u.s. gsm carriers

I think one reason is that there are several different digital standards here, CDMA, TDMA, GSM, iDEN, not to mention AMPS(analog), and currently, only GSM accepts SIM Cards, as opposed to Europe, where everything is GSM. Another reason would be that GSM coverage in the US is not anywhere near what the other technologies enjoy, so GSM would not be a good technology for such a machine here. Oh, and from what I have read, Post paid is the preferred way to subscribe to cellular in the US.

 

Anonymous: it simply isn't profitable for them to do so. People in the USA are used to highly subsidized phones and contracts. Also people here like to keep their same phone #; changing it is a hassle. I dont know how often people in Europe change providers. Nobody would want to pay $150 for a Nokia 3360, for example, when they are planning to stay with the same provider and can sign a contract and get it for $25.

I think people in the USA use their phones more (although I have no facts). When I sign on to Cingular's Home 400 plan, for example, for $40/month, I get 400 anytime minutes + unlimited nights & weekends. This is more than sufficient for my needs - I use my cell for 95% of my calls; basically unlimited for me at this time. I dont think about how much each call costs, and I periodically check online billing to make sure I dont go over my minutes. In Europe, the calling party pays. That would make me a lot more hesitant, to just call up and B.S. with my friends, if I knew that $.15/minute was ticking away. But people in Europe are used to that, as their landline calls have per minute charges; here we are used to unlimited local service provided from a landline.

The providers are happy to collect your $40/month and give you a deep discount on a phone, with the guarantee that you will be paying them that $40/month for the next 2 years.

 

interesting thing about overseas gsm use

Jack

 

I must disagree with you about the people in the USA using their phones more than those in Europe. From what I have seen we don't use them at all compared to them.

In Norway, the cell phone, I'm sorry, the mobile phone has 1 more digit than a local phone. All of their mobile phones start with a '9' so the caller knows they are calling and being billed to call a mobile phone. Also very popular there is text messaging and I think I have seen the fastest thumbs in the world. Everyone is either talking or typing on the phone all the time. On the high speed train from the airport to Oslo, about a 25 minute trip, all you hear are phones ringing, either for a call or a new text message, and there never seems to be any dropped calls, just clear calls. I noticed the same thing on a hour long train trip from Porsgrunn back to Oslo on a Friday night. Even kids have their own mobile phones.

VoiceStream and T-Mobile International Roaming have made using my v60g much cheaper to use today in Norway, and many other places in Europe. Some day here in the USA we will have a great GSM network as they have there. I never found a place there where the phone did not get a good signal.

 

I agree with Mike. I was in London a couple of years ago and I couldn't help but noticing everyone using cellphones just like if they are showing them off. For what I hear their cellphone systems are more sophisticated than in the US so mobile phones have to be very popular. The first GSM networks were built in Europe back in the 80's so they are very experienced with their stuff.

 

Yes, but have you seen their pricing plans? Ouch....I wouldn't talk much. It's either you get very little peak minutes, or you get a few more off peak minutes but pay for peak....ahh it's confusing. They might have better coverage and technologies, but I like our pricing (T-Mobile UK is what I looked at, but at the time it was One2One)

 

One thing to keep in mind... Europe as well as Asia have nowhere near the penetration of hardwire land lines. Everyone in the US has a wireline phone, or easy access to it. Many people in E and A rely exclusively on their wireless phones for their main means of communication.

 

Given that, wouldn't you think that wireless pricing would be more affordable?

 

<< Given that, wouldn't you think that wireless pricing would be more affordable? >>



Given that, it's partially why prepay is more widely used and available too.

Matt

 

One thing you can do in EU that you can't do here is since incoming calls are free, you just buy a prepay with little minutes so its cheap and have everyone call you insteand calling them. You'll never run out of minutes.

 

I don't know about the other carriers but with VoiceStream it seems different. The past 2 weeks a couple of my associates have been in Norway. I just checked my statement on MyVoiceStream.com and under the unbilled calls were many to them. They were listed as Mobile 2 Mobile calls. Not as International or billable calls. I also had some SMS to them and they were listed as Text calls.

