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."

Comments

And the telcos had to learn it ...

[foobsr]

... already a couple of years ago when designing mobile phones (actually, they did quite a bit of market resarch on that - I participated (as a researcher)).

CC.

Aha

[chrispl]

This does a little bit to explain why my friends in the US often say "SMS? Whats SMS?".

I just recently started seeing commercials for ringtones on American TV, while it seems like 90% of European TV commercials have been for annoying ringtones for years now! I find it funny that on the American versions of the "Jamster" (Jamba in Germany) adverts they have to have a short blurb explaining what an SMS is.

Re:Aha

[Anonymous Coward]

I discovered the same thing when they started airing American Idol here in Finland. The depth and care taken by the host in explaining how to send a text message seems almost ridiculous when compared to the Finnish tv. All they say here is "Send a text message to this number."

Re:Aha

[Unknown Lamer]

The lack of knowledge of what SMS is can partially be blamed on the cell phone companies--none of them call SMS SMS, they call them text messages. It is less confusing for the masses I guess. People don't send you an SMS, they text you.

It's worse for MMS since Multi-Media Message or even Picture Message (Picture Message is what most of the providers that offer MMS call it) takes way more time to type on a cell phone than MMS...

Re:Aha

[mo^]

welp, thanks for all the teasing guys. finally got my arse into gear to look for better dsl at a better price (im on virgin adsl right now)

just found bulldogdsl new offering - 4mbps + phone line for £40./..

enyone heard any good/bbad about this>??

Re:Aha

[Anonymous Coward]

Something missed in the whole description of SMS is that SMS is quite precise as long as the user doesn't use that annoying short hand way of writting things down.

Let's take an example... the following SMS message is sent:

MEET YOU AT 14:25, 15 Glastonbury St.

Is short and whoever gets it can keep it in the phone's memory to re-read it again.

The equivalent in voice talk would take at least 3 or 4 phone calls because both people would still feel the need to argue, one of the persons would have forgotten what time it was, then more calls about what address it was again and why again.

And finally the last call at 14:45 when one person would be saying "where on Montgomery St are you? I've been waiting for 20 minutes and there is no number 50!"

That is mostly why I prefer SMS over voice for cases like these.

People talk on mobile phones, yes, but they talk so much they never pay attention.

Re:Aha

[boster]

Also, bear in mind that European carriers were required to adhere to one standard (GSM) and that their networks interoperate. As a result, ever since SMS became available everywhere, European customers never had to work about what network the recipient of the SMS was on -- it would work regardless of that. In the US, when SMS was introduced (under a zillion different brand names, I might add) it usually only worked between phones on the same network. That has changed -- most (all?) US networks will now receive each others SMS's. But it's another reason the feature was basically ignored for years. This was certainly the case five years ago -- many payphones in Switzerland even had keyboards for sending SMS's, while in the States it was effectively crippled. On another note, some commenters have pointed out that SMS is no longer cheaper than a minute of airtime in Europe, and that airtime minutes are cheaper in the US. This is true. However, there are still times when SMS may be as/more effective than voice. One can unobtusively use SMS in places (meetings, loud bars, for example) where a voice call would have to be ignored. "One minute" of voice can easily stretch on if the receiver must leave a room to talk, or if you have 30 seconds of "can you hear me now" (common in the US). Also, if you have addresses, numbers, directions, etc in your messages, it may be easier to receive an SMS than to transcribe notes (for example, in the car).

Enough Cell Phones!!!!

[JJ]

Considering that the actual wattage usage of a cell phone is more than 2 and a half times as great as the same connection via landline, I find the increase in cell phones hardly something to be admired.

Just my ex-Greenpeace side kicking through though.

Re:Revenue

[Eminence]

• Perhaps the U.S. should look at how the Europeon Union did it. All the same standard = more money.

More money where? In corporate accounts or in people's wallets? Because the fact is that we all here envy American's cheap calls. I would love to call more, but I always feel the counter ticking in the background. And telco is a de-facto oligopoly all over Europe, with state owned companies in almost all countries and heavily regulated GSM operators who hardly compete since they know no new players would be allowed on the market.

But will europe stay ahead?

[famebait]

It just annoys me that if governments hadn't got so greedy with the UMTS licenses and grabbed all the money that should have gone into deployment, we'd probably be even further ahead, maybe even ahead of japan too.

Let's just hope they've learned something for the next time round: tax them _after_ the money is made, don't cripple things by charging it all upfront, while everyone else catches up.

Lousy article

[MBraynard]

U.S. cell phones sputter and fail in an apartment near the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, a U.S. agency created to set consistent standards, and in ranch houses in the Los Angeles suburbs. A land line is a necessity... Europeans can skip fixed lines altogether. Why bother? A GSM works nearly everywhere..."

This has absolutly nothing to do with GSM versus other networks but with network coverages.

Americans have made voicemail a way of life, where it often replaces the busy signal. A conversation can be supplanted by voice mail exchanges. Europeans often skip voicemail, although they have sophisticated versions. Their mobiles automatically send a note saying "1 missed call," and tell them who called. People call back even without a message.

