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Over 2.5 Billion Cellular Connections Now Active
An anonymous reader writes "It appears that humankind has managed to spread cellular technology like a virus. About 2.5 billion cellular connections exist in the world today, according to an estimate from the GSM Association.
It took 20 years to reach 1 billion connections, three years to reach 2 billion connections and the market is moving to reach its third billion in a period of just over two years.
Not surprisingly, the countries with fastest growth are the 'emerging nations.'"
Step 1: Steal Underpants
Step 2: Re-sell w/ sewn-in camera cell phone
Step 3: Profit!
I have a similar graph.... Y axis is number of "cell conditions" and the X axis is the level "Assholeivity in Public (theater, etc). " Yes, I think is a directly proportional relationship.
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
I spent a small amount of time in the US, and surprisingly the tarrif structure and the talk time etc., plans available in India are far better than in the US. In broadband access developed nations have lot of lead over developing ones, maybe because to have good connectivity you require undersea cables as most of the servers are in west, but in case of cellular connections countries like India are way ahead of the US/Europe, and very soon 3G deployment will be mainstream.
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
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The cell providers are laughing all the way to the bank(at least in the US). With all this business why are the cell networks in the US so poor.
How can this be if there aren't enough digits in a US phone number:
1,23-4,56-7,890
allows ~1.2445679 digits (some rounding error)
What do class 5 switches allow globally and whats the denomination?
is the way in which technological innovation (i.e. a cellphone) allows countries to 'skip' older technology and move straight on to the newer ones, thus catching up quicker.
the NSA has increased their data storage capacity to 2.5 billion data-storing nodes.
You could say it took millions of year to reach 1 billion connections, since hasn't all of mans endeavours, from fire and the wheel to radio and transistors been moving towards creating mobile phones? Depends on how you look at it.
I'm from India, the operators are pretty cool here. You have a choice of GSM and CDMA, you're phone isn't locked down by your operator, and I've personally faced no problems with either the tariffs or the coverage.
I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you.
Leaders / Mobile phones and development
::: yfnET
Less is more
Jul 7th 2005
From The Economist print edition
Mobile phones can boost development in poor countries—if governments let them
IMAGE (iAfrica)
IMAGINE a magical device that could boost entrepreneurship and economic activity, provide an alternative to bad roads and unreliable postal services, widen farmers’ access to markets, and allow swift and secure transfers of money. Now stop imagining: the device in question is the mobile phone. Not surprisingly, people in the developing world are clamouring for them, and subscriber growth is booming. The fastest growth rates are to be found in Africa, albeit from a low base. Already, 80% of the world’s population lives within range of a mobile network; but only about 25% have a mobile phone.
The primary obstacle to wider adoption is the cost of handsets. In the rich world, these typically cost around $200 (though most pay less than this thanks to subsidies from network operators), or less than 1% of the average income per person. In the developing world, in contrast, a $50 handset would account for 14% of the annual income of someone earning $1 a day. So the first step in promoting the adoption of mobile phones, say operators in developing countries, is to reduce the cost of the handsets. Several such schemes are under way: in particular, several operators in developing countries have joined together to aggregate their buying power, and Motorola, the world’s second-largest handset-maker, has agreed to supply up to 6m handsets for less than $40 each (see article). There is already talk of prices falling below $30 next year.
Industry observers believe cheaper handsets could expand the market by as many as 150m new subscribers a year. As well as boosting economic development in poor countries, this will help to close the “digital divide” between the communications-rich and communications-poor. Governments, you would have thought, would be doing everything in their power to promote the spread of mobile phones.
But rather than treating mobile phones as an important tool for development, many governments see them instead as an opportunity to impose hefty taxes and milk a fast-growing industry for all it is worth. In both Turkey and Bangladesh, for example, anyone buying a new mobile phone must pay a $15 connection tax. Many countries slap large import duties on handsets and impose special taxes on subscribers and operators. In many cases, these taxes double the cost of acquiring a mobile phone. As handset prices fall, such taxes will become an ever more prominent obstacle to wider adoption.
Governments should reduce these taxes at once. Indeed, by doing so, they can both speed adoption and increase revenues. High import tariffs discourage legal imports of phones and encourage people to buy them on the black market instead. Reducing such tariffs would boost revenues as legal imports increased. Lower taxes on phone calls would encourage adoption and increase the tax base. It can be done: both Mauritius and India have recently reduced their taxes and tariffs.
