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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."
Perhaps the U.S. should look at how the Europeon Union did it. All the same standard = more money.
Or perhaps it's 50% more people and a 400% higher population density.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Old habits will die hard. I think Europeans will continue to use the phone for messages rather than as a surrogate for being there.
It also makes the infrastructure a lot cheaper, since you're covering less area.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
Wow, more EU residents have cells than US residents do. With the differences they're citing, it's no wonder, seeing as America generally has a better POTS than Europe. In the US, it costs just a little bit of money to have unlimited local and incoming calls on a land-line, plus it never has an error, ever, of any sort. So, it's not much of a surprise that the US has slightly lower cell uptake.
"...The article mainly discusses mobile phone usage, though."
Well, that's the thing, then, isn't it? In the US, dirt is pretty cheap and plentiful, so land lines and wires that require poles to by strung up everywhere have predominated where the relative scarcity of space in European and Japanese cities has forced a much higher adoption rate for mobile technologies.
Tell me if I'm wrong, eh?
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
"Wouldn't the higher population density cause less phone calls to be made?"
No.
"Why call when you can walk next store or just find them down at the pub?"
Why walk next store or down to the pub to try to find them, when you could just ring them and be certain they're there?
America's landline system was superior to Europe's. This was partly due to the fragmentation of the European market and partly due to the socialized phone companies in most countries. The Europeans did not make the same mistakes with wireless, resulting in a better quality of serverice for wireless. In general Europeans jumped to wireless faster because they were disatisfied with their landline service, compared to Americans. This has given Europe an initial edge, however in the long run I believe the US approach is better. Standardization has short term advantages, but in the long term it is more important to promote technological development.
You know, the population density argument can only be taken so far. Yes, South Korea has an advantage over the US in general for implementing a new system. It's not just population density there: the simply fact that it's small does the trick.
Now move to Europe. If they are to implement standards as a whole, they need to reach all of the European rural areas, just how it hasn't been reached in the US. As the article explains, those areas have been reached there. Whether you're in no-mans land in Scotland, Spain, Italy, Germany, Malta, Lithuania etc... you're connected.
Again my point is that population density doesn't matter much-- land area itself matters more. While a higher population in rural areas (high population rural areas?) would increase incentive for a company to spread there, that only matters so far. Every bit of land you don't cover, even where the population density is zero, will make you lose customers in the more populated areas. I'm from a rural area in Maine. I live in upstate NY. I did not buy a Verizon plan because it did not service my Maine location. Think I'm the only one? Nah.
Oh yeah oh yeah. Poland too.
Actually, I wonder which technology uses more energy if you account for the infrastructure too.
Digging and closing holes to fit many many miles of telephone wire will lead to a fair amount of fuel being used. Also, the copper wires have to be produced which is quite energy intensive too.
I have no idea on the total energy and monetery requirement to operate a mobile vs a land-based service, but I do have a gut feeling that the mobile service will be cheaper to construct in both aspects.
Of course, there is quite a lot of pre-existing landline infrastructure, but that will have to be replaced some day, and new infrastructure is also required when new areas are built up. If you'd have to start from scratch, the mobile solution seems cheaper and faster to construct... many emerging nations even skip most of the landline phase.
It's nothing new, all this has been well known throughout the industry for years. Two points that are missing from the Reuter's text are VoIP and Wi-Fi. Both phenomena are a direct result of America's (more) free market approach. And in both cases the explosion goes on in the US with Europe slowly catching on. It's overall cheaper to communicate if you are in the US then in Europe. So, dear Americans, don't whine, you've got a better deal anyway even without fancy ringtones ($2 each) or other stupid stuff like that.
The funny thing is that Europe's less area has one infrastructure. Where as America's large area has multiple infrastructures. Which makes the American solution even more expensive.
And I'd like to know what magic allows a phone to work at "the bottom of a salt mine in Poland." It doesn't matter whether you use GSM or a mix of three different standards, it's difficult to push a signal through tons of rock (which was alluded to the problem on "trains", which I take are really subway trains).
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
This article is BS. It basically says "Americans get more minutes of talking for less money than Europeans, but don't use the call management features as well, because the US government has only recently started leaving telcos alone, while Europe's governments have meddled with their telcos". What does any of that have to do with the US GSM dropping calls all the time? How about the unreliability of US callerID, because there's no universal inter-telco standard?
Consider the effects of US market saturation with landlines before mobiles appeared, compared to Europe's many "first time callers" without any phones when mobiles were first offered? How about Europeans many languages, in which people can more easily communicate with short SMS messages, rather than demanding interactive multilingual voice calls? Or the role mobile phones play in teenage consumer cultures, in car-hungry America vs. poorer teenage Europe?
No, none of those answers would blame the government for interfering with culture. Some of them might even blame corporations for bad service! And when you get your info from a London telco marketer and an FCC PR flack, why would you bother to validate that solid-gold wisdom "from the horse's mouth"?
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make install -not war
Probably overstated.
If a cellphone saves a trip to somewhere - say back to the store to get a forgotton item - then energy is quite clearly saved.
Mobile communications are critical in reducing the amount of energy consumed per GDP. FedEx, Construction workers, Employees in large factories - all use mobiles to be more effecient - which inevitably saves energy.
Your Greenpeace instincts are right - your data is wrong.
AIK
Are we to assume that you posted this message from a new ultra-low power computer, as apposed to one of the ones the rest of us are using which guzzle watts by the hundreds? Or maybe you're just a hypocrite.
It encourages cuthroat competetion, encouraging people with cellphones to not self-delude themselves into thinking that most calls are incoming. (By definition, for every minute of outgoing call, there must be a minute of incoming.) This encourages businesses to keep prices very low.
Also, adding on a special billing infrastructure for sender-pays, even for local calls, would have been a hard sale when the cellphones were first being produced. Since local calls are free in the US. Making it cost the caller to call early-adoptors on a cellphone is going to be a non-starter --- especially when the value of the cellphone is for the recipient.
Besides, why use a cellphone over a landline unless it has more value for you --- ergo, worth paying to both receive and send calls.
someone once told me they hate the term "land-line" but is there a more descriptive term?
Sure, there are any number of words. You can call it a telephone line, for starters. Everybody understands that.
POTS is clear to me but not obvious to others
Avoid acronyms. Always. It's just a good rule of thumb. Once your grandmother knows an acronym, it's okay to use it: DVD, ATM. Until then, use actual words. Don't say "POTS." Say "telephone line."
I have no idea on the total energy and monetery requirement to operate a mobile vs a land-based service, but I do have a gut feeling that the mobile service will be cheaper to construct in both aspects.
;)
That's my gut feeling as well. Which is why I wonder why GSM calls are (still) an order of magnitude more expensive than POTS calls?
Just like CDs never became cheaper than LPs when the technology matured. And where's my damn flying car?
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
DVD and ATM are not acronyms
Least useful nitpick ever.
It is completely acceptable to use an acronym.
It is only acceptable to use acronyms which are in common usage. All others should be avoided.
POTS is far more descriptive than "telephone line"
Typical nerd rationalization. "It doesn't matter if no one understands me. I'm more precise!"