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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!
... 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.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
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
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.
What post? The one you're carrying inside your rusty innards!
Old habits will die hard. I think Europeans will continue to use the phone for messages rather than as a surrogate for being there.
Wouldn't the higher population density cause less phone calls to be made? Why call when you can walk next store or just find them down at the pub?
US Population - 295 Million
EU Population - 455 Million
Evolution or ID?
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.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
I know this much - I once saw a cell phone ad where the guys are at a restaurant and the one uses the pepper grinder built into his phone. Then the ad cuts in, with the narrator asking, "Want a phone with the features you need?" before breaking into a list of just utterly useless garbage. Games, ringtones, a shitty camera, etc. My only thought was that the pepper mill would have been far more useful.
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.
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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.
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.
"...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?
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
Not that the article specifically claims it to be news, but it seems like people are now just realizing the huge differences between America and Europe in this area.
I'm 25. When I was 15, in high school, there were already a significant number of kids in my class with cell phones. Sure, the rest of us were talking behind their backs about how silly they were to spend so much money on something so useless, but that's 10 years ago.
Nowadays I doubt the number of kids in that particular high school (age 13+) without a cell phone even reaches double digits.
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
The article seems to hint at too many options available preventing standardization.
But when the dust WILL finally settle, who will be further along?
I mean look at how Minitel delayed Internet acceptance in parts of europe. An old, entrenched "standard"
Minitel is primitive.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
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.
Paying to recieve calls and SMSs must make telesales people even more loved and admired!
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
The economics of the situation. Basic supply and demand theory would indicate that Europe's overall usage of mobile phones would be lower.
The reason being that prices are higher in Europe, not significantly, but enough to influence some sections of the market. Its the same with many luxuries really (cars, dvds, designer clothing etc).
Despite the fact economies are growing in the Old World, we can't seem to reflect this in lower prices.
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.
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.
sudo ergo sum
[1] The sole exception being if I were to take a UK SIM card to Spain in which case I would be billed for the international part of the call should a friend back in the UK call me. This is why the practice of buying an additional SIM when travelling abroad within the EU mentioned in the article is so popular.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Somehow the figure seems a little small, remembering all those cell phones which are currently on, waiting for a call and depleting their batteries.
Underholdning.info
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.
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.
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.
Duh! Missed a "for example" out of my footnote in the parent post. You could, of course, substitute any pair of EU countries for Spain and the UK.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
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?
Guess I just know my friends are always at home or the pub. Sometimes I forget not everyone has lazy drunk friends like I do.
Evolution or ID?
Perhaps, you should picture the person on the landline sitting on a plastic chair, in an air-conditioned house, with the lights on. I, on the other hand, prefer to use my mobile phone only while sitting in a bird-sanctuary, on a weathered rock, warmed by the sun's rays.
Besides, energy consumption shouldn't be nearly as great a concern as the process by which that energy has been generated.
"Europeans traditionally pay by the minute for both fixed lines and mobiles."
Knew some about GSM and stuff, but had no idea about this! Guess this isn't something you'd be as likely to find out about as a tourist.
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.
HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
Or or could be the insane roaming charges. Yes, your phone works everywhere, but if you're SIM is from a German carrier and you drive a few hours to Austra, suddenly you're paying 2 euro a minute. No wonder SMS (at .50 per message) is used more often.
.20 per minute more on *your* bill.
Also, if you call a cell phone in Europe, expect to pay at least
Many things are right in Europe (phone works everywhere and the SIM card moves your service and numbers to a new phone), but the pricing structure stinks compared to U.S. plans.
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.
I noticed a variation in phone culture in the US. It's sort of a difference in the "handshaking" part at the beginning of the call. It happened when I started dating this girl from Wisconsin. Apparently they have a different protocol up there.
Here's standard protocol in Texas (she says it's anywhere in the south):
Ring
Recipient: Hello?
Caller: Hey [insert recipient's name] it's [caller's name].
Recipient: Oh, hey, what's up?
Begin Conversation.
It's that last reply that she would always leave out. It doesn't happen anymore now that I pointed it out to her, but I'd call and say "Hey, it's me" and then there'd be this weird silence while I waited for her to acknowledge before I began the conversation, and she'd just be waiting for the conversation to start. Strange, huh?
GSM != TDMA. GSM is a particular standard; it happens to use TDMA in the current generation, and will use CDMA in the next. The benefit is in the standardization, not in the particular multiplexing method used.
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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.
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.
Cheaper calls? Not if you have seen the over-your-limit charges the telcos slap you with. $5 a minute? not unheard of, just because you chatted more than your 500 minutes per month
I've used mobile phones since the late 70's, first the huge mastodonts in a small suitecase, plugged into your cars lighter, with an antenna on the car roof, via the first hand helds in the 80's up to the new ones we have today. Oh yes, I lived in Europe during those early years.. The American system is IMHO, not very good as you have to pay for incoming calls and whatnot. paying per minute used is much more economic for the consumer and ensures that you will get no overage charges, resulting in a second mortgage to pay the bill...
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
Not *really* (and we're pretty much down to 2 infrastructures now, TDMA is just about dead and buried).
See, infrastructure really needs to be measured on a user-area context; yes, covering the area multiple times costs more, but covering twice as many users on the same infrastructure costs more too. Single infrastructure is cheaper, but by no means is the American solution 2 or 3 times as expensive - its a lot closer to 1.3-1.4x as expensive (for the current 2-standard situation).
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
I'm an American, and I don't get charged to send or receive SMS messages on my phone. Some plans do charge for SMS. That's what the article is attempting to convey; the free market lets consumers pick the plans they want based on features, costs and technologies.
The USA has been behind in the uptake of mobile, compared to Europe, mainly due to the fact that the different mobile phone standards used payment schemes where the receiver payed for incomming calls. Consumers thought twice before purchasing a mobile phone because they didn't want to pay for incomming BS calls from direct marketing companies.
