Do you guys have free nights and weekends?
I pay about a nickel a minute for outgoing calls (and of course, being under the GSM standard nothing for incoming). Everyone having a cell phone might seem like hyperbole, but I have three functioning, though I only use one, the other two, being older than two years, are gathering dust, it’s just that it seems a waste to throw them away.
The talk about infrastructure isn’t exactly true either. Sweden and Finland, home to Ericsson and Nokia respectively, are world leaders in cell phone technology, but we had excellent land connection and an effective mobile phone technology before GSM and microwave technology (it was called NMT: Nordic Mobile Telephone, a joint standard for the Scandinavian/Nordic Countries). Back then, calls were a buck fifty a minute and phones were insanely expensive (about $2k for a cheap phone). De-regulation in the late 90’s, early 90’s led to fierce competition that drove prices down.
Textmassaging is mostly kid/teen thing. Most parents will not get their kids an open contract, they get a sim card that can be charged with a certain amount of money thus keeping track of costs. Kids text becuase it’s a fixed rate, no matter the length of the message, and of course receiving messages (or calls) is free. Some companies even have a policy that you call for free within their own network and get paid if you’re called from someone outside your network.
All in all, Sweden now has more cell phone numbers in use, than their are people in the country. So it’s not surprising that we’re at the forefront of the technology.
anecdotal evidence:
When I was in the States a year ago, I spent the day with a good friend, and 3 times in one day, I asked him to hand me his cell phone while I made a short call. Now, if I had been at his house, I wouldn’t have even considered asking permission to make a local call–I’d just naturally pick up the phone on the kitchen wall and dial.
But with the cell, he made more than one comment about me “using up his minutes”.
And therein lies the difference between America and the rest of the world:
Americans still treat their cell phones the way that, in the 1950’s, their grandparents treated long-distance calls placed through the operator. They are very aware of each call, and and carefully limit their use.
The rest of the world uses cell phones freely and naturally, with no guilty conscience, and without calculating each and every call and how much each minute costs.
It’s not just an issue of America being behind the curve on the technology* and how widespread it is with the public. It’s a psychological issue–Americans are , well, afraid of their cell phones. The rest of the world isn’t.
*for example: America has huge areas not yet covered by cell service. Most other countries are smaller and have better coverage. And Americans have to specifically sign up for “roaming” if they move from city to city. Most other countries don’t even have that concept, and certainly don’t charge big money for it.
While I agree that the US cellphone stuff is generally behind Europe in most stuff, it’s not as bad as it once was. Before I left for Spain, everyone had that Nokia that really started off the cell-phone craze in America You know the big one with the rubber antenna (although it seemed small at the time) The last time I had an answering machine and a landline that I used was in high-school. But anyway I then went to Spain and saw what they had there. I can’t remember the next American phone I had, but when I went to Germany it was clear that the service was far superior.
Basically European phone companies don’t screw you over NEARLY as bad. Here’s an example of what I can remember about my German contract. The minimum payment for having it was 5 euro a month although this was a student price. The normal price was slightly higher. It was a two year contract. Also I had something called a homezone, meaning within a certain radius of my house (generally about 500 meters) I could make calls which were generally on par with landline rates. I could call my house in the US for 10 eurocent a minute! Incoming calls were free, as they always are in Europe, and normal calls outside the homezone were generally about 20 eurocent a minute.
Now the Danish mobiles are really cool. Everyone’s got the latest tech, due to the fact that contracts can’t last any longer than 6 months here. This is a great idea. Basically you get a huge discount off the price of the phone I bought a shiny new Nokia 3G mobile for about 65 dollars (399 DKK) And then you end up paying a minimum amount each month which equals the price difference in the retail and reduced price. So the 399 DKK minimum use x 6 months = 2793 DKK. That is the price of the phone. This is about 460 bucks. But the cool thing is that I generally use a good bit of that minimum usage, so you are getting it for free in a way. I normally use all of the 399 DKK each month, so I’m getting the phone at a much cheaper price. In a way I’m paying for my service and 1/6th of my phone with the same 399 DKK each month. But I also have 3G service, meaning usable internet access with the Opera Browser. It’s really good for settling disputes about something at the pub. Plus google makes GMail and Goggle Maps for mobile which is awesome when you try to navigate around town. They work really fast too. I also used it for internet access when I first moved in. It is pretty fast, although limited by bluetooth speed. But you can get around that with a cable.
Text messaging is cheap .20 kroner a text, I believe. Yes…that’s 3 cents USD. And can you believe the rates Verizon gets away with?!? It’s huge here and everyone uses it. Also I get video/voice calls for .7 kroner a minute which is 11 cents a minute USD. And data is about 1.6 dollars per megabyte. That can get steep though.
Basically I see the reason why America lags behind is that it seems that cellphone companies have lots of regulatory protection and seem to go on the business model of screwing their customers. But the handsets seem to have gotten better since the switch to GSM handsets. In Denmark, for example after I finish paying off the phone with the monthly installments, I only pay 49 DKK a month plus usage. None of this crap like “10 bucks a month for free incoming calls!” 49 kroner (less than 10 bucks) and whatever I use after that. It’s truely awesome. 3G is awesome, but kind of just a gimmick. I never do video calls because I don’t know who has the capability to use it.