Using the T-Mobile International Roaming with VoiceStream must not be like calling a mobile phone in another country. All they are paying is the $0.99 per minute roaming fee.

So it looks like if you have VoiceStream then someone here in the US can call the local number at no additional fee to the caller.

 

<< So it looks like if you have VoiceStream then someone here in the US can call the local number at no additional fee to the caller. >>



You are right.

 

I am glad to see you can access your account again Chris, what happened?

 

I got banned for a couple of days when I didn't even do anything. I didn't threaten anybody or anything.

 

Anonymous, we are expecting a heafty bill for the phones that were in Europe. Their calls should be $0.99 per minute. We do have one person traveling at a location that costs $2.99 per minute. Yes, I am sure the bill for the ones traveling are probably going to be quite high, but that is the cost of business today. If it was a personal trip I am sure not as many calls would have been made. I was just happy the calls I made were listed as mobile 2 mobile calls, knowing the other end was paying a roaming charge.

They both came back with a new Nokia 6310i tri-band phone they were given by the Home Office in Norway. Can't even get those phones here yet. I believe that model is the first tri-band from Nokia. They had a dual-band before, but never a tri-band one. Two years ago when I was over there I came back with a Motorola P7389 tri-band phone. That was later replaced with a v60g.

 

I'd say the usage is about the same... look at all the morons who drive and talk at the same time (hello, Los Angeles!).

The difference in pricing is that in Europe, you choose one 'nice' on your plan (say, lots of off-peak minutes, or more on-peak minutes, or more text messaging), and you pay quite a lot for the other features. Thus, the businessperson will get some more on-peak minutes, but the college student might want night/weekend minutes or text messaging.

Next comes the long-distance business. Long distance is almost NEVER included in European mobile plans. For example, in May, our rental phone (and plan) from SFR came with a deal - 100 domestic long distance minutes for â?¬10,-- (about $9.50 at the time). This was on a plan with 3 hours (180 minutes) on-peak and 6 hours (360 minutes) off-peak with very little text messaging, for the (in France) steal of â?¬36.

Bear in mind that while it looks terribly expensive to Americans, many Europeans use only a mobile phone (instead of a landline) - when you compare the costs, it's not that bad, given that you pay by the minute even for local landline calls.

The US is the only place I know of where you can get most of your desires in one plan - a decent number of anytime minutes, lots of (or unlimited) off-peak minutes, lots of (or unlimited) mobile-to-mobile, and long distance. OTOH, Americans are used to roaming fees (though this is slowly changing), whereas a Frenchman expects to be able to use his mobile anywhere in France for the same price. Americans are also used to contracts; these are less common in Europe.

Now, my candidate for the place where it bites hardest to have a cell phone with any reasonable amount of talk time is Canada. Fido and Rogers are absolute scam artists, and while Telus Mobility is less so, their technology is awful.

 

As mentioned many times, GSM is not the exclusive of the US. America has helped develop the predecesor to GSM but dropped the ball by not following through. Of course cell phone bricks were available here long before anyone even dreamed of cell phones in Europe. Europe is much smaller and has the benefit of not having to go through the development phases and just pick the best system and implement it. I recently came back from the Czech Republic, one of Europe's leading cell phone users. Over 60% of the population have at least one cell phone. True that prices in europe for talking are a bit higher than here, but so is everything. I've noticed people don't use cell phones to engage in lengthy conversations like americans apparently do. You call your friends, locate them, see how they are, and set up a time to meet and that's it. I haven't noticed lengthy conversations really anywhere in Europe. As to our approach of buying subsidized phones, its the same in Europe. You get discounted phones through contracts with the carrier. Most people I know get a pay-as-you-go plan but they have to pay full price for their phones, or get them used. Used is a great way to go for a $500 phone that's half price less than a year old. Personally, I'm getting my N95 tomorrow and I'll be spending the whole weekend tweaking it, something a bit nonamerican about that comment. I might buy the iphone too, just to play around with it and see if its worthy, though its main benefit of built in memory isn't that wonderful when you can get a 4gb microsd for your nokia for about $60. hmmmm

 

:O oh newbies.....lol

 

You have just read a 5-year-old topic raised from the dead.