Funny, I've had a cell phone in the US going back to 1997 and this feature was on the first one I owned with AT&T. It was also on the second and third one I owned with Sprint, and the fourth one I owned with T-Mobile.

--Americans traditionally have paid to receive mobile phone calls and tend to be less free about giving out cell phone numbers.

This has less to do with the regulatory environment than with call screening and the consideration that if you are calling me on business, I'd rather you talk to my receptionist first.

Overall, this article featured a few stats that could have barely populated the bottom right graphic of the USA Today Money section and stretched it out into a three page article. Fluff journalism strikes again.

Re:GSM is so great?

[Unknown Lamer]

TDMA uses less power. CDMA is better when people are spread out. TDMA is better in heavily populated areas. 3G (UMTS) uses W-CDMA which is not the same kind of CDMA that Verizon and friends use.

It doesn't matter if W-CDMA was developed by an American company because we won't get widespread UMTS coverage until around ten years after the second coming of Christ. Damn Europeans and their superior cellular technology.

Suprised Me....

[Chi Hsuan Men]

When I studied aboard in Ireland (Spring, 02') I was absolutely amazed at how mobile phones kept people connected and governed most young peoples' social lives.

Personally, I was very anti-mobile phone when I arrived there, but I was told that you really needed to have one if you wanted to be at all socially active. My first weekend there was a home stay with a family in rural Limerick (rural meaning they lived on a farm, had cattle, but no shower). The entire family had mobile phones, even their 10 year-old daughter.

The flat I stayed in (with 6 other Irish students) didn't even have a land line, (ironically enough, it was wired for LAN; however, I was the only person with a laptop) everyone used mobile phones. The crazy thing was, they rarely actually TALKED to each other, they simply sent text messages back and forth. Most of their plans were pre-paid, so, to get the most use out of their Euros, they would simply text each other.

The funny thing is, now that I'm back home and with a phone, despite my x amount of minutes a month for free and free "in calling", I still text message all of my friends.

I guess I'm just proud of my l337 phone typing skillz I accrued while abroad.

Re:Suprised Me....

[Anonymous Coward]

There's been enormous progress in Ireland. In 1985, I spent a week in Carna, and you had to go through three manual operators to get out of the country.

Electronic switching was just being deployed, but the outside plant was in such bad shape it had to be replaced to work reliably with the new CO gear. Dublin had been upgraded, but the countryside was still suffering with terrible service.

Telex, though, had automatic switching, and Telex current loop circuits would work over bad lines, so people would get Telex machines at home. I heard a mother tell her daughter "when you get to ...'s house, send me a telex".

Re:Useless Features

[Leo McGarry]

Actually, you hit on the one thing that I would like my phone to be able to do that it doesn't presently do: More easily store data.

I'd like my phone to appear on my desktop the way an external hard drive or other mass-storage device does whenever I get into proximity with my computer. I'd like to be able to drag files to it to copy them to the phone over Bluetooth. I'd like text messages in the phone's memory to show up as notes on the phone's interface so I can more conveniently do things like storing driving directions. It's possible to store memos on the phone now, of course, but it requires a program and it's a pain in the rear.

And I'd like it to have a gigabyte of memory instead of 2 MB or whatever.

I'd happily trade the games, the camera, the little Internet browser thingy and the ass-ugly interface "themes" for features like those.

Re:Well, Duh

[Leo McGarry]

I can't remember the last time I even saw a telephone booth, much less used one. Everybody has a mobile phone.

(The six-out-of-ten figure the article quotes must count grammar-school kids, the elderly, criminals in prison and dead people. Because seriously, everybody between the ages of 13 and 60 has a mobile phone.)

Re:Revenue

[Eminence]

• 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.

Sorry, but they have not been sold. They have been merely privatized, which means that they have been converted into corporations with shares traded on the stock market. However, many of the shares still belong to the states either directly or indirectly (belong to other companies where the states have some share, in many cases majority). As an example in France representatives of the government are directly on the management board of France Telecom, presumably "private" enterprise now. And some shares belong to Aerospatiale which is an aerospace corporation heavily controlled by the state. The same model has been followed in Spain (Telefonica), Germany (Deutsche Telekom) or Poland (TP). In all those countries the concept of "national operator" exists which means that market is regulated in such a way as to ensure that no real competitor to the "national operator" would be allowed to grow. I don't know how it looks elsewhere, but I suspect that the situation is very similar.

So, on the surface you can argue that these are not state owned. However, operational reality is that these are de-facto politically protected monopolies in their respective markets. Now, these are merging into bigger behemoths on the European scale, again with help from politicians on all levels.

Result? Much higher costs of calls over fixed lines, expensive Internet access.

• 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.

We could argue here about the meaning of the adjective "heavy". From my point of view heavy regulation is for example the fact that in some cases (e.g. Poland, as far as I know also Czech Rep.) licenses issued (effectively agreements between the state and the operator) included a promise from the state that for a given period of time no new cellular operators would be allowed to enter the market. Has anyone in unregulated, free market that kind of peace of mind? Even Microsoft, so many times called a monopoly, doesn't have this kind of protection.