In Europe, not bothered by strange payment models, mobile was nothing short of a small revolution. This in turn resulted in differences between mobile phoning behavior.
The lack of a dense, highly used mobile network like Europe has is considered to be a strong driving force behind WiFi though. Therefor agencies like Forrester think that WiFi will develop quicker and bigger in the states, although there isn't much of a proof, yet.
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.
Respect It.
> Or perhaps it's 50% more people and
> a 400% higher population density.
Ok, and how would that explain Finland, Sweden and Norway? Eg, there's 5m people & about 16ppl/km^2 in Finland, yet it has been among the most mobile phone penetrated countries for ages...
Yeah, I just don't understand that either. What *was* the reasoning behind the US charging both the sender and recipient, instead of simply charging the entire amount to the sender? Especially since it opened up the possibility of abuse by telemarketers etc. and the resulting legislation, however effective that is. The only thing I can come up with is both telcos involved wanting to get a slice of each messages' profit or some interstate tax thing. We have multiple telcos in the EU though, and they all seem quite happy with the "sender pays all" approach, presumably on the grounds that it should all balance out in the end, and if not then costs can still be reconciled behind the scenes when negotiating the interconnects.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
One quick thing, in the US only Verizon does not use SIM cards. So other than coverage area, it appears that the US is just as good if not better than the European mobiles.
We have nationwide calling plans in the US. How come no one has introduced a Continent/Union wide plan in Europe yet?
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
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"?
--
make install -not war
(Quick asside: someone once told me they hate the term "land-line" but is there a more descriptive term? POTS is clear to me but not obvious to others.)
I dumped the notion of having a land-line long ago. Mobile phones are just about as cheap and more versatile. At the moment, I live alone and I have no need for more than one phone line... and if I did, I'd just get another mobile anyway. I used to have ADSL but then I moved and it wasn't available so I got cable. Hence, no further reason for a land-line phone.
It'd be interesting to know how common this scenario is. I know I'm not the only one, but how many of us made that move?
(And isn't it annoying that customer service for a mobile phone assumes you have a land-line to call them from?)
[1] Not quite the sole exception. I've just had a battle with my phone company over some unsolicited reverse billed premium SMS's. They didn't back down until I threatened to take the dispute to Oftel (the UK telecoms regulator).
That's not really true. A cell tower is a cell tower is a cell tower. If provider X wants to start offering service type Y instead of service type Z, all he has to do is swap out some gear in the tower's electronics rack. He doesn't have to go out and build a new tower.
while in the US people effectively get charged both to make and receive on their mobile
Except practically nobody in the US actually pays by the call any more. The cheapest rate plans available from the different mobile-phone companies all include something like 2000 minutes of airtime, which is far more than the average person needs.
Even the most telephone-addicted businessman can get 5,000 minutes or more for less than $100 a month.
Don't be fooled by the vendor Web sites. They say that a 1,000 minute plan costs $100, but that's deceptive. They offer incentives to get you to sign up that include things like an extra thousand or two thousand minutes per month free. When you actually go to sign up, you end up getting three or four times more minutes than the plan normally includes because the companies are competing for your business.
I think you hit the nail on the head. The European choice resulted in a widespread and unified system and very high customer prices, while the American choice resulted in slower and more organic adoption but highly competitive customer prices.
That's the classic planned-economy/market-economy trade off. We see it everywhere from tractor factories to airlines to health care.
Now that phones can log into services such as AIM or MSN messanger I wonder how that is changing?
One of the major reasons why people use SMS's in Germany, at least, was because there was a fix price per SMS and it was generally cheaper than talk time.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
60% of 295 million have cellphones in the USA. 177 million subscribers.
So Europe has twice the subscribers and makes 37% more money...
I'll have to call my wife's cell and discuss the ramifications of this for an hour or two (for free, mind you, since our cell plan doesn't charge for that)...
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Indeed. I've been hundreds of kilometres north of the arctic circle and had 5 bars reception on my phone.
And at the same time, the planned economy has universal reach (here with the meaning of having a single standard), while the market economy is fragmented into several incompatible sub-markets. As always, there's no single "best for all" solution.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
I, on the other hand, prefer to use my mobile phone only while sitting in a bird-sanctuary, on a weathered rock, warmed by the sun's rays.
True, but if you are one of those gits who needs to SHOUT into the mobile you will have very few friends in the bird sanctuary.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
I've worked in fixed-line telecoms in the UK, for a US company, so I've seen a lot of both.
Basically, the US telecoms industry never recovered from AT&T being broken up. It's catching up with UK & Scandinavia fast, but it started a long, long way behind.
The incompatibilities across the country are just one aspect of that. There are two different GSM frequency bands used within the UK by different networks, and not long ago your phone would only work on one or the other. Nowadays all phones work on both bands.
A point missed in the article is that the largest part of a typical domestic phone bill is calls from fixed-line to mobile. Fixed-line to fixed-line calls have dropped to about nothing. Even international calls to popular destinations are much cheaper than fixed-mobile.
Text messaging is not cheaper than voice calling. If you pay a hefty monthly fee (and most people do) you get a number of free / cheap texts thrown in, but a text message will generally cost about the same as a five-minute call from a landline, or a short mobile-mobile voice call. Whatever it is attacts people to SMS, it's not value for money.
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.
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.
Those radio cards arn't free. Nor is the radio planing required before you can even erect those radios. The manpower and planing requirements of getting those cards installed and connected to your network isn't zero-sum.
Come to that, you'd be very lucky if you could just swap out one radio for another and maintain a usable signal. Radio planing is complicated; the best cell tower location for one type of radio at any given frequency may be totally useless for another type of radio. So your simple "just swap the radios" isn't anywhere near as simple as you seem to think it is.
