiver, obviously, and emergency and maintenance calls are obviously free.), and rates vary depending on distance, time of day and day of week. This means the concept of paying per minute for phone calls wasn't an issue when mobile phone networks started to have enough capacity to be popular.

But in all, a lot of the credit for the success of mobile networks in Europe has to go to GSM. GSM was designed to have much of the functionality of ISDN networks (AMPS, which sadly IS-136 [so called D-AMPS or TDMA and derivatives] and cdmaOne have done much to try to emulate, tried to look as much like POTS as possible.), the phones were cheap and interchangable, users could have multiple phones on a single subscriber line (via the SIM card - if you have any difficulty understanding why, get a PDA phone), and the standardisation on a single standard and cost savings as a result, have done much to make the phone a genuine one-size-fits-all standard.

$700 Phone Lines

[Aging_Newbie]

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.

A missed point

[CyberPhunk]

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.

Re:A missed point

[Anonymous Squonk]

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.

I live and work in the Tokyo area and I have one, but only because my company bought one for me and forced me to carry it last month (is this the cue to start looking for a new job?) I really don't have either the desire to be contactable 24/7, nor the desire to fill in the few moments of free time in my day with "productivity" I have yet to see any evidence that the ability to get a hold of me while taking a shower or playing with my daughter in the park improves the quality of my life in any way.

Re:A missed point

[globaljustin]

well in cyberpunk...i live in Korea (which does it's best to copy Japan) and have visit japan many times.

Your point about cell phones being a 'must have' in japan is especially important, and unfourtunately missed in the article and in the discussion on this forum.

~j

3 simple reasons

[mah!]

Here are, IMHO, the reasons for the cellphone/wireless phone/mobile phone situation in the USA being so far behind in technology, widespread use, acceptance and cost, compared to pretty much anywhere else in the world:

1. 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.
   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.
2. 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!
3. 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 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!

Re:3 simple reasons

[money_shot]

I don't buy it. I don't think you use a cell phone in the US, but rather are just spouting BS you read in some European paper (especially when you spell "Myths" as "Mythes."

Damn near everyone in the country already has a land line and most people have access to a computer online (if they don't already one at least one or two.)

-James

Re:3 simple reasons

[Jucius Maximus]

"Here are, IMHO, the reasons for the cellphone/wireless phone/mobile phone situation in the USA being so far behind in technology, widespread use, acceptance and cost, compared to pretty much anywhere else in the world:"

You forgot that the landline system in the usa/canada is far more reliable and inexpensive than in most other countries. Paying $0.00/min for 'local' calling in the UK is a foriegn concept over there. Remember also that having a home/apartment/etc without a landline is highly irregular in north america and only starting to appear among people who only depend on the cell.

Re:3 simple reasons

[Cato]

Landlines are very cheap in the US, but it's a myth that they are more reliable than Europe - I can't remember the last time I had a crossed line or line fault in the UK or in fact anywhere in Europe.

Your 'free' local phone calls (and not dedicating area codes to cell phones) are also why people have to pay for incoming calls to their cell phone - otherwise the caller would have to pay more to call some local-looking numbers than for others. So it's not all upside...

Re:3 simple reasons

[mah!]

I don't buy it.
What is it that you don't want to buy, my opinions or a cellphone in the U S of A? :-)

I don't think you use a cell phone in the US,
OK, I can't give you my phone numbers here, sorry, but if you are curious, I have 2 cellphones which I can use here - a 3-band 7389P with a sim@ctiva prepaid - which has 0 monthly fee and allows me to send/receive email through SMS gateways, only what I use on it gets charged on a credit card - no bills etc. And the cheapest GSM combo in the USA - A VoiceStream $20 plan with the Nokia 5190, for local calls etc. So I know what I am talking about: I travel quite a bit around the world ...and about GSM in the USA, I can tell you all you want to know about the annoying unusable AT&T GSM signal which is interfering with VoiceStream's one, problem about which neither company claims to be able to do much at the moment, and is extremely annoying expecially for people who'd roam on either network anyway.

but rather are just spouting BS you read in some European paper (especially when you spell "Myths" as "Mythes."
Sorry, I am not a native English speaker, and I had posted that msg from my PBG4 using Omniweb, which gives me spell checking for free, and it suggested it that way - try it out for yourself if you don't believe me. BTW, how much do you know about cellphone access/prices/plans/coverage etc. outside the USA, kid?

Damn near everyone in the country already has a land line and most people have access to a computer online (if they don't already one at least one or two.)