Mobile phones have created more entrepreneurs in Africa in the past five years than anything else, says the boss of one pan-African operator. Promoting their spread requires no aid payments or charity handouts: handset-makers, acting in their own interest, are ready to produce low-cost phones for what they now regard as a promising new market. Mobile operators across the developing world would love to sign up millions of new customers. But if developing countries are to realise the full social and economic benefits of mobile phones, governments must ensure that their policies help, rather than hinder, the wider adoption of this miraculous technology.
But if I did get one, I think I might feel obliged to actually go outside {shudders}.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
That's quite the impressive number, though I'm still keeping my AT&T landline. That way when I need to call 9/11, I won't have a dead battery or Vonage in my way.
" We don't need to find the weapons of mass destruction we just need to want to find them, that's the way it works!
Right now I'm working for one of the "culprits" in this phenomenal growth. Digicel allegedly sold 300,000 phones in it's 1st month of operations in Haiti. If you check the CIA Factbook, it basically says this is the worst run country in the western hemisphere. I have been here for 3 months now and I can say it's the worst I have seen.
Despite that, Somebody sold 300,000 phones in a month. How? Because a prepaid cellphone with free incoming calls is exactly what you need when you are impoverished. Looking for work? Put the number on your resume. Family members in a developed country? Give them the number so they can call you and you can ask for remittances.
Seriously. That's why it makes sense to sell a U$75 phone for U$25 to someone who had to save for weeks to pay that price.
So yeah. A nation doesn't even have to be emerging for Cellphones to take off. It could be a textbook case of "How to, not develop".
PS: Another sign of underdevelopment is when you must import almost your entire technical staff.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
No. That's because India has the 2nd largest population. It's beeten by China.
A better measure is per capita deployment where some European countries have passed 100% (more people with 2 or more cellphones than people with none at all).
Or even small "Developing" countries like Jamaica with Over 2 Million Cellphones and a population of 2.7 Million.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Part of the reason mobile phone ownership growing so fast in 3rd world countries is the lack of infrastructure - large expanses of 3rd world countries have no phone lines at all, and a mobile phone is a cheap and easy way to communicate in any language, especially when using recycled handsets from 1st world countries.
A small village can share a handset, which both facilitates trade and also obtains the best prices for their vegetables in the markets in the surrounding town.
Also, greater population density in many 3rd world countries allows for more phones per base station (ie. greater economies of scale), and therefore cheaper plans. You'd be surprised at how hard telcos in India and China compete for customers, something telcos in the US have managed to avoid for many years.
Leave a phone on a cafe table..... See it on CNN three days later in Mogadishu
is monitoring every one of them....
Metcalfe's Law explains well why a cellular network grows rapidly. The value of a network grows as the square of the number of members of a network. Here, members are owners of cell phones. As the value increases, more people want to be part of the network. So, more people buy cell phones. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
I agree wholeheartedly with the article. In India for instance, Now a days where ever you look, you can see people with a cellphone glued to their ear. News channels provide SMS (Short Messaging Service) numbers where the viewers can send messages via their cellphones. And the cellular service doesn't come cheap. It is atleast twice as costly as making calls via landline though deals are available dime a dozen. Sometimes I wonder if all this is really a good thing.
Somebody should do a detailed study of the negetive effects of using a cellphone.
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There have been a series or articles in the last few years in the Economist about how having mobile phones helps to lift people out of poverty in the developing world. Their view, and I have to say I agree, is that its more important to get people a communication network (mobile phones) than it is to get them a computer.
Its a genuinely good thing that this is taking off in the developing world to help people create small businesses and to reduce barriers.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Ok, dumb question here, yet I am serious.
Why on earth would anyone have more than one cell phone?
Thanks for pointing that out, I was totally off track there :)
My point was about the parent's comment on the state of the operators and regulations here, and yes, the article's stats aren't a measure of that.
I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Accelerating_R eturns
It's hilarious that the oldest civilizations on this planet like China and India are called "emerging nations"...
Funny how the anti-cell phone Luddites can be twice as rude as anyone with a cell phone and not even realize it.
Business and pleasure.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
Many people in Europe travel between countries often, and keep numbers in multiple places to avoid long distance and roaming fees.