Yeah I work for a company that supplies radio planing and network management software to telecoms operators.
Pay to receive SMS? What carrier does that? Both of the carriers I use (Verizon and AT&T) provide unlimited free incoming messages. They do charge something like 10c for each sent message though.
I thought the reason is that it's not possible to tell from a US telephone number whether or not it's a mobile number, and so it would be unfair to charge more for dialing a mobile.
In the UK (and I think most of Europe) you can tell straight away if a number is a mobile number.
That's the classic planned-economy/market-economy trade off. We see it everywhere from tractor factories to airlines to health care.
In the UK, my phone bill was around 20 pounds (~$40) per month. Upon moving to the US, my first month's bill was $250. Cellphones in the US are a fucking rip off, free market notwithstanding.
Precisely what aspect of the cellphone market in Europe is a 'planned economy'? Have you ever actually been to Eurpoe? Or is your knowledge -- like many Americans -- based on the Epcot Centre at Disneyland?
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
All places where traditional phone networks languished due to the inability to construct them easily. (You try getting a crew of 12 guys to put up telephone poles for hundreds of miles across Finland. Yeah. I thought so.) So when cellular networks arose, they built a cell infrastructure in lieu of a traditional POTS network -- saving dramatically on capital investment. The cell networks were easier to deploy with larger coverage. [You've picked nations that happen to have some of the highest cell-to-people ratios in the world.]
When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. (Larry Wall)
"French movies suck. Seriously. No explosions or Ben Affleck or anything."
Conversely, we over here in Europe believe that American movies "suck", FOR PRECISELY THE SAME REASON!
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Not for free. You paid for the plan.
I know for a fact non-heavy mobile users get the short end of the stick in the US. I went from spending 10 a month in a prepaid mobile in Spain to spending $35 a month in the cheapest cell plan available for 10 times as much time as I need in calls.
The reason is when cell phones came out everyone had unlimited usage land lines. If I am a business man it would be tacky to expect clients to pay to call me.
They used to have cell phones here where caller pays, you had to dial a 1 before the number as if it was a long distance call. They are not used anymore because regular cell phone plans are cheap. For $40 a month I can get a cell phone with unlimited minutes and 600 long distance minutes (from Cricket) that only works in my home city or I can get a national plan with 600 day minutes and unlimited nights and weekends (from t-mobile). Nextel even offers a plan with unlimited incoming minutes so on that plan no party pays.
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.
I'm no mobile phone expert, but doesn't that step from Time-based frames to Code-based frames reflect the diversity of data that will be flowing through the 3G networks -- from video calls to multimedia messaging as well as the odd piece of voice data -- with the intention to share the bandwidth among more users?
:-P )
(Did I hear that the move to CDMA methods had a lot to do with the American companies involved in drawing up the standards?
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.
Living in Germany so other countries may vary.
While cost is a definate reason people go with the handy, another major reason I have noticed is that housing just does not have all the phone jacks that are usally available in the US. In the US your average house will have phone jacks all over the place(kitchen, living rooms, seperate bedrooms,etc) and they are usally all wired so that they can have a seperate number. In the housing I have seen here you will probably have 1 phone jack in the house, and if its a relativly new multi story housing you might get a second jack on the floor with the bed rooms, but it will be out in the halls.
Some of this could of been because of the push to ISDN and having multiple phones through that. But even with that the location of the plugs are still bad.
Also construction wise houses are brick with plaster over that, so unless the house is initially wired, you are not going to be adding much.
So with the cell phone(handy) you can give a phone to your children and have a phone that is easily accessible to the bed or most places in the house.
On another note, this also effects home computer networks. When I was hooking up my ASDL connection I went to the local media store(something like best buy in the US for comparison) and they had a wide selection of wireless ASDEL modems/hubs while the options for running a cable between the wall to the modem to your computer was limited.
You're just mad because they're not releasing the directors cut of "Gigli" in Europe (with over three hours of informative "behind the scenes" interviews !!) That, my friend, is pure cinema gold.
StupidChildren...the reason jesus is crying
I hope land lines never go away. I had a cell phone once and absolutely hated it. Why? Because when I go out, I don't want to talk on the phone! I don't want to be bothered. Sure I could sign up for voicemail and leave it turned off at home, but where I live in Canada, that's an expensive option. Whereas I can get voicemail on my landline number virtually for free.
I hate talking to people on the phone. I tell all my friends if they want to talk to me, they should come over and we'll go for a beer.
"The reason why Alexander Graham Bell accomplished so much in his life was because he wasn't bothered by the telephone." How true it is.
"You can't use every phone everywhere in the United States, so that puts a limitation on the end user," Munoz observed of the three incompatible American systems.
Bullshit. I'm sick and fucking tired of hearing Europeans talk about how their coverage is better than ours.
First of all, the quote above is pure FUD. Nowadays, phones (that you buy, not freebies) are robust enough to handle all of the standard US networks (roaming charges may apply, but it works). If there is a lack of coverage, it's because you're in BFE and there's no cell towers nearby.
Which brings me to my second point. We have a large, no - huge, country compared to the Europeans (goegraphically speaking). I mean, we have thousands and thousands of square miles of land where nobody lives or goes; Europeans are all crammed into their tiny landmass where they've been developing various cultures and civilizations for thousands of years (as opposed to our 200 year old civilization) -- they're all crammed in like sardines; no fucking wonder they get universal tower coverage.
We have unfulfilled Manifest Destiny; they have universal tower coverage. And they're bragging??
That's not a truism; it's just true in some cases. For instance, the health-care system in the US is not fragmented into incompatible markets. At any time, you can pick up the phone and sign up for a different insurance carrier or make an appointment with a different doctor.