Damn or not, I don't see what this has to do with the cellphone use. I have landline, home and work fast internet access, and GSM, in both countries/continents. So?

I forgot the 4th reason (IMHO again) why the cellphone market is so much behind here (USA is my here at the moment): in the USA people tend to be either indoors or in a car most of the time: and much less time spent outdoors/socializing/etc than in other countries (in my own personal statistic which includes only about 30 countries in the 4 continents where I've been sofar).

Re:3 simple reasons

[mah!]

the landline system in the usa/canada is far more reliable and inexpensive than in most other countries

I've heared this argument from other USians before, and I honestly do not understand whether they've never been to other similar countries (other G7 countries for example) or what else makes them think that landline systems are less reliable elsewhere.

I also do not understand what landline has to do with cellphones: I never used my cellphone to call while at home or in the office (while in Europe that is). The cellphone is for when you're outside, obviously. And for other people to reach you no matter where you are.

Cellphones are not used instead of fixed-landline-phones. They are simply another thing which complements the previous one. You don't use the TV instead of your radio, right? The 2 complement each other.

Re:3 simple reasons

[mah!]

With your Dude, never had to sign a contract, you are a fool, Anyone who shops around, and sadly out of date, it seems to me you are trolling.

If you can show me one cellular phone I could use in the USA without signign a contract - e.g. a prepaid service, which has comparable rates to yearly subscription plans, and does not expire its minutes montly (something like Omnitel's prepaid cards) I would really like to know about it, to use it myself.

But if you can provide no link, no pointer, no real information, sorry, you're just trolling, AC.

Re:3 simple reasons

[Cato]

Read my post - I didn't say that landlines in the US were unreliable, I just said they were not *more* reliable than in Europe. So landlines are reliable in both places.

I already agreed that landlines in the US are cheap, but free local calls are one reason why mobiles haven't taken off there. I have lived in the US for a while as well as in Europe, by the way.

i was not aware

[gimpboy]

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.

Why?

[tkrotchko]

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.

Re:Why?

[jquirke]

And this is exactly what the article is talking about. This is the reason why the US is behind in this technology.

There is nothing wrong with this attitude at all, however in other countries this attitude is generally not accepted, and that is the reason they adopt wireless technology more quickly.

No this is not flamebait, I'm just pointing out the obvious.

things are different here

[mrm677]

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.

Re:things are different here

[Anonymous Coward]

Everybody, I mean everybody including your grandparents, already has land-based voice service. This isn't the case in other countries

Pray tell me, what those other countries would be? Everyone here had access to land based voice service. Yet not having a cell phone now is considered somewhat odd.

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?

Carry that Gateway with you wherever you go. You'll find out why. It's amazing how americans seem to think these things happend because 1) their other services are inferior anyway 2) they can't afford to buy computers.

Well, at least you can stop worrying about trying to impress anyone with your knowledge of the world around you.

I did away with my cellphone because I would rather spend my money on DSL at home.

I have both DSL and cell phone. Can you not afford both in the US?

If I had a little more money to spend, a cellphone with basic voice service would suffice

Ah ha! so you don't have the money. Well that explains it then, an average american is too poor to own a cell phone.

Re:things are different here

[mrm677]

Pray tell me, what those other countries would be?

China. Korea. Japan. Ever been to any of them?

Ah ha! so you don't have the money. Well that explains it then, an average american is too poor to own a cell phone

If you really care to know, I went back to graduate school after spending many years as an electrical engineer. Yes, I have cut back on my expenses and try to limit my communications budget to less than $100/month until I re-enter the workforce. You must be a rich American, so excuse me.

(one of the) reality of cell phone Internet access

[ilbrec]

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.

Sprint PCS

[Anonymous Coward]

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/

Re:Sprint PCS

[Alex Zepeda]

McFly? Anyone home??

Geez. Verizon does do CDMA, as do Alltel and a bunch of smaller regional carriers.

At this point Cingular and AT&T are also a bit more fsck'd than VoiceStream as they provide both "straight up TDMA" (IS-136 I believe) and GSM service depending on which market you're in.

- alex

OK, I'm not American...

[BrokenHalo]

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.

Re:OK, I'm not American...

[sheean.nl]

When it's so much easier to sit down at a computer?

Couse you can't use an computer on the move, and carying an 15 2KG laptop around all the time instead of an 2 200G phone isn't an option for most people.

I would use a PDA or a laptop.