Two options exist for them. Switching SIM cards when crossing the borders or having multiple phones. The obvious advantage with multiple phones is having all the numbers active for receiving calls and messages (SMS is usually free to recieve even when roaming).
is it's super-low up-front costs, not for the hand-sets, but for an operator to offer initial coverage.
a tions/hurricane-relief-1105.htm
With wired service, you have to invest up-front, burying cable throughout a population center before you can acquire your first customer. With wireless, you put up one tower, set it for maximum range, and open shop.
A single WiMax tower can reach 40 miles in radius. After Katrina, Intel donated $5M in hardware, and was basically able to cover the Gulf Coast. Bell South says they'll needs between $700M and $900M, and they're still not done with repairs. That cost might be fair, but it shows the advantages in bringing in wireless cheaply. Here's an Intel link:
http://www.intel.com/technology/magazine/communic
I think we should be using cheap wireless technology for IP based emergency communications, enabling people to help each other so they wont have to wait for FEMA to arrive. Check out what hams do for free:
http://eng.usna.navy.mil/~bruninga/aprs.html
A system built on the Internet model might enable neighbors to help each other, which is basically required after a mass disaster, since any emergency response team will be overwhelmed. Do you know how you'd find your neighbors after a disaster? How would they find you?
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
Mind you, I am owner of two cell phones and so much tech gear that takes me 15 minutes to enter a bank branch. But I put them on vibracall when I'm at a restaurant or movie theater, and I go to the bathroom or outside to take a call -- IF it's imperative that I take the call. I own a cell phone for the last 15 years and NEVER anyone "sssh"'d me. So, excuse me if I see a guy my age taking a call during the best part of a movie "no, dear, I'm still at the movie, yes, I'll bring home some Chinese, how is your sister going ..." out loud. Come on.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
the administrative circle thing and restrictions on operators in multiple states are pretty bizarre, though. there really is a lot of unnecessary bureaucracy in the system there (or "here", as that's where i am right now).
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
Many people have a cellphone of their own and supplied with one by their work. They won't give up the one they had, because they might change jobs and the family, friends and relatives all have that number, and the company will insist on supplying them with one, because they have a policy about these things, or the number comes with the position, or whatnot. This happened to me, and I'm no exception.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
2.5 Billion, eh? That sure is alot of cellphones. Gives me a headache just thinking about it. Sort of a burning, pulsating headache...
which is a major reason it is so hard for the US to get it off the ground. Building a train between X and Y is not very worthwhile if X and Y do not connect anywhere.
So you can turn one off and let the other on, and always know what is going on. And sometimes the firm gives you a "work-calls-only" enforced policy cell, and you still have yours for personal calls.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
and I still can't get any service at my house
Another benefit of mobile phones becoming more common (I believe I read this in a magazine called "The Africa Report") is that reports of centralized/governmental corruption spread much quicker. This helps the population in nominally democratic countries keep tabs on their representatives.
Ghost in the Shell will become real! ;-)
Funny how it's called 'cell' too. So many cells, what will http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_theory think of next time....
it is not surprising - emerging nations have people without mobile phones
developing nations are saturated with some having more than 100% penetration
after everybody has mobile phones, let see where they will see growth. probably aliens?
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
Two possibilities come to mind;
- Studies simply aren't being performed on this topic (which I doubt, as there are many groups out there who would love to be able to link something this widely used with dangerous cancers, such as the media and environmental activists)
- There really is no danger of getting cancer from using a cellular (more likely, as with over a billion connections, we have yet to hear of anyone who actually got cancer and died due to phone usage)
Sorry to be somewhat off-topic, but the FUD surrounding cellular phones (and the fact that it's repeated to me ad nauseam by some of my more luddite co-workers) makes me rather upset.Take the number with a very large pinch of salt. Even accounting for multiple cell phone owning road warriars, the number 2.5 billion connection seems too large. I suspect GSM assoc is counting every SIM cards that were manufactured as a "connection". It must be including all the expired accounts, expired prepaid cards etc.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
174cm, average-to-large-bones build, slightly overweight, always in jeans and black t-shirts, pierced years but don't use an earring since I married 9 years ago, some white hair in the sides. Not threatening IMHO. No, I just behave properly.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Not really, as you can dial into and out of the cellular network from/to an existing landline network.
