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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.)
Cell phone services over here are just dreadful. Why you all pay so much for such mediocre service, I really don't know.
You're visiting America right now, and apparently you're paying for our mediocre service. Why are you doing it?
Probably for the same reason we do: there isn't much of a choice. It's either pay for bad service, or don't get service. No one is offering good service at a decent price.
The government is in cahoots with them, very directly. You see, the cell phone companies pay for the the frequencies they have to resell to you as cell service. The last auction (for admittedly some very juicy 700mgz frequencies) ended up being 14 billion dollars, straight to the government. 14 billion is a lot of cabbage, even to the government. Now I ask you, what incentive does the government have to go after the people that are paying that kind of money for the use of those frequencies?