Yes, you would use that, be every kid with just a few $ aren't going to buy an $400 device just for sending a few mails if they can do the same with an $50 mobile-phone.

Sidewalk Traffic Jams

[schepers]

"...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.

Re:Our land line service doesn't suck

[roboneal]

Give me a break, have you even been there?

Land line service in Europe, including Scandinavia, is merely adequate by US standards.

In addition, the generally unlimited local calling we have enjoyed for decades does not exist.

No wonder cell phone use took off when compared to crappy government run phone monopolies.

Re:The other reason is that the US is too busy...

[xenolon]

hmmm...very concise statement you have made there, your point a was well thought out and delicately crafted piece of poetry. I think we can all see that your intellect and maturity are head and shoulders above the rest of us. Your mother must be proud.

Re:ha ha

[xenolon]

it's also nice that his/her sig is misspelled, nice touch, don't you think?

ISDN is that much better?

[David_W]

...and in many counties ISDN has replaced POTS as the dominant home phone system. (Yes, ISDN, the rich flexible multi-facited system...

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?

Re:ISDN is that much better?

[squiggleslash]

ISDN carries two digital phone lines plus a control channel, and that third channel, known IIRC as the D channel, is the interesting one. It allows messages to be sent to the equipment on your end out-of-band and includes everything from "What kind of call is this" to the phone number you dial.

Advantages? It really depends on how far you want to go and the complexity of the equipment you buy, and what services you want to get from your provider. Call connections are for all intents and purposes instant. You can get your computer to handle call forwarding and make up flexible rules depending on the incoming number. You can put in a cheap PBX and either route calls to different rooms in the house on the basis of CLI, or subscribe to a service whereby ten numbers will be assigned to your "two" ISDN lines and you can route on that basis. Your fax machine can automatically pick up digital fax calls without needing a seperate number and likewise your computer's TA can do similarly with data calls. Etc. etc. And it's a two way, instant on, up to 128kbps (ok, slower in the US because, for some reason, the US phone standard is 56kbps per channel, so 112kbps becomes the maximum) digital connection. At one point there was much hulabalo about it being used for basic multimedia services but that's died down as they never did figure out the metering with that.

All of which sounds rather boring but it's all stuff along the lines of "If I had it, I wouldn't want to lose it". When I came to the US, I felt the same way about GSM - there was no GSM service where I am now, and suddenly being unable to usefully use a PDA phone (who wants to have to drag such a thing around all of the time), to be able to send calls directly to voicemail or reroute them to numbers programmed in the SIM at the touch of two buttons, etc, became things I missed even when, for the very latter, I didn't use them that often.

It's a very nice system, as big a change to the phone system as the introduction of the RJ-11 jack. It's a shame that, outside of mainland Europe, it was so badly cocked up.

The article totally misses the point.

[money_shot]

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.

Re:The article totally misses the point.

[techwolf]

Can your PC fit in your pocket?

I thought not.

-techwolf

Re:Not only the japanese

[Alan Partridge]

if you're white, you're a European too. don't sweat it, he only said the US mobile 'phone system was shit, not the people. They are, of course, but that's another issue entirely :-]

Re:Not only the japanese

[Alan Partridge]

It's always nice to meet a fan. Watch out for my new book, coming soon.

Text messaging apps how-to

[goldfndr]

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.

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.

Not a substitute for internet, but why bash them?

[kyotolaw]

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.

Re:Our land line service doesn't suck

[roboneal]

Please feel me in on what backwater there is?

Sum it up

[jbridges]

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).

Re:Sum it up

[erikdalen]

5. US has FAR higher ratio of PC owners than Japan. So many features like email/messaging are done from PC.

I don't think this matters much. Finland and Sweden have a higher ratio of PC owners than US and both those countries have far more cell phone owners than US (and Japan).

/Erik

Re:Sum it up

[jbridges]

The article was about Japan vs the US, and specificly about the fancy phone features that seem to be unique in Japan. It went into detail about odd and uniquely Japanese phone fashion culture.

Are phones commonly used in Finland and Sweden as a PC alternative for things like email?

Re:Sum it up

[DataSquid]

I worked in .fi for the first four months of the year. Nope, mobiles aren't really used in place of PCs, but the 9210 Communicator is suprisingly popular given it's huge pricetag. I suspect these people are replacing a laptop with it. The airtime is damn cheap, and the coverage excellent. No monthly plan, incoming SMS is free and low per-minute rates. I think I never spent more than CDN$20 in a month. Crazy prices for new phones, but used can be gotten pretty cheap. Of course, I never really properly got over the sticker shock of seeing a 22%VAT in all prices.

