US Cell Phone Plans Among World's Most Expensive 827
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.)
Stupid prices (Score:5, Interesting)
This is what I've always wondered, but learned from Slashdot comments. Why the hell mobile plans are so costly in US? I have the largest plan available from my phone company, 2500 minutes / 2500 sms per month and unlimited 3G internet. And that's still only 29 euro per month. And I did actually use that 3G internet connection for a month while waiting for adsl connection to be set up for my new apartment (hell, even running a server from it). No transfer limits or anything like that.
Yeah, mobile companies have extra costs from providing their infrastructure, but it just seems a lot what they ask in US. Sweden is mostly woods and non-urban areas too, so why is it done better here?
Maybe voice your opinion to the companies so they stop charging so much?
Dutch second cheapest (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, that's a first! At last we're cheap in something else than marihuana...
Apparently the privatization of mobile networks worked out really well here!
X.
MOD PARENT UP! (Score:2, Interesting)
You don't realize how low the population density can drop until you ride a 3.3 gallon tank motorcycle through Wyoming. Number of phones per cell tower varies from 10 million to 1, sometimes.
Re:Missing Data, Towers Probably Influence Cost (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, let's imagine that coverage of the country directly affects cost. This might not be so outlandish as cell phone towers need to be erected to cover area. I would venture to say that Americans & Canadians suffer from sprawl much more than Finland and total area of dense population is probably more than five times that of Finland's. So let's assume that those cell phone tower maintenance (more harsh weather conditions across the US than Finland also) and building costs are passed on to the consumer.
Eh, you obviously dont know much how nordic countries are. Most of the area is forest and not urban cities. Theres no tornadoes or such, but the weather changes a lot between summer and winter. Finland also only has 3 cities that passes 200k people living and the land area is large and many people live in smaller cities/towns. I would even argua that the cost of having cell phone network covered is more than on USA's area.
Hidden Costs in European Cell Rates (Score:4, Interesting)
From TFA, 1680 minutes per year is considered high use. Really? Two hours twenty minutes per month.
Also stated is that same-network free calls and such aren't considered in the data, which skews prices higher in the US than is realistic. I pay $67 a month after taxes for unlimited everything but mid-day calls made out of network, with nights and weekends beginning at 7 PM. That's not great from a global perspective, but it's not the worst in the world, either, considering that I get 3-4k minutes of use and a few hundred pictures and videos sent in that interval.
Anyway, my real problem with European cell phones is how much is costs to call them. If I'm in Italy and I use a calling card to call an American land line, I'll pay around $0.02/minute. If I call an American cell, I'll pay exactly the same amount. If instead I'm in America and I call an Italian land line, I'll pay $0.01/minute, while a calling an Italian cell will cost me $0.15/minute on the same calling card.
On another note, I'm glad that my cell plan includes unlimited skype usage.
Re:comparing apples and oranges..... (Score:5, Interesting)
Uh.. those perks have been available in England for years. Plus when we get a phone with a contract, the phone is usually free. And can be upgraded every year, for free.
I'm visiting America for a couple months right now, so I've bought a cell phone for while I'm here, and I've been appalled at how bad your cell service is. You guys have phone companies boasting in adverts that they drop your call less than any other network. FFS, why do you put up with them dropping your call at all?!? Unless you drive through a lot of tunnels or live in serious wilderness, if your phone dropped a call in England as often as they seem to over here, the network responsible would be out of business long before your contract had a chance to expire.
And the nuisance calls.. I bought a brand new phone and gave my number to maybe three people. I've received over a dozen calls from unknown numbers, all of which Google has identified as scam callers. And I've been charged for being called by these so-and-so's.
Cell phone services over here are just dreadful. Why you all pay so much for such mediocre service, I really don't know.
Re:Stupid prices (Score:5, Interesting)
We need a VAT in the US.
We need to tax the bad (over-spending/under-saving) and not the good (working and earning).
This is not true around the world (Germany for example could arguably be blamed for over-saving), but the US desperately needs to tax consumption rather than production.
10.95/month sounds expensive (Score:3, Interesting)
I fall in the low usage category in Finland and have paid a total of 8.52eur for all my mobile phone usage since November last year when I switched carriers. I commited to 24 months at 0.66eur/month and I get 50 minutes of normal price calling as bonus. The base cost has thus sofar been 5.94eur and the rest has been mostly international use. Though I went a few minutes over the 50 one month, those calls being billed at 6.9 cents/minute.
Normally one does not commit to any term and can switch carriers in about a week, as I have done couple of times. So the free 50 min/month is an attempt to get some heavy users to get locked into their service.
Re:I have it under 50$ (Score:4, Interesting)
And when I called about it, it is because the number is a Michigan number.. because it is they can charge a sales tax on it.. as well as tax me because I reside in Pennsylvania
Avoiding a double-taxed good was the focal point of the "no taxing interstate commerce" clause in the constitution. Let AT&T know you're speaking to lawyers today about starting a class-action lawsuit against them for double-taxing you.
Re:Stupid prices (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure, TMobile is cheaper, but the coverage sucks here, so its not worth it for most people. My company just made the painful switch from TMobile to AT&T for the coverage reason.
Interesting to note that when my ATT using friends have coverage issues, I always have full signal on T-Mobile.
Re:Stupid prices (Score:3, Interesting)
. You want to make it progressive, you make the sales (or VAT) rate proportional to total price, so you pay more tax on more expensive things.
That will never happen, because unlike income tax the truly wealthy will actually be expected to pay VAT (probably one of the reasons that it has never gotten serious traction up until now).
Re:Stupid prices (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:comparing apples and oranges..... (Score:2, Interesting)
You get dropped calls because things are simply bigger here. You switch between more towers faster, there need to be more towers to support the same number of callers, and so on. I don't think that that's an excuse for the higher prices, but it is reasonable if you start looking at how radio waves propagate and such.
Re:Stupid prices (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:comparing apples and oranges..... (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually over here it's illegal to call cell phones with such calls. I've never received any SMS Spam and the only unsolicited phone calls I've ever received on my cell phone were from a company that just got shut down by the FTC a few weeks ago (the auto warranty nonsense).
I came over here for a visit a month ago & bought a cell to use whilst I'm out here - my EU phone doesn't work over here.
Brand new phone, and I've given the number to maybe three people. I get a call every day or two, on average, from unknown numbers. In fact, I had one just minutