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Cell Phones: Japan vs. the United States
Stirland writes "Cell phones/Connectivity: Japan and the United States: Worlds Apart on Wireless. Interesting analysis of the economic and cultural reasons for why the Japanese kick Americans' butts when it comes to wireless cell phone technology and usage."
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
It's simple: in Japan, Europe, Australia, New Zealand etc... you only pay to call someone, not to receive a call. I understand most Americans are reluctant to give out their cellphone numbers because you pay to receive calls as well.
This is stupid.
Also, the US has a large culture of pager use that just hasn't taken off anywhere else in the world. We have cellphones with SMS capability to do the same thing. Forget combining the two products - they're already combined.
There are five stages to owning a mobile phone: This presumes you've got one to make use of it, not to just so you can say you have one.
1: Buy the phone. Many people think this is the only thing they have to do. It's not.
2: Carry the damned thing with you everywhere. Most fall over at this point because they do things like only carry the phone to work or whatever - if it's not with you AT ALL TIMES then people won't get used to reaching you on it. This stage is tricky because you carry it everywhere even when it doesn't ring, and it won't for ages until:
3: Don't be afraid to give out your number to everyone. EVERYONE. Once you've done this you'll actually start receiving calls - it's only at this point you'll be seeing the benefit of having the phone.
4: Don't be afraid to MAKE calls on your phone. The more you use it the more you'll be contacted on your phone.
I am a leaf on the wind
The biggest reason why cellphones have not taken off in the US in comparison to Europe, at least, is simply price -- or in particular the *way* they are priced.
In Germany (and, I believe, in most other European countries), cellphones are charged exactly the same way a fixed-line phone is charged. You pay a basic monthly fee, and you pay per second or 10 seconds for calls you make. There are no "airtime" fees or other gotchas. The rates are also easy to understand, more or less -- for a call within your provider's network, you pay a "local" call; calls within your country are "long-distance"; and calls outside of your country are international. Quite rational.
My provider also has the added perk that I can choose either five fixed-line numbers or one area code to get discounted calls. So if I choose Berlin's area code -- 030 -- I can call anyone in Berlin for a much lower rate.
In comparison, my family in the States has a blizzard of confusing fee schedules, with plenty of "gotchas" built-in.
Another problem is the lack of standards across the States. Europe has the GSM standard, and your phone will work across nearly all of Europe. The USA has no such common standard, and even if you're smart enough to get a dual-band or tri-band cellphone, you get hammered on the roaming charges in the States.
I'm actually not that much of a fan of cellphones-as-portals, though -- WAP seems such an abortion of an idea and so far navigating the Web with a keypad is just a non-starter (and, like the article says, Americans tend to drive and not take public transport, so they have less time to fiddle with the things). But it is often a nice option to have. I use it to check what movies are playing (and to reserve tix), check train times (OK, that's not too useful in the States ;-P ) and sometimes to check the news, but that's about it -- I would never buy anything with it, because the technology is so far rather insecure.
i-Mode was also recently introduced in Germany by my provider (they licensed the technology from NTT-DoCoMo), so Europe is close to Japan's level now, though it remains to be seen if i-Mode and other 2.5G technologies take off in Europe (let alone 3G).
GPRS and HSCSD are also well-established, so I can go online at 56K digital with my Nokia and Powerbook via infrared and OS X (haven't gotten it to work with Linux, tho). GPRS is *very* expensive, though -- 2.5 Eurocents per 1K of data -- but HSCSD is fairly reasonable (why the difference, I don't know -- both give you the same speed AFAIK).
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
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.
My Sig: SEGV
Japan has a much higher population density than the US, so it's easier for the providers. You don't need to erect as many towers to cover the same number of people.
So in other words, Americans have far more erections than the Japanese, but when they have an erection they do it with more people.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
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.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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).