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Reuters On Telephone Cultures
mamladm writes "Reuters has an interesting article about the Differences in Telephone Cultures between the US and Europe.
It describes how the different regulatory frameworks have created distinct cultures on how telephones are being used in the US versus Europe. The article mainly discusses mobile phone usage, though."
...here!. Not too hard, is it?
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
I'm a born and bred American, lived there until I was 20. I've lived in Germany for the last three and a half years. I've made some trips back to the states, a few months here and there.
In the US, for us common rabble, it's "Do you have a cellphone?" Whereas, in Europe, it's "What's your number?" Most people assume that if you're giving them a telephone number, it's your cell phone number. And they will not ask you if you are capable of receiving SMS, they will assume that you are. It is more common in Europe for someone to have a cell and no landline than it is for someone to have a landline and no cell.
Specialization is for insects. -Heinlein
That's why in the U.S. it's been illegal for the telemarketers to call you on a cell if you also had a landline. They had to call the landline number. Now that we have a national 'Do Not Call' list for telemerketers, it's easier to give up your land line, knowing you won't get a bazillion telemarketing calls if you list your cell on the DNC list.
To the best of my knowledge, most member states have sold their telephone companies - certainly, the big ones (UK, France, Germany) have done so. Off the top of my head, I'm not aware of a country in the EU with a state owned telephone company - I'm not saying one doesn't exist, I just don't know of one.
The "heavily regulated GSM operators" aren't that heavily regulated in most juristictions, and most countries have at least four nationwide mobile phone operators (two on 900MHz, two on 1800MHz), with 3G operators opening in addition to these. Far from knowing no new player could enter the market, most operators are putting up the auctions of 3G frequencies at the moment that's resulting in precisely that - new players being given an opportunity. The original opening of PCN (1800MHz) by the UK government in the early nineties was specifically to create an opportunity for new operators to emerge, and the rest of Europe followed suit.
The situation isn't directly comparable to the US - I have a choice of about five or six operators where I live in Florida, but "nationwide" is still a relative term. Verizon, Cingular, Sprint PCS, T-Mobile, and Nextel (soon to become part of SPCS) would probably all describe themselves as nationwide (and would probably be the only US operators who reasonably could do so), but all have massive holes in their coverage maps, frequently omitting entire, relatively populous, counties while covering the neighbours. It's only because of transparent roaming and operators gobbling each other up we're seeing anything approaching usability in these networks. Sprint PCS is rapidly becoming a service network for operators like Verizon, Nextel and SPCS are merging, T-Mobile is a prime takeover target, probably for Cingular.
Outside of that four and a half, there's a bunch of ultralocal operators who seem to live in some era where mobile phones are just cordless phones with a longer range, frequently covering single cities, for all intents and purposes aimed at an entirely different application.
I don't want to suggest everything's great in Europe, it isn't. Operators in the US are generally now offering better plans. Much of this is because of the monetary culture that's different between the countries rather than regulatory. Europeans tend to be interested in spending as little as possible, resulting in large numbers of users choosing $20-30 a month "plans" (frequently pay-as-you-go) with very few minutes. Americans are more interested in trouble free/worry free usage, and have to pay for incoming calls, so tend to spend more, which gives the operators disproportionally more money after they've bought their infrastructure, so allowing them to offer more bundled minutes and features like unlimited calling.
But that's entirely seperate from regulatory pressures.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
"This is not surprising. European technology is waaaay ahead of american technology. That's because the Americans are run by the bean-counters (because of the obsession with the bottom-line), who are never on the forefront of technology, while in Europe, people in charge have a more broad education than bean-counters who, there, are mere lackeys instead of the feared rulers they are in the US."
I suggest you read the article.
SMS has never caught in the US because it costs less to actually talk on your phone in the US than in Europe.
From the article
--Americans traditionally have paid to receive mobile phone calls and tend to be less free about giving out cell phone numbers.
--American mobile subscribers get an allotment of minutes for a monthly fee and competition led to packages offering free nationwide calls nights and weekends.
--Europeans buy more limited packages -- especially geographically. Despite investigations by the European Commission mobile phone companies in Europe charge as much as one euro per minute to send or receive calls abroad.
Yea you may get to talk to anyone in your country but the countries are smaller than many states in the US.
The article also goes on to talk about how much more profitable cell service is in Europe than in the US. Seems like bean counters to me.
The Bottom line is in the US you get few "features" and less total coverage of the total country. One the plus you get a lot more geographical area as local and it costs much less per call to make actual calls. SMS is popular in the EU because it is CHEAPER then making a call. In the US SMS is not popular because it is MORE EXPENSIVE than making a voice call. Ring tones? Gee let me pay so I can have a song instead of a ring on my phone? This is a great leap forward? It seems to me that the EU customers are paying a lot more for phone service than the US customers are.
Sure they have a bunch of added features "ohh... Ring Tones". But to actually make a call costs a lot more.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Uh dude, Europe the continent is pretty damn huge too and my family can use the same phone w/o roaming charges anywhere from Norway to North Africa from Spain the the Ukraine. That's about twice the number of people as the US or didn't they tell you that at Rush school?