I’ve read a similar cite for colour TV quality in the US.
We only pay for calls made from a fixed line, never to receiver them- unless it’s a collect (reverse charges) call.
Cellphones here are so cheap they’re practically free. You can, for example, pay Vodafone or Optus either $49 or $79 a month and get $230/$550 worth of call credit to use on whatever you like- voice calls, picture messages, text messages, video calls, GPRS, etc. The main reason to have a fixed line here now is for your internet.
The cellphone coverage here is pretty good- each of the three main networks (Telsta, Vodafone, and Optus) boast coverage to over 97% of Australia’s population.
Sure, that means you won’t be able to get cellphone coverage in the middle of the Simpson Desert, but as already been pointed out, why the hell would you want it? If you’re in the middle of the Simpson Desert, you’ve got a UHF radio with which to talk to people. And if you’re in the middle of the Simpson Desert without a UHF radio, you’re a complete tool.
FWIW, I’ve got cellphone coverage in some fairly remote places here, but as a general rule, if you’re in a civilised area you’ve got cellphone coverage- and that’s more than enough for most people here.
I should also mention you never pay to receive calls or messages on a cellphone here, unless you’re roaming overseas- the very idea of paying for people to call you seems totally ludicrous to most people here.
This is not the case in Japan, which also you choice your cellphone based on an approved list. However, the competition among manufacturers is intense and has lead to rapid innovation.
after all the posts about the technical differences in the US, I’d like to suggest another reason : cultural differences.
I’ve noticed (but I may be totally wrong!) that Americans who have cell phones use them very differently than everybody else in the world: Americans use them on when necessary, for serious conversations-- not casual chats or quick 5-second calls(i.e. “buy milk on the way home”).
This may be because of the stupid pricing/marketing in America, which makes people count their minutes and think twice before dialing, as seriously as an Atkins dieter counts carbs and thinks twice before eating a sandwich.
But I think it’s because of a cultural thing: An attitude about privacy that makes people self-conscious about intruding on other’s personal space, or annoying others. An American who is shopping in a supermarket won’t call home to ask which flavor ice cream to buy for the kids. And Americans don’t like other people eavesdropping on them,so they tend to look for a quiet corner before using their cell phones. If they are in a crowed space, they prefer not to use the phone.
All the above are just my anecdotal observations–am I totally off-base?
oops–I meant to type only
I would agree that there are very few areas where no one lives. Even in the Rockies, we have little clusters of population. I do have coverage at my house, but just barely.
My Wife and I drove to Las Vegas recently. There was one area in Utah that had no services for 110 miles along the interstate. I did not check the cell phone coverage though.
And what is very wrong- oftimes (at least here in the Bay area)- that resitance is led by a few tinfoil-hat-wearing loonies that think that cellphone towers are somehow dangerous what “with them invisible microwaves and all, hellfire, shoot, if them thar things can cook a hot dog, my weiner ain’t safe”. :rolleyes:
One thing that we do in America is let the tinfoilhat-dudes have a voice. I am not sure if that’s good or bad.
Askance: even in most of the outback, “You mean where there are no people?” is false. Sure, the population density out there is very very sparse indeed, but people do live out there (Bushrangers, prospectors, Aborigines, sheepranchers, and the like). And, so what you seem to be saying is that 99% of the population have very good coverage, and the rest can get stuffed, as they live “where there are no people”. 
Not in Japan. I’ve never purchased a cell phone in the US, but in Japan each provider has proprietary phones that you choose from. If you change provider, you buy a new phone.
:eek: :eek: :eek:
At that rate, I would’ve paid $166.60 in SMS charges last month! Does your provider not have a messaging plan that would make that cheaper? Mine charges me $9.99 / month for unlimited SMS / MMS on all three of our lines. They also don’t give a damn about the fact that of the three phones on our plan, not a one was purchased from them. They’re all eBay babies from overseas.
Also, Martin, T-Mobile is VoiceStream – VoiceStream is no longer and has not been for years.
Well, yeah, but why should I pay $9.99 per month for a service I don’t use? It’s a cell phone; call me; it’s quicker.
Yeah, I’m one of those old dudes (35 this week) that all the news reports says are afraid of new technology and don’t use IM services or text messages, and cling to our old school email. Now I’m going off topic, but: WTF? Email can be nicely archived for future reference in our PST’s, and telephone’s are just about always faster than text messages sent to a cell phone. One exception: from a proper desktop computer using a paging application, it’s handy for telling someone to text-page a telephone number (or model number or a grocery list or something) while in the car so as not to have to write it down. Okay, so I’ve now convinced myself that’s there’s some value, but I see people using their thumbs to carry on friggin’ IM-style conversations with these things.
Man, I wish that “quiet corner” behavior was the norm. I must be living in a different region of America.
But it’s not always quicker, nor is it always most convenient.