Re:Not only the japanese

[Archfeld]

err how about per minute charges for everything as a real argument..I have no per minute charges for anything defined as local. While I am sure the phone system quality has little difference, the billing system is much better for local calls at least here in the US.
Why am I responding to an AC ? Must be time for a break...

Re:Our land line service doesn't suck

[shepd]

Well, is it free to call next door, or not?

How GSM beat the Euro telemonopolies

[GeorgeTheNorge]

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.

Cell Phone usage

[ericamerica]

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.

Re:Cell Phone usage

[Riktov]

Although I would normally argue against the stereotype of Japanese conformity and herd-mentality, as I did in this previous post, I have to admit there's something to it when it comes to cellphones. Everyone's gotta have the latest DoCoMo or J-Phone with the 64k color screen and built-in camera, which will no doubt be discarded for a trade-up within six months.

Meanwhile I get by fine with a 18-month old PHS with monochrome screen. When I signed up I asked for the cheapest handset, and it was "0 yen".

Trends are much easier to start (and obviously, die) in Japan because everything is so centered around Tokyo. A densely populated city of 10 million has critical mass that the U.S. doesn't.

Re:Cell Phone usage

[Hast]

Everyone's gotta have the latest DoCoMo or J-Phone with the 64k color screen and built-in camera, which will no doubt be discarded for a trade-up within six months.

Meanwhile everyone in the US and Europe /has/ to have a new computer. (for mailing, and stuff, oh and some video thing...) I don't think getting the latest and greatest has much to do about conforming, more like wanting to be hip. (Which is in many ways the opposite of conforming.)

I haven't been to Japan though, so it could be more too it than I think.

Too lazy to read all these damn comments

[c.a.g]

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.

Re:Too lazy to read all these damn comments

[c.a.g]

uh correction i have a headache- your LINE for connection not modem... get off the freaking internet and leave everyone alone.

Re:Too lazy to read all these damn comments

[c.a.g]

Oh and one last thing- as a commisioned sales person- can i just say that americans are too cheap to buy more expensive cell phones? The ericsson t68 is at 299.99 with a $50 mail in rebate and nobody wants to buy it. Everyone wants free, what else can you give me for free, can you give me a discount? if you guys really want nice cell phones- order it from japan or taiwan- you can get them off the black market- (BTW there's about 30,000 v60's running around that were from a stolen truck - they were going for $150.) and have the phone unlocked and use it with cingular/att gsm, or voicestream/tmobile. That's what half of my asian customers do. by the way gsm coverage in the us sucks- is really limited- but growing. 1900 mhz us/900 europe/1800 asia however there's been talk in the industry about the world switching to cdma?- which is what verizon is on.

Re:Not a substitute for internet, but why bash the

[c.a.g]

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.

OH NO!

[Beansack]

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!

Useful Feature: Home alarm - cell phone link

[ashitaka]

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)

in Denmark it's 37 hours a week

[LazyGun]

and here in Denmark is 37 hours a week
and in france it is 35 hours a week.

Ttwo additional reasons that might explain this di

[stephanruby]

I won't repeat some of the good comments already made, so here are two additional reasons that might explain the cell usage difference between the US and the rest of the world.

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

The Nokia 8890 ...

[vrai]

... 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".

Re:Not only the japanese

[stephanruby]

If you want to fault the land line systems of Europe as helping the cellphone markets, you'd better try the marketing.

I wouldn't blame marketing. I'd blame US laws. If our US government gave cell carriers and landline carriers as much freedom as it has given our credit card companies; I'm pretty sure that our phone market would start looking more like Europe's.

Clarification

[CaptainZapp]

EU users don't have to pay for incoming calls.

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.

Re:Clarification

[stephanruby]

This is what US carriers just don't get.

The US cell carriers get this. It's the US government which doesn't get it.

Re:Paying to receive

[Alan Partridge]

but it actively discourages the use of your 'phone. Who fucking cares if it costs your caller a million bucks to get to you? It's their peoblem, your number alone tells them what kind of line it is, if they don't want to make the call, they aren't forced to. Mbile 'phones are PERSONAL 'phones, I've almost given up making private calls on the company landline because of my GSM 'phone's messaging ability - most others have done likewise - and the answerphone has gone the way of the dinosaur here now; why leave a meassage when an SMS is so much more effective and concise?

Re:Ttwo additional reasons that might explain this

[Riktov]

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?"
"By the Starbucks"
"The one across the street?"
"Yeah, I'm crossing, now ... oh, there you are."

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.)

One year in Denmark.

[Per Abrahamsen]

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.

Two reasons why the US lags the rest of the world

[cheeseflan]

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.

You Moron

[Talez]

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.

The biggest problem

[InstantCrisis]

I think the biggest problem with the original news article was that it was written by a reporter.

I like my news from people who understand that of which they write.

InstantCrisis

You've totally missed my point

[Ethelred Unraed]

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

Re:You've totally missed my point

[swillden]

No, I didn't miss your point, you missed mine ;-)

Mine was that the problems you mention aren't really an issue for most people. They have phones, and they deal with the issues. Some (like me) do it by getting an extremely high number of minutes per month and a nationwide no-roaming contract. Others do it by watching their usage and learning their home areas.

But people do have phones and do use them, and the issues you mention aren't really an impediment to usage.

The system in Europe is just so much simpler, and has achieved much higher rates of acceptance

Rate of acceptance is exactly what I was talking about. The deployment issues have to do with the deployment of the next generation of wireless technology. It's slow and it's going to be slow for the reasons I mentioned, which have nothing to do with the acceptance of cellphones by the people (which is quite high).

Real GPRS speeds

[Cato]

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.

Re:Real GPRS speeds

[BrookHarty]

Acutally, 2.8mbit was the speed for the devices. But like everything else it depends on how many channels you use for data. Some devices only use 2-3 channels out of 8. Phones for power reasons only use 1-2. You need a dedicated GPRS modem with muliple channels for more bandwidth.

Dont blame the telco, blame the hardware/phone vendors.

Re:Real GPRS speeds

[Cato]

GPRS is never going to go at 2 Mbps, you must be thinking of UMTS (which will probably not get that high either in reality) or CDMA2000 1xEV-DO/DV.

Use a Palm + GPRS

[Cato]

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.

And what exactly

[CaptainZapp]

has the government to do with extorcionist roaming charges set forth by those carriers?

Re:And what exactly

[stephanruby]

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).

The true cost for that roaming charge is not 30-50 cents. It's more if you count what the other person has to pay to dial the incoming call. In the US, our carriers are not allowed to profit from the incoming call, so the person receiving the call has to pay the entire cost of the call.

Seems obvious

[Sponge Bath]

"reasons for why the Japanese kick Americans' butts..."

With butts that big, how can they miss?

20 minutes??? Thats it?

[agilen]

hmm, thats an interesting point...you only get 20 minutes of talk time? Personally, I have like 400 minutes peak time, and unlimited nights and weekends....and I use a lot of my time. With free nationwide roaming and free long distance, for about $50 a month, and since my cell phone is my only phone, this plan works out pretty well for me.

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?

Just to add insult to injury.

[jotaeleemeese]

The working week in the banking industry in the UK is 35 hours per week.

What's the big deal?

[RalphSlate]

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

Re:Not only the japanese

[Archfeld]

you got a point, there is a huge usage difference between europe, japan and the us. It is probably due to the lack of interoperability between systems here. I can't send an sms message to anyone, only those on my system. There is no incentive for the companies to cooperate :(

Did I miss something?

[Kalewa]

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?

Fees for Calling Cell Phones

[aaarrrgggh]

It's less attractive to have extra fees for calling a cell phone than having the reciever pay. The thing that kills me is making an international call to a cell phone.

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!

Why are these articles all the same?

[LuYu]

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:

Japan's use of wireless phones has frequently been dismissed as superficial fun, a phenomenon driven by teenage girls, Hello Kitty screensavers and an endless variety of ring tones.

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).

Funny, my Verizon phone is CDMA

[Mr2001]

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.

Re:Funny, my Verizon phone is CDMA

[Sycraft-fu]

Yes GSM. We have the phones here at work. AT&T and most of the others also have old CDMA/TDMA service but they offer real, honest to goodness GSM service. The onyl difference is the frequency, it's still GSM.

Not always true

[Snover]

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.

One big reason, I think

[AndyChrist]

Fewer....people....drive.

60 hrs?

[sitturat]

Jesus!

Here in Germany we have a 37.5 hr working week.

Re:60 hrs?

[Joel Ironstone]

Yah, and you get 3 more weeks a year vacation than we do in north america. Life is shit sometimes

Subscriber Density

[IncohereD]

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.

Nice theory, shame about the facts

[metamatic]

What you seem to be ignoring is that Americans work longer hours than any other country in the world, including Japan.