Also, from the point of view of marketing departments of a GSM operator playing in such a market its competitive options are very limited. All other (two or three) operators use the same technology, same phones with same capabilities over the same bands with very similar coverage. You can cut prices only a bit, because doing so dramatically is out of question - it would create a price war on which everybody would loose in the end - and the margins are huuuuuge, believe me. So the only way you can try do differentiate from your competitors is by creating various add-ons - hence the premium SMS-es, which serve as micro-payment medium for many services, ringtones and images etc.

Re:Of course! Different costs

[digitalchinky]

Early on they used to charge you for receiving a call in Australia - that model never took off fortunately.

In the Philippines (where I am now) to send an SMS costs about 0.5 US cents. Very cheap, though the moment you make a voice call, it hits your wallet hard.

SS7 has its negative side, they also hit you for the time spent waiting for the call to be answered. 20 rings to answer, that'll be an extra 100 peso thanks - just for listening to the tone. I suspect they do this all over the world though.

Re:Bah...

[Gruneun]

And these two things are different how?

For example, an efficient car that runs entirely on fossil fuels versus an innefficient car that runs entirely on solar power. Of course, at that point, one's interpretation of efficiency would be relative.

Article has Omissions up the wazoo

[bcnstony]

I'm an American living in Spain, and the gist of this article is familiar to me, but the author is missing a lot. European coverage may be more, and a larger percent might own them, but they don't use their phones nearly as much because everything is ridiculously expensive. The article also says

They pay nothing to receive mobile phone calls in their home country.

The result of this? MUCH higher charges to the caller when calling a mobile number vs a land line. Call a Spanish landline from the US - 4 cents a minute. Call a Spanish Cell Phone from the US - 30 cents a minute. Call from within Spain and you pay about the same price, and same difference.

What the US calls Number portability, where you move a number from a land-line to mobile, is impossible here, and will remain so indefinately.

When I explain to Spaniards that I had nights and weekends free, Verizon to Verizon calls for free, and 25 minutes a day of talktime for 40 Euros a month, they crap themselves. I don't care how many text messages they might send, the system here is years (or Dollars, depending on your viewpoint) behind.

What I can't believe the article didn't mention was VOIP. I'm not talking about Spanish companies offering VOIP, but US Companies competing internationally, offering local numbers everywhere. I can't wait for Vonage to come in and crush stodgy old Telefonica. And it's starting to happen. I can get a Vonage account for 15 dollars a month, and add a Spanish number to my account for $5 more a month. Spaniards won't know or care who I get my service from - they'll just call the Spanish number and I'll pick up the phone. Outgoing calls to Spanish numbers, both land-line and mobile, is about the same through Telefonica or Vonage. Calling anywhere else in the world is cheaper on Vonage. The savings to hassle ratio isn't enough for most Spanish Companies yet, but it's a matter of time.

One final aside - one of my consulting clients was an elderly businessman formerly in charge of running ITT (International Telephone and Telegraph) in Spain, as a partner to Telefonica - Spain's AT&T, if you will. During the Franco era, when state monopoly meant state monopoly, getting a new landline to a business took - get this - 16 months. John told me the story of how an old fraternity brother called him up and explained that he was opening a GE branch office in Spain, and they needed a telephone line. John, perhaps having more power in the phone business than anyone else in Spain, used all his abilities and got the lead time for a phone line down to 6 weeks. Admitedly, customer service has improved since the 60's, but not much.

Re:Revenue

[Zocalo]

Even the most telephone-addicted businessman can get 5,000 minutes or more for less than $100 a month.

Yes, but you are still effectively paying $100 (or so) per month for those calls, whether you make them or not. Just because it's called "phone rental" or whatever, doesn't mean that's where the money goes. From the telcos point of view, it's the average that matters, so while theoretically everyone could max out and pay 2c per minute, in practice it's going to be higher than that.

The other side of things, is how many people *really* look at their usage to see whether they have the best plan for their needs instead of going with the herd. For instance, I used to have a mobile on a great monthly plan at ~£20/month with a sizeable number of free minutes and SMS messages included, after which they would be billed at a given rate. All well and good, except that I never used up my allowance since I would always use face-to-face, landline/VoIP and finally email/IM in preference to my mobile and the bulk of my mobile use was people calling/SMSing me. I've since switched to a pay-as-you-go plan which has cost me less than £20 so far this year, sure it's very "teenage-girl" style mobile telephony, but that £200/annum saving still buys quite a lot of beer! :)

Re:Useless Features

[mollymoo]

I'd like my phone to appear on my desktop the way an external hard drive or other mass-storage device does whenever I get into proximity with my computer.

My Siemens S55 does this. The entire filesystem (texts, pictures, contacts, java apps, settings, ringtones...) is browseable over bluetooth, serial or USB and you can drag & drop. Some Siemens phones have an SD/MMC slot, so you can stick a gig in if you like. You do need software on the host PC though (unless you use BT and OBEX, but that's not quite the same).