It's not true of mobile phone technology, either, because market forces lead markets like that to converge, not diverge. Any telephone can call any telephone; most phones are compatible with most system. Witness the Microsoft/Apple thing. Two different companies selling two competing products, but over the years, their products have become more compatible, not less.
It's also a little ironic. If we're comparing it to the US, what system in common use in the USA actually features more services than GSM? The only one I can think of, off the top of my head, is iDEN, a close relative. The choice for most users in the US is GSM or IS-95 ("CDMA"), the latter of which is provided in an operator hobbled form (with the full blessing of Qualcomm) with restrictions imposed on end users and their ability to choose their own equipment.
Whatever the case, the reason for higher per-minute charges in the EU is the one I gave - the relative unwillingness of most Europeans to commit to a larger monthly spend. It's a real cultural difference, and not one I expect people who haven't lived in both countries to understand. For much the same reason, DSL is considerably cheaper there than it is in America, so it works both ways.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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.
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! :)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
...specifically the Philippines, everyone in urban areas and most people in rural areas have a cell phone, unless if they're downright starving. A significant number of people think that it's weird to have a landline at all.
Why is this? In my experience, the traditional phone system there is awful. Imagine picking up the phone and getting the call of the neighbor down the block by mistake. Or talking to someone and having your connection fail in mid-sentence.
SMS is in widespread use in the Philippines. You know how in the U.S., news shows will mention their e-mail addy or website? In the Philippines, they push SMS so that the news show can run live opinion polls. They also display people's comments on the bottom of the screen, rather like a stock ticker. Some U.S. television shows do show comments in the same way, but they use e-mail rather than SMS.
A curious corollary I noticed when I was in the Philippines is that the cell phones were a few years ahead of what was available in the U.S. Come to think of it, the cell phones I saw there three years ago have some features which I still haven't seen stateside. I think this is due to the country's proximity to Japan.
I have no idea what the regulatory situation is over there.
Anakin Simpson: If you're not with me, then you're my enemy--ooh, donuts!
In the UK, my phone bill was around 20 pounds (~$40) per month. Upon moving to the US, my first month's bill was $250.
What other difference did you notice when you moved here in 1991?
My mobile phone bill is $40 a month, only $10 more expensive than a plain telephone line with no additional services would be. I get so many minutes per month of airtime that I never use them all. It's something in excess of 1400 minutes of daytime calls and unlimited nights and weekends. I never pay for long distance, and my phone works anywhere in the United States. (Swapping out the SIM card means it will work anywhere in the world, or at least nearly anywhere. There's always an exception.)
Have you ever actually been to Eurpoe?
I think the more important question here, since you are so massively confused about mobile phone pricing in the US, is whether you've ever been out of Europe.
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?
sorry, you don't live in a free market. Barriers to entry are high. Once you are with a carrier you are locked-in for a while. I can't go anywhere without a contract. The few choices for pay-as-you-go have impossible requirements: high prices, set-up fees, you don't use them for 3 months and it is gone. The plans have all two years requirements, they have the same conditions and the big companies battled the number portability to death.
The free market works when there are many companies who do not coordinate their efforts. This is not the case in the US, where they have virtually identical plans and they lobby together. They are nominally competitors.
Good luck with your illusions.
What other difference did you notice when you moved here in 1991?
In fact, 2003.
my phone works anywhere in the United States.
Even in the Rockies? The Nevada desert? Alaska?
I indicated that I already have. Obviously, basic English comprehension is outside your grasp.
I take it you're going to dodge my question on planned economies?
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
I think a limiting free market in the standard adoption is a good idea, though. There have been three incompatible mobile phone generations in Finland this far (starting around late seventies, I think), but they have been generations, not really competitors. And it works. Take a look at Sonera coverage map, for example. The country has five million inhabitants, most of them in most southern fifth of its ~1200 km north-south length, and highest third is mostly populated by roaming reindeer, but still, it's pretty hard to find a spot without GSM coverage at least couple kilometers from the location.
Oh all the Cato institute retards here can scream and masturbate about free commerce and competition but the real kernel of truth is that US telcos buy and are granted exclusive or near exclusive monopolies in the markets they want to play in. The FCC may grant a few tiny mom-n-pop companies the right to squabble over 3% of the regional market but by and large all of the telcos are given feudal rights. They can charge what they want, where they want and they can cover what they want. They only sigificant progress that 'competition' had created in the cell phone market in the past 10 years is a gradual conversion from analog to digital in cities, where rural customers still only get analog, and, automatic roaming billing that does not require you to manually enter the local calling company. Saves time and trouble, a little bit. You still have to reenter the phone number, hit a bunch of extra keys and pay about 10 or 15x more per minute than you normally would. And if you are not along a major interstate - the key calling areas of most telcos then you are doubly screwed because you will be roaming in an analog local company which is effectively unregulates vis a vis interconnections and they can charge you $5 a minute if they so wish. You're not their customer so what are you going to do?
It is me or that article doesn't give us any new info. It's no news for your average salshdoter. So it should've been someting else - an editorial or an in deept article, but no there are just some bits someone gathered them in one file.
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.
"With the herd?" Nice. Smug much?
Look, every six months or so I get a call from Cingular, my phone company. The guy on the phone says, "Mr. so-n-so, we've noticed that your calling habits are changing. Are you interested in trying plan such-n-such to see about saving some money or getting better service for the same money or whatever?"
Everybody I know gets calls like that. A couple of years ago, when I established a company phone plan for about a dozen employees, the phone company (AT&T at that time) just moved us around from rate plan to rate plan on their own to keep our monthly bill as low as possible.
Why? Because the phone companies know that if they don't, I'm gonna walk across the street to one of their competitors. They have to do stuff like that to keep their customers.
Competition is good.
Not true - Sprint/Nextel does not either.