I work retail and so do all of my friends. Our shifts are all over the clock, and we’re never all off work at the same time. Texting is a godsend for us, because it’s asynchronous. I can be at home or at work, fire off a quick “Dinner at 11?” to a bunch of them at once, and wait for replies to come in as they have time. I cannot call them at work, and they can’t call me, but we can communicate in quick little messages. Little thoughts that occur here and there can be sent out and we can keep in touch. Also, I spent the last year traveling, and I could take pictures of where I was and send them off to my friends. Typing on the phone isn’t nearly as irritating as you might think, since most of them have decent predictive text entry. Nokia’s is my favorite, but that’s probably because I’ve been typing on different Nokias with their predictive text for almost 10 years now. My current phone is even multilingual so I can tap out messages in Spanish really easily to my Spanish-first friends.
In addition, there are a bunch of handy services you can access via text. Google SMS is my favorite – mostly translations and weather information, but also directions and other searches.
As far as archiving for later retrieval, my phone has an application (it lives both on the PC and the phone) that synchronizes my messages, notes, pictures, recorded sounds, and videos with the PC. I have a timeline of everything in and out of my phone since December of 2005.
I think the entire premise is faulty. I am a fairly atypical US cell phone customer and the phone selection in the US does not appeal to me. The phone selection in Tokyo appeals to me even less. Yes, they might have video phone and 3D LCDs(what the hell is the point of that?) but a lot of phones are still at 128Kbps, the user interface is slow and the phones enormous in size. I don’t think they are ahead, I think it would simply be impossible to market what passes for a $500 cell phone in Tokyo back here in California - and if they could be they would be competing with Treos and Blackberries and not regular phones. I don’t know what the situation in Western Europe is but Russia with its dual CDMA/GSM network has pretty much the same unlocked phone selection as US but more expensive.
Checking out T-Mobile’s (Deutsche Telekom) German website right now, I see a lot of the same stuff I see here in the “regular size” category: RAZR, PEBL, W810, W300, 6100 series, etc. I see a lot of phones I don’t see being all that popular in the US, for instance Sony Ericsson M600i probably wins the Russian Constructivism Reborn award, what the hell were they thinking? KRZR is also kind of an odd one out and probably suffers from the Japanese-phone syndrome of “looks kind of funny in any pocket”.
So, I’m not buying that US cell phone tech is in any way behind the times. Perhaps people are, but not the tech. I text maybe 500 - 700 messages a month and use unlimited data on the EDGE network with my laptop getting download speeds of close to 25 KB (yes, kilobytes) in some places, and this is on a two year old phone/card/account.
For the record, I happen to have just read an article on a related topic that mentionned in passing that the dominant position in cell phone technology Europe was benefiting from was indeed, as many posters mentionned a result of having adopted GSM as an universal european standart.
The article was actuall arguing that Europe was about to lose this dominant position to Japan and north-America because, according to the author, european countries had bled to death their telecom companies by selling at absurdely high prices licenses for the new 3G technology that apparently isn’t as profitable as expected, making said companies so indebted that it would significantly impact their ability to invest, research, expand, etc…
Actually, you bring up good points, and they all seem to pertain to lifestyle. I spend considerable time in front of a workstation all day, and so I didn’t see the need for anything aside from email. Everyone in my circles is similarly situated, and so if that weren’t the case, then I’d very much see more use out of it. I guess that’s why engineers aren’t marketers ;).
Thank you for the clarification. Whereas here I could call anywhere on my island (Oahu) whether it be next door or 20 miles away and it was always free. Although I’ve since dumped my land line in favor of my cell phone. The only place I’ve ever had trouble being in network was around this pond in this small town in the middle of Kansas.
New Zealand works the same way- all local calls (with 100kms) are completely free from one fixed line phone to another.
Australia’s refusal to follow suit has been a constant source of minor irritation to me since I moved here, but since I get an inordinate amount of free credit on my phone plan now, it’s a moot point anyway.
Thank you. It really is a lifestyle thing – I have no access to the Internet at work and neither do the rest of my friends. E-mail for us is at home, whenever we get home. Given that the shifts we work start anywhere from 6a to 4p and end between 2p and midnight and that we’re all in different stores, the lag would just be no good. So, we use messaging instead.
I was gonna ask you about Mexico. I assume that Canada and the US are similar with cell usage, but what about Mexico? Did you notice any differences in how people in Mexico used cellphones versus Canada and the US?
This is very rapidly changing, especially for young people. I’m 25, and fewer than 10% of the people I know at that age and younger have land lines. And most of the ones who do have them because they need to to get DSL internet.
Oh, and add me to the list of people who are pissed off by the fact that text messages are 5c to send and receive. I get 1500 minutes a month for $40 (and use less than half that). And it takes way less network usage to transmit a text message than it does to connect a circuit for a minute. Yet my actual call time is cheaper than the stupid text messages I get.