People buy mobile phones because they see value in them; whether that's witnessing first hand the usefulness of being able to be contacted (nearly) anywhere on the planet, or simply being seen to be important enough to have a mobile phone. The value isn't really brought from the network itself, though.
That was my first question too. I've got to think that the cost of equipment is the same in the US as overseas - so the economics can't be all that different. But the monthly rate in the US ($35/mo for a low end plan) would be impossibly expensive in a developing nation's economy. How can it be that much cheaper overseas? I'm sure there are differences in the quality of service (building adequate numbers of towers in urban areas, or building in marginal areas), but coverage in the US is still limited (especially in the West).
ticker counter at http://www.gsmworld.com/index.shtml reports a mere 2 billion (If i count the 0's right) reminds me of the daily number of guinness pints consumed clock counter in the guinness brewery in dublin..
Please do not call cellular technology "viral". Everyone knows that this word is only chosen for its negative connotation. Real viruses can spread accidentally, while a voluntary act is required to make a cell connection. It's such an old, often repeated argument that it is a wonder that people still fail to understand it!
is everyone saying... "What? I lost you there for a second." or "Your phone is acting funny, call me back when you're not in a bad area."
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
thats because everyone who is not in an emerging nation already has one...
It took 20 years to reach 1 billion connections, three years to reach 2 billion connections
Wow, they hit two billion even before they hit one billion. Now that's fast.
Have you read my journal today?
KASHWACK=NO-FO
That makes no sense at all. Huge numbers are already connected to the phone network via their landlines. The reason mobiles are so popular in emerging nations is that it's much cheaper to set up a cell in an area and sell people mobiles than it is to lay cable to everybody's house.
When you have a country half the size of the US but with nearly 4 times the population how is it surprising that you have better cell coverage? This is getting really old having to re-explain this to every dimwit that comes along.
BTW: I hear the cellular coverage in Siberia really sucks, the same with Antartica.
Ok folks, we now know what is causing global warming.
It's the 2.5 billion microwave ovens running around the world.
Let all turn off the cell phones for a week and cause an ice age.
--
If a frog can jump 3 foot how far can a toad jump?
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
Not only is what you're saying not a fact, it's a complete misapplication of Metcalfe's idea.
People who had a landline were already connected to the network - getting a cell gives no value from the viewpoint of giving access to the network.
The primary reason cell use has spread so much - specifically in "emerging" nations - is because it is MUCH cheaper to set up a cellular system and spread access than it is to do with landlines.
Another big reason would be the mix of convenience and quality of service. In my case, I ditched my landline 2 years ago because it was pointless. I like having a phone with me all the time. If I want to be unavailable, I can put it on silent mode. A phone that sits at home - a place where I spend maybe 4 waking hours a day - just seemed pointless. I don't think I'm the only person who thinks that way.
My hope is that since cells are now virtually everywhere, people who used to feel the need to talk at the top of their lungs to let everyone know they had one will now see it as a sign of class to speak softly on them. I am doing my best to encourage people to do just that - when I am on the bus or train and someone is having a LOUD conversation on their phone, I will look at them raptly, and, if they ever fall silent, I will say "Oooh, what's he saying now?" When they inevitably say something along the lines of "this is a private conversation" I explain that, at the volume they were speaking, it was anything but. Of course, I say it with a great deal of charm, so I have yet to be bopped in the nose.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
I work at a mobile content company making music ringtones, video ringtones, and wallpapers. I don't own a cell phone and have never owned a cell phone. I don't even know how to work one. That all may change this weekend because I think I'm going to go buy one, so make it 2,500,000,001 mobile connections.
Can I bum a sig?
Oh, and if I'm the first one to think of it, then PATENT PENDING! Patent pending, patent pending, patent pending.
Patent pending.
If fate makes you a motorcycle, you become a motorcycle.
My brother has two mainly because he does most of his business trough the phone, and here in Venezuela there are two major cell phone companies (well, more than two, but the other ones don't have countrywide coverage yet and neither of them work where I live), and both of them have rates that are a LOT cheaper for calls within the same cell phone company, so it's cheaper for him to have one of each and use them depending on who's he calling to.