Cingular is GSM (w/SIM cards)
Verizon and Sprint are CDMA - no SIM card.
Nextel is iDen - no SIM card.
And parent called the European cell phone market was "planned economy" because the standard for communications was enforced - GSM, no other. I think the parent was being a bit over the top - but we did end up with noticeably cheaper service over here, even if phones often only work on one carrier's network.
Even in the Rockies?
Everywhere in the Rockies I've been, yes. That includes most of Colorado.
The Nevada desert?
Are you kidding? The Nevada desert is so flat and wide that you can see no fewer than three mobile phone towers at all times.
Alaska?
I had the opportunity to go ANWR in the fall of 2003. Perfect mobile phone reception everywhere I went.
I take it you're going to dodge my question on planned economies?
Your question was stupid and indicated to me that you're only interested in picking a fight. Coupled with the fact that (1) you were totally and completely wrong about that "my bill was $250" thing, so wrong that I can only conclude you just made it up, and (2) the fact that you tried to bait me a second time into getting into a fight with you, I can only conclude that you are an unskilled and amateurish troll. Call it dodging your question if you want. I call it not wasting my time.
Skype is beta testing a new service,SkypeIn, that allows Skype users to receive calls from regular phones by purchasing a phone number (a 12 month subscription is 30). Right now SkypeIn numbers are available for France, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and the United States.
How do you think Skype and similar applications may help to overcome regulatory limitations?
Instead of Ben Affleck they just use the embalmed corpse of famous dead French actor, Alain Delon. And he still does a better job of acting than Affleck. Less wooden, less stiff.
Actually, the land-line network in Finland reached probably 99% of its potential customers in continuously inhabitated residences well before GSM catched on. "Continuously inhabitated" has a sort of catch here, though: Finns have hundreds of thousands of summer cottages at the countryside, and reasonably small portion of those have had a landline, traditionally (Most or at least major portion lack electricity, too, but that doesn't bother people either. Lack of sauna would annoy mightily). But on the other hand, those cottages are usually populated only for a month in a year, and many Finns go there to keep away from technology for a while. Permanent habitation with landlines tend to exist like one kilometer away, though.
There's no denying that landlines, usually implemented using air cables, are expensive to repair after the storms that tend to hit them at least once a year, but everybody that wanted a phone had it decades ago in Finland anyway. (I believe my family had one almost a century ago, and the location was certainly on countryside.)
Almost but not quite. US regulations say no marketing calls to those who pay to receive.
I'm just waiting for these "free to our customers" plans to get wide enough that its' economical for the marketers to have a set of Sprint/Nextel/US Cellular/etc phones so they can call those numbers, too....
Do you like Japanese imports?
yes, but the minutes of outgoing do not have to be on cell phones. 90% of the calls I get on my cell are from landlines. if i didnt have to pay to recieve those calls (well, pay for my block of minutes) then cingular would make almost no money from me.
the differences in price and availability of phones in the rest of the world versus the US. Obviously having 1-2 billion potential customers for a GSM phone versus a few million for a PCS or CDMA or whatever phone will motivate manufacturers to come out with new technology faster and to compete more on price.
It's still going to be illegal for them to call you if you are on the DNC list and you don't have a 'existing business relationship' with them (unless they are calling from political organizations, charities, and telephone surveyors).
The cheapest plan on my carrier has only 400 minutes. You must be talking about T-Mobile who will try anything to get a customer.
Gorkman
Verizon does not do this....unless we go over our minutes and get zapped and we bitch. Then they change the plan....I started out with the 400 minute plan and then the first month my wife got addicted to using her new phone and whups!
Verizon competes by having a better network. It's definitely not their phones. They still do not have the Treo 650. ONly way to get one is to hack a sprint phone.
Gorkman
The cheapest plan on my carrier has only 400 minutes.
Mine, too. Call them up and ask for a promotion. They'll give you a thousand or two thousand additional minutes at no cost.
And no, I'm talking about Cingular.
Don't be so sure. I read somewhere that the next gen (4g?? or True 3g??) technology is based on CDMA. That and of all the carriers, Verizon is the first to get faster data speeds wirelessly working with EVDO. EDGE may end up being faster, but the EDGE rollouts seem to be behind teh EVDO rollouts.
Gorkman
Reminds me very much of the dolphins/humans superiority debate from Hitchikers Guide:
http://instantbadger.blogspot.com
but I always feel the counter ticking in the background.
Which means that you are rationing your use of a limited resource (bandwidth). You might even opt to use SMS to save money.
Which is how market economics is supposed to work.
I wonder whether part of the difference in phone cultures between the EU and US have to do, not only with a different attitude towards resource consumption, as well as a differnce in attitudes towards regulation. It is relatively less important to Americans that they have universal geographic coverage than that when they have it, it is cheap.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
Have them move the town close to a major highway. Problem solved!
If 'the people' in Amendment 2 are 'the state' then Amendments 1, 2, 4, 9, and 10 benefit the state, not you.
I think that it helps if you think of it in the old model way. A mobile phone company buys a number of lines from the land line company, then charges you for the usage of the radio. You're using the radio whether the phone is incoming or outgoing. The caller doesn't know that you're not on a land line. Remember, Americans aren't used to paying for outgoing local calls. So you either make the phone a long distance call (and have people not call you because it's not free), or make the receiver pay for a set amount of usage.
Part of the reason that America tends to be behind is that we had a number of early adopters - all the way back to trunk phones (IE you had a phone taking up a chunk of the boot for you Brits). This occured wihin a short period of developing voice over radio. The first ones were purely operator run. So we have existing infrastructure, and more surface area to cover for the population, making upgrades more expensive.