Actually the roaming thing isn’t so much of a problem now as it was before. But the minutes thing is true. It’s pretty stupid to have to pay for a big pack of minutes each month. And the most ridiculous thing was “rollover minutes” meaning that the minutes you didn’t use would be added to your next month’s minutes. But what’s the point in that? If I didn’t use them this month, then why would I need them next month?
Just go to Cingular.com and check out the stuff there and compare it with something in Europe, like vodafone.ie to see the differences. Although in England, it appears they also have plans with minutes and such as well.
But yeah, I really prefer pay for use than some package of minutes or whatever.
Not to sound like a jerk, but you admit using anecdotal evidence from one American friend and then profess to know how 300 million people view their cell phone? And your ideas about roaming are about a decade out of date. Any cell phone plan worth its salt in the U.S. will have no roaming charges what so ever anyplace in the lower 48. And your friend is either cheap, or has a crappy plan. I’m telling you, I can call any phone in the US from any place in the US at any time, virtually limitlessly and pay 60 bucks a month. After 8 pm and all weekend long, it doesn’t even eat into my ample allotment of time at all. I don’t know anyone under 65 that is “scared” of their cell phone.
When I had a French friend living in the states, he wanted to take a road trip to Utah, and didn’t have a cell phone. I gave him one of mine, and I had to convince him he could use it as much as he wanted in rural Utah without running up much of a bill.
Now I will admit the US might be behind in internet gadget phones and the like, can’t say, I’m not really into all that, although the Google earth thing would be awesome.
Scandinavian dopers: I read an article about 5 years ago that said soon you would be able to walk up to a vending machine, call a number, and have the product dispensed and billed to your phone. Did that ever come about?
Can’t speak for Scandanavia but here in Aus as long ago as four or five years there were vending machines (coke & chips mostly) that allowed you to do that in Sydney. It was only available to people with certain carriers that had an agreement with the vending machine company, but you could just dial a # and get your coke and the $2.20 would go onto your phone bill.
I really missed that when I moved back to Adelaide, sometimes when you need a drink but don’t have any cash/change and there’s no ATMs around it was a really good idea.
From what I’m hearing here, my cell phone experience wouldn’t change a bit no matter where I was. I don’t talk on it that much or text at all so those things wouldn’t change. I’ve spent a total of $130.00 since december 05 including the phone itself and don’t want all the other options.
Thanks for the input everyone.
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And as for U.S. visitors being impressed upon seeing cell phone ubiquity in Thailand, I would guess they aren’t impressed because Thais use cells more than Americans but because they mistakenly believed most Thais wouldn’t be able to afford something like that.
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Service is cheap enough here that just about everyone can afford it. We don’t pay for incoming calls. Outgoing calls are 3 baht per minute for the first two minutes, 25 satang for the third minute, then it’s free after that. In terms of US money, at the current rate of 35 1/2 baht to the US dollar (and there are 100 satang to a baht), that’s about 8 1/2 cents per minute for the first two minutes and about 3/4 of a cent for the third minute. Our cellphone bill for the entire month is only about 200 baht, or $5.63, but we’re not like a lot of people here who live on their cellphones.
Actually, this is the first I’ve heard about that, but then, vending machines aren’t all that common here. Paying for public transportation and parking with your phone account is quite common though.
I really want to get one of these to attach to my cell phone. Just imagine the looks you will get at the coffee shop!
In the UK they were also talking about selling ready to go mobiles from vending machines, I’m not sure whether they are doing it yet.
The UK’s land line infrastructure was pretty good before the introduction of mobiles, so that cannot have been the reason why they caught on here.
Clever marketing had a lot to do with it. When I opened a student bank account back in 1998, it came with a free phone, which at the time was an amazing deal. Of course, it was PAYG with all calls charged at about 50p/minute, so everyone who got them soon upgraded to a monthly plan.
In fact, the whole introduction of pre-pay phones at that time was shrewd: it was particularly targeted at the teenage market, who may not have been big spenders at the time, but are now the 20-somethings on the massive 1000s-of-texts monthly plans.
That is very neat, they probably got the bank to pay a good chunk of the cost of the 'phone.
A lot smarter than giving out iPods
I want the Bluetooth version. It’s cordless. 
Oops. I didn’t really think that one through - don’t we have UK billions anymore then?
Nope, I’m afraid we had to revalue the billion during the 1970’s oil-crisis.
There’s a good point in there somewhere - the billion did get standardised, but how?
Seriously I do think it was at some point in the seventies that the old definition faded away. The Treasury changed their defintion in 1975, according to Jeff Vagg of Beckenham in this link.
That’s interesting… not because I’ve acted in any significant way on a false understanding of the value (either way, it’s too big a value to have been of daily use to me), but because I can recall numerous incidences of seeing people saying “…and that’s UK billions, which are bigger…”. Standardisation makes sense, of course - I’m just wondering how many people missed the memo, like I did.