:)
Also, it has become a rather popular business to buy several cell phones and then rent them on the street for people to make calls (kinda like public phones), and according to a friend that does that, it's quite profitable if you use the free minutes plans, plus you get enough "points" to change or get new cell phones from the operators at least once a year for free...
Part of the "talking at top of lungs" is due to the lack of feedback within many phones (i.e. the microphone is not echoed in the speaker). If the meatheads who build the things would just make it provide this feedback, people would probably be quieter.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
That sound you just heard was a joke going over your head.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Warning: Shameless bump/plug ahead :P
I spent two months investigating the wireless industry for its potential, and came up with a report denoting, in it's conclusion, the explosive potential yet to be had in the wireless (and by this, wireless telecommunications) industry.
The VERY READABLE (complete with many pictures!) report can be found here:http://www.eugenechen.ca/files/coop_no_2_a_mobile
http://www.eugenechen.ca/index.php?pagename=wirele ss
(PDF is recommended - the PNGs actually take longer to download than the whole PDF)You mofo geeks have done it again! But it's not like anybody RTFA or anything.
Grand-Parent was joking. or something.
Cellular technology has spread like a religion.
It's possible. The carrier has to set it up. evidently no one in the US is doing i
A link for you:
http://forums.mobiledia.com/topic27924.html
Ursula Andress, Catherine Deneuve, and Charo, twice...
And how many of those 2M cell phones are disposable?
I think there's some monkey business with the statistics (trot out Twain).
I'm certain there's some differences between "permanent" and "disposable" affecting the overall total.
I do have a good cell phone story: even though they are personal cell phones, the missus gets a discount because of where she works - word of mouth to co-workers & whatnot. Anyway, a couple of years ago, we decided to introduce my in-laws[1] who are (now) in their mid-70s. We handed down[2] one of our phones when our contract ended, but put them on our plan to keep an eye on them. They'd take it in the car with them and use it to call us when they were running late to meet us at a restaurant (they're about eighty miles away). The problem? They'd turn the phone on, make the call, then turn the phone back off to conserve energy, even though the phone was plugged in via adaptor. Obviously, they came from the Depression Era, so everything has been critical. It took awhile for them to realize powering the phone is like removing a spoonful of water from the ocean, but they've gone ahead and obtained one for each of them.
______________________________________
[1] I pity those who have a monster in law, or a mother|father in law they just tolerate. I grew up in an abused house. I've got a Dad and a second Mom. I'd tell Mom about being able to lie on my back on their couch and fade before I could finish a breath (and I can't sleep on my back). I told Mom it was a soft place to fall (see: Dr. Phil). She told me it was a nice couch. It took a little bit to get her to understand it's where the couch was, not the couch itself.
[2] I can't figure out why people turn in their old phones for nothing, even bringing accessories later when left behind, is beyond me. Most carriers don't give you a trade-in and resell them. We usually give them to friends who don't want to spring for a cheap phone with no features or not-for-profits. At least you can get a tax deduction.
Not surprisingly, the countries with fastest growth are the 'emerging nations.'"
Check this out, how aggressive some Asian Telcos are. Will these telcos takeover the world due to their low cost operational experience and yet remain profitable ?
Does that include neurons?
Yes, but why should the carrier have to do it? Someone could easily manufacture a phone that is not locked to a particular carrier, which hosts 2 completely different SIM cards. The two lines could even be with different carriers. What I am thinking of here has nothing to do with carriers. From a purely hardware standpoint, it shouldn't be hard to do this. It would be like having two different phones, except they are in the same shell and share the same screen, buttons, speakers, and microphone, etc.
If fate makes you a motorcycle, you become a motorcycle.
Hello, thanks for inviting me to this forum, My name is "George" and it's been 21 months, 4 days and 5 hours since I have had a cell phone. It was hard at first, not having a cell phone, I went through withdrawl symtoms, my hands hurt, I had hot flashes, and seeing some one else use a cell phone made me dizzy. Now thanks to groups like this (Cell Phone User Anomoyous) I am cell phone free. I am no longer tied down by the man, I am free, no longer can the corporate weenies contact me at a whim, I am free, oh thank god I am free.
I've never owned a cell phone that *didn't* do this...
Does anyone know the chart that indicates the speed of change over time.
So in the same way the number of connections has gone up from 1 to 2 billion so quickly as has the adoption of the internet etc has sped up technological progress.
Apparently its a well know MIT chart over time but Ive googled it using the full extent of my lateral brain which isnt much so any one who knows what im rattling on about shout now!
Thanks
How many neural connections are there in a brain? More than a couple billion, but that never stopped Hollywood before...
The 'seen as important' ship has sailed. Anybody who wants a cell phone has it.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Well, sometimes drug dealers will own a personal cell and then use a pre-paid phone that's constantly changed for handling "business" ...or so I hear.
Not sure about the cell-vs-landline comparison, but European mobile prices sure seem cheap compared to US ones.
Comparing per-minute costs is very misleading. For many users like myself, per-minute costs are almost irrelevant, because the monthly fees (or expired unused minutes in the case of prepaid) dominate. When you take all costs into account, European prices are _WAY_ lower, even though the European per-minute domestic airtime prices are much higher than their US counterparts. At least for my usage pattern.
I use local prepaid SIM cards when I travel to Europe and Africa, and find them remarkably cheap compared to the US. In the US, because prepaid plans here have very short shelf-lives on their minutes, I'm forced to use a monthly plan.
The main difference I see is that in Europe (a) Monthly rates are somewhat lower than the US, for the same number of included minutes, (b) Monthly rates have a lower entry-level than the US (i.e. you can pay less if you only need fewer minutes, if you wish), and (c) prepaid minutes have a much longer shelf-life, if you choose your carrier carefully, so you can actually use them up before you have to pay for more(*).
All of the above make European mobile usage far cheaper than the US at least for users like me who don't make a lot of calls every month.
Of course, this is not applicable to everyone: I guess there may be some high usage levels at which US prices reach parity with Europe, or even drop below European prices. But certainly not for me.
(*) US cell providers have a trick to guarantee a constant stream of revenue from prepaid users. They offer minutes in bundles of various sizes. Only the very largest bundles have decent shelf-lives (typically 6-12 months) and relatively low cost per minute (say 12c). All smaller bundles have _very_ short shelf lives (say 30-60 days), and much higher cost per minute (say 50c). This makes pre-paid pretty much useless in the US for anyone who uses their phone infrequently, because of the high cost of paying for all those minutes they never use.
I noticed, but ... decided to make it clear :-) Besides, it wasn't a very good joke :-)
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
hmm, does he carry a gun too or travel with bigass bodygaurds? it would seem to me that renting cellphones on the street like that was almost asking to be robbed.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Well, in my friend's case, he's on a very transitated place right in front of a beach, and he closes before nigthfall... I've seen a couple here that are still open for a few more hours agter nightfall but they're next to very transitated fast food places. I'd believe they'd get robbed here and then, though... or most likely end up paying some protection money instead.. :)
While I have not seen a phone with two sim slots, I have seen addons for some phones that will let you use two sim cards and you just have to turn off the phone and back on to use the other card. kinda nifty if I had a use for something like that.
> For frequent callers, the EU might be cheaper,
That I'm not sure of. But for _infrequent_ callers, the EU is _definitely_ cheaper than the US. I know that because I'm an infrequent caller in both. In the UK, anyway, you can still buy a prepaid card with reasonably long shelf-life and use the minutes only when you need them. (In the US, that's impossible. You have to keep paying to keep the phone alive regardless of whether you chose a prepaid or monthly plan). Of course, I may be overgeneralizing to the whole of Europe. I only really know about a few countries first hand, and only the UK recently.
> but now you also have to show the certificate that you got when you registered your
> residence in germany in the town-hall of your hometown.
I hadn't heard that before. That's quite alarming. You can't have a local cell phone unless you're a resident of the country! If that idea spreads to other countries, it's curtains for affordable communications while travelling. What a terrible, tourism-hostile policy! You described it as a "regulation", so I assume it's a law, rather than just a misguided dumb decision by one carrier?
Do you know if this is a German regulation, or is it something to do with the EU government, in which case it will apply all over Europe?
Hmm. It seems to me that everyone in my family has owned at least a few mobiles so far. With upgrades, and boredom, and losses, it's not hard to figure out how there can be billions of cellphones when not everyone actually has a cellphone in the developed world, never mind the third world.
I didn't say cell phones were viruses (or virii for that matter) or even a religion. I didn't say they were cancer or evil either. I did say something about sloppy thinking, though.