I don't read AC A human right
A few things I would like to comment on. Being a dual citizen of both France and the US, I have had the opportunity to check out both telephone systems. And I consider myself as relatively unbiased, as I like to defend whichever nation is being unjustly accused by members of the other... So here it goes: - quality of connection. The "five 9's" have been demanded by (land) telephone companies for decades. That is, a call will not fail (with a 99.999% probability). In both Europe and US, this is something which has been verified. However, I have experienced in the US some bad calls (which did not come from the phone but the connection), and never in Europe. As for cell phones, the connection highly depends on quality of reception, all those arguing this point will not convince me based only on self-experienced bad coms. - coverage: Europe is densely populated. Yet, non dense zones are also incredibly well covered. As I understand this is not the case in the US. "Can you hear me now?" has not been a selling argument for years, as all netwok operators reach a very high percentile of the AREA in Europe. - prices: Expensive in Europe, cheap in the US. Here, a 10$ will get you roughly an hour a month of outgoing calls. Reception (SMS, calls, etc.) is free, always. I have heard of 40$ buying unlimited calls, out and in, and free roaming in the US. This explains partly for the SMS factor. Of course, being able to send an SMS while in class or in a meeting, or just the fact that you don't want to talk to someone but just send out some info quickly and not be forced to chit chat also counts, but needs a UNIFORM standard, such as the GSM frame provides. - compatibility: well,here is the strong point for Europe. Anywhere. GSM always works. A same phone worked for me in the 9 different countries I visited with my cell phone in Europe, plus China. Including on desert islands in Greece. - services: well the ringtones are polluting advertisement time in France, but given how little of it there is compared to the US, I wouldn't really use this as an argument... Now ringtones are stupid, useless, teenage-appealing gadgets, and so are the chat services, etc. But services don't stop there (understand: news/weather, cabs, operator agreements for roaming ALL services (caller ID among others), SMS of course, etc). And things will definitely be going even further with UMTS. - bias: i love /. But what's with the incredible number of people who can't think objectively? Europe isn't perfect, and the US neither, fat from it. Living at the moment in France, I have the impression chauvinism is a French quality. Good thing I have /. to prove that it is international. Bias: equal for both sides.
To sum up:
Europe has always been slower than the US. Totally free market vs planned standards. Examples are numerous (DSL, GSM among others). And always, the same conclusions: more raw performance and cheaper in the US, better quality and better improvement space in Europe.
Absolutely. Which is why you get a freephone number, rather than attempt justify illogical cost transference to a recipient of a service.
Ack, yeah I got that backwards. Or ... something. It was seven a.m.
HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
Not for free. You paid for the plan.
I know for a fact non-heavy mobile users get the short end of the stick in the US. I went from spending 10 a month in a prepaid mobile in Spain to spending $35 a month in the cheapest cell plan available for 10 times as much time as I need in calls.
Odd, I'm paying less than $35 each for the three phones I currently pay for. Of course, I seldom use the minutes I pay for, but the long distance calls to the wife would cost me WAY more than $35 per month, if I were doing it the old-fashioned way.
Or did you mean to suggest that Europeans get thier cellphones for free?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Since you are quoting France:
-> the state does own shares of France Telecom
-> however an independant authority, the ART, decides on what is fair or unfair, and has (again) recently ruled against the former national operator which wanted to change pricing policies. So there is nothing more than a historical advantage to France Telecom, and it is really disappearing fast...
...when I was in high school (suburban Washington, DC area) ten years ago, cell phones and pagers were strictly banninated. The assumption was that if you had one, you must be a drug dealer or something. I gather it stayed that way for a while - sure, I'd borrow my folks' phone when I went to prom or something, but I was one of those good kids, so it never went inside the school.
On September 11, 2001 (four years after I graduated), I gather the principal got over the public address system and said in effect "I know you've got 'em, and we're waiving the rules - you should use 'em today." They've been accepted ever since.
The pain was excruciating and the scarring is likely permanent, but that just means it's working.
Up until about 1986 (+/- 3 years) the US was the same way. Everyone except a few freaks had one phone in their house, and no other jacks. The phone company owned the wires and changed for each phone they connected for you.
With the breakup of "MaBell" and AT&T you suddenly owned your own wires and the right to install as many phones you could could. (but you only got enough power for 4 ringers which was an issue for a few) Thereafter everyone started adding jacks where they wanted them.
Brick and plaster is no fun to get through, but if you are determined you can do it.
The other thing to consider is just that people in Europe/Japan probably have more times/chances to use their SMS than people in US. Most of US adults drive while poeple in other countries spend waiting/riding the mass transits. That is also why kids in US are more into the SMS than adults. They simply have more time where they can be staring at their phones and type in T9words.
I live in Arizona and used to know someone with a calling part pays cell phone. It had the same area code as my land line but when you called the number it would say you had to dial a 1. Its not always true now days but it used to be if you dialed a 1 before a number you had a good idea you would be charged for the call. 10 years ago you had to dial 1 before 411 for information since it charged a fee.
No it isn't. Around here (Portugal) after some time without answering, you will go to the answering machine and they only bill you after the first 5 seconds (so that you have time to hang-up, if you want it). For those without answering machine, after sometime (like 1 minute), the call is automatically terminated.
The other
Doubt it as I already have 800 and it's enough.
Gorkman
My battery always dies if the conversation is longer than a minute or two //old phone...
Usually I am in class, or in some other place where I dont want to 'break the silence'
Most of the messages i send are tech-related. I guess it is a lot easier to write PC-HUB-> WO-O-WG-Bl-WBl-G-WBr-Br than explain it orally :-)
Other interesting facts:
The country's population is of about 4.4 million, of which at least 700.000 work abroad. [This number should be a lot greater... because the latest census stated that there are 3.3 million in the country]
It is a lot cheaper for a person abroad to call to a mobile than it is to call a fixed phone. Why don't they use email? That beats me... But in the beginning of the mobile-boom, the relatives of those who work in foreign states were the first ones to get mobiles.
