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US Cell Phone Plans Among World's Most Expensive
Albanach writes "An OECD report published today has shown moderate cell phone users in the United States are paying some of the highest rates in the world . Average US plans cost $52.99 per month compared to an average of $10.95 in Finland. The full report is available only to subscribers, however Excel sheets of the raw data are available to download." (You'll find those Excel sheets — which open just fine in OpenOffice — on the summary page linked above.)
It's because US carriers compete based on who has the iPhone and who has the Pre rather than network price/quality. Then users "buy" $800 devices for "$99" and make fun of uncrippled foreign cell phone brands because they're "so expensive", and have useless features like application downloads from Sourceforge.
My Sig: SEGV
What I'd be intrested to see. .instead of how much we all pay is.. how many customers are served Per tower - and how many towers vs area vs coverage.
You maay have the largest plan for sweeden.. but do you roam when you go to the UK? even if not.. all of Western Europe is ~1/3 the size of the US and has 1/3 MORE people
comes out to be:
Western Europe | 514 people/mi^2
United States | 86.5 people/mi^2
Basicly it takes 5 times the area to hold the same numebr of people - asume population was evenly spread (i know it isn't) it should cost 5 times as much to provide for the same number of people..
"Average US plans cost $52.99 per month compared to an average of $10.95 in Finland."
Assume the Finland price for all of western Europe - and we pay 5x the cost for something 5x as expensive to provide..
People don't realize how large the US is.. and that most plans now days there is no roaming from sea to sea.. thats alot of area to provide for..
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
On the other hand I think US carriers are guilty of heavy upselling. If I live in a dense city in a dense area (Boston, New York, DC, etc) and do 99% of my calling from there why can't I pay for a local plan and avoid subsidizing the tower/person costs of residents of Wyoming?
Seriously, I don't know what he's smoking. I pay roughly the same in income tax here in the US (once you add up federal, state and things like social security tax) as I did in the UK, but also get to pay for medical. Awesome!
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
> about 70% of the people in the US LIKE what they have
As a European living in the United States, I think that is because the people suffering by far the most in the US are so ill-informed about other Western democracies and so brain-washed from an early age, that they actually are proud of the abuse they're suffering in this country! After all they constantly hear they're "no. 1". What they generally don't hear is that the US is "no. 1" in the percentage of uninsured children etc. Even the ability to legally bribe politician here, called "campaign contributions", is called "freedom of speech." I guess corporations and rich people have much more "freedom of speech" than someone with a median income.
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When 1person suffers from a delusion,it is called insanity.When many people suffer from a delusion,it is called religion
Or how about you use Finland's population density instead, which turns out to be almost exactly half of that of the U.S. That pretty much destroys your argument.
Or more properly, get government regulation in place to stop the pricing schemes that all of the US providers are in cahoots with. There is no reason sending a text message should be so expensive or even a voice call once the infrastructure is in place.
Cell phone services over here are just dreadful. Why you all pay so much for such mediocre service, I really don't know.
Do you know how to pay less for better service in the US?
I didn't think so.
There's your answer. In the US, you have the choice of high-priced, mediocre service or no service at all. To make matters worse, a cell phone has almost become an essential tool for most Americans. So if you want better and cheaper service, your only (unrealistic) choice is to leave the country.
Ideally, our capitalist economy should keep all the prices down, but the cellular giants collude to keep prices high and service poor. They also lobby the government to prevent any mandated change.
It's completely appalling, but very very hard to change as a voter choosing from an extremely limited subset of corrupt politicians. That said, no country is perfect. I am sure there are some things about the US that you find superior to Britain as well.
Did you happen to know that Pharma spends more for advertising in the US than R&D?
How about we get like almost every other country in the world, and ban prescription drug advertising, that would cut down on their costs dramatically, and make drugs cheaper for everyone.