And another thing we have (and probably nobody else) is the ping-system. I was surprised to find out that they don't have a reliable caller-ID system in the states, but here we do (and even my landline caller-ID can identify those calling from mobiles, or from different countries). So, what are the pings all about? When you call someone, wait for one ring then hang up. The person who received the call knows that its either "i'm home, call my landline" or "yes" or "i'm in front of your house, come out", etc. The point is that the 'ping' is not taxed... And people figured out how to take advantage of that. In fact, some of my friends can live for a whole month with only 30 seconds in their account :-))) unbelievable!
Another fact you might be interested in, is that we have 3 operators for the 3.3 million. Two here, and another one in a part of the country which is sort of problematic (they claim independence, bla bla)
The saddest poem
Ironically, the blurb at the end of the article wonders what will happen with 3G services. If the U.S. had followed Europe's "one standard technology only" approach, the prospect of 3G services and the technology used to deliver them would be very different. The U.S.'s competitive landscape allowed CDMA to mature, and both GSM and the first incarnation of CDMA will migrate to 3G services on a CDMA-based technology. (UMTS/WCDMA for GSM, CDMA1x/DO/EV-DO/etc. for CDMA)
But I don't want to pay more money. Good from a maximizing-what-we-charge-as-a-business-model is the polar opposite to good from a consumer's perspective.
...because "hacker" sounds way sexier than "code drone."
I get 500 min/mo for primetime calling...which I rarely ever use...during the day, I work and have a land line near me for use. My after hours minutes start at 7pm...and weekends are free. What saves ME the most money...is having free long distance. I have friends all around the country, so, just being able to call them with no LD toll charges...really I think I save a great deal of money this way with my plan...but, it fits my lifestyle.
Plan works for me....2 year contract and a 'free' camera phone...phones last about 2 years, so, I don't see what the big deal about a contract is...
I mean, hell, a land line costs about $33/mo. My plan is like only about $50 or so a month...and I make many more long distance calls on the cell, that more than justify it over the monthly landline...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
$5/minute? I've not come across an overage charge like that before; on every plan I've been on it's been in the range of .30-.70/minute for daytime minute overages..
It struck me reading the article that the term GSM has been anglicised, and I didn't know when it happened. The Reuters article defines GSM in the following way:
.. so I did a bit of research. Here's what I found ..
...
"Europe's single-standard GSM, which stands for 'global system of mobile communications' reaches a broader audience than America's multiple-standard system."
Whereas my recollection was of a French phrase
(from http://www.mobileshop.org/history/digital.htm
"GSM -- the committee
In 1982 the Conference of European Posts and Telecommunications (CEPT) formed a committee called the Groupe Spécial Mobile .
This committee was to develop a standard for mobile phones that would use radio spectrum efficiently, provide international roaming, give satisfactory voice quality, have low equipment costs, be compatible with other systems such as ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) and be ready to support new services as they were developed.
In 1992 GSM coverage was restricted to large cities, and around airports. The networks rolled out, more countries signed up to the system, and by 1995 rural areas were seeing GSM coverage. In 1995 Phase 2 of the GSM (by now renamed to Global System for Mobiles) was published, adding additional features and services. "
Fascinating, I know but we IT Architects are known for pedantry.
The US government gets involved in a lot of places it shouldn't, too, but for a lot of things it stays out of the way and lets the customers decide what they want. The recent number portability act was a great example of allowing even more customer choice in the marketplace.
I thought one of the grand ideas of the European Union was to provide for unified laws, currency, and regulations across national boundaries. It seems fromt he Reuters report that the different countries all still enforce their own rules and regulations, only using the euro as a common currency. If these guys really wanted to encourage competition, they'd cut the BS around calling 'locally international', and give their citizens (ie the customers) more choices for mobile plans. Why exactly is it an international phone call fom Spain to France? Because they're different countries. If they want this whole EU thing to work, the people in all these little countries need to feel like they can communicate freely with each other better.
antipaucity
Man...where did you grow up? I've never known anyone that had only one phone in the house...short of grandparents. I was a teen in '86, not a wealthy family...and we had 3 phones in the house...kitchen, parents room, and my room. Everyone I knew had at least 2-4+ phones in their houses....and this was in the SE US...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I guess I don't understand. Many times, if not most of the time...I get calls on my cell from friends from their landline. How are you supposed to charge for that?? Also, how do you know when you're calling a cell phone or not...the phone numbers look the same....
In Europe, do they have different numbering systems for cell vs. landline, so a person would know what they were calling?
If you call from a landline...do they somehow charge you if it goes to a cellphone? That would suck I'd think.....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The Europeans passed laws making it illegal to deploy anything other than GSM.
GSM is based on TDMA, which is fundamentally flawed and which couldn't keep up with demand. That's why you have GSM for voice and GPRS for data; one system can't do both.
Meanwhile, in the USA, Qualcomm developed CDMA, which is far superior to TDMA (and, by extension, to GSM). US-based carriers are already deploying CDMA all over the place and giving customers better service at a lower price (more calls per tower equals fewer towers for the same level of service quality) while Europe is struggling with how to make TDMA last until they can do a massive "flag day" change-over, turning on CDMA and turning off GSM.
How did Europe get into this mess? By legislating mobile phone standards. How did the USA avoid it? By letting the free market run itself.
(I agree with Leo, however. You probably are a troll. I just don't mind feeding the trolls once in a while.)
I have a BT landline and we have a few mobiles as well.I cant get rid of the landline because i get my broadband on ADSL.Apart from that there really is no need for a landline.My mobile works almost all over the country and chargers are ubiquitous these days.
If at any time in the future , i might be tempted by cable TV , out goes the BT line.
In fact , considering the number of portable devices people tend to carry (Mobiles,PDA's,MP3 players etc) , the next big idea will be the invention of a standard batttery charger for all of these.Who knows maybe we will be buying a battery charge pretty soon at the corner shop?
Wanted : A Signature.
MN. We only had one phone, until I helped dad install a new one. My gradparents (mom's side) had more than one, but they ran a business so they needed those lines. On Dad's side I don't think they have two phone YET, though when they are in the house they are in the room where the phone is so there is no need.
Now that I think of it, there were some houses with more than one phone jack installed. You still had to pay extra if you wanted to plug a phone into any of them. Few people had the extra phone because you paid for it. (Though considering quality less than what you pay for a phone today)
I'm just curious who moderated this comment as flamebait. Disagree sure, plenty of people do, but flamebait? I hope you get your come uppance from the meta-moderators.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
Most people in the UK use this method. I can type about 20-30 words per minute on a phone using predictive text. Ideal for sending short messages in long boring meeting,
I've always thought that this was because the town has such a large American Indian population, and the big companies don't give a shit.
Wow, do you honestly believe that? Last time I checked, "the big companies don't give a shit" about race.
Perhaps there isn't any coverage because no one will let them put a cell tower up? Perhaps the population isn't big enough to warrent the expense? Maybe too few people in North Fork, CA want cell service? Maybe you just need to wait for the network to expand to North Folk, CA naturally.
I'll guarantee it's not racism -- that's a load of shit -- and you know it.
Required reading for internet skeptics
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.
We in the US have this as well on our cellphones, and the situation is the same. I don't always leave voicemail. My mother only checks her voicemail at night, when it's free.
Now I'm no big American nationalist flag waving fascist or anything, but I must say that we have waaaaay better phone service here than in Europe.
Calling a mobile from a landline or public phone in Europe is ridiculously expensive. In fact, I can call a landline in Europe and speak for several hours on my international calling card, but only about 14-20 minutes if I'm calling a mobile (WTF!?!?!).
Travelling in Spain, for example, not wanting to invest in a mobile (maybe I will next time), I can't tell you how many goddamn Euros I spent in public phone cards just making 1 minute calls to cell phones. We're talking like .50 Euros a minute or more or something. I don't remember exactly, I just remember it sucked. I remember England being a bit better because you could put coins in a public phone and then use a cheap calling card to make calls ... but still ... calling mobile phones would vapori(s/z)e it (it was 60p/minute to call mobiles ... is that right? that would be $1.20/minute, folks).
So I have a bunch of European friends that I cannot really afford to speak with for very long. And they aren't even geeks or anything, so I can't speak over MSN messenger or whatever :(
Sure, you "pay" to receive calls on cell phones here in the US, but it's not a problem. You just keep your call short if you want to and everyone's happy. Want to talk longer? Wait until nighttime and talk virtually forever on your night and weekend minutes. Over there, ALL the cost (and maybe the real cost times 2 just to punch you in the gut) is on the caller. Not good.
Also, text messaging here in the US is totally cheap. Sure it's not as popular as it is in Europe, but it's cheap to use. Over there, they realized that it is something that people use and went waaay overboard with overcharging people. It's obscene. Also, you can send people text messages for free from their phone company's website (usually you can get like 100-200 messages free per month ... add ~$4.95 and you can get very, very, very many text messages per month)
In the US you can typically call anywhere in our gigantic country for the same rate from your cell phone. Nice, right?
Now, the US system has a lot of problems as well. First, we have these awful contracts that we have to sign to get cell phone service at a reasonable rate. 1 year minimum with a terrible penalty for cancelling.
Umm ... that's all I can think of right now, actually. I'm no homophobic retard-executing Christian-fundamentalist supply-sider, but the market made phones rock here.
our written thoughts are gifts to our future selves
I live in North America. My brother lives in the UK.
NA: When I go to buy a cell phone I have to pick a cell phone company then choose from a selection of, what, 20 phones max.
UK: My brother chooses from hundreds of cell phones, then picks a carrier and has the phone programmed to match, or uses an existing smartcard to transfer in his phone number and address book.
NA: My cell phone is expensive - I dont want to sign-up for any 5 year term.
UK: My brother's cell phone is cheap. A couple of years ago I described my new $400 phone with a colour display. "oh", says he, "you mean model XYZ? I have dozens of those in my drawyer at work". He's a high-school teacher, and it turns out that my model is in vogue. The kids buy them for $15.
NA: I pay a monthly fee and get a huge number of minutes.
UK: My brother pays through the nose, by the minute (or is that 'buy' the minute?).
NA: Internet access and phone calls have been cheap in North America for ages, so the method here is to place calls and send emails.
UK: For my brother, Internet access and phone calls have always been 'buy' the minute and expensive. But "texting" (SMS) is real cheap. To keep in contact with close friends and colleauges he finds that texting is the way to go.
At my brother's school, the kids can't afford to go 'buy' the minute so they opt for texting. A whole sub-culture emerges of ascii-art, asci-jokes, terminolgy, lingo, abbreviations. The works. Their phone and texting technique becomes a question of style and identity. It becomes important to have custom backgrounds and ring tones - it's fun and gives that teenager a cool identity.
In North America we have very little choice in electrical consumer goods, but what is offered is very economic. It must be that we prefer it this way. Right?
Why open the door to find out what the weather is like, when you can call up the weather-service?
How lazy can you get?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Done! Emailed the hotmail account listed on your resume.
"No wonder SMS (at .50 per message) is used more often."
This boggles my mind. Assuming a voice call consumes a 9600 baud data rate, a 160 character SMS message consumes far less bandwidth than even one second of airtime, even if you factor in protocol overhead. Logically, SMS messages should cost less than one second of airtime; yet this is clearly not the case.
Bloody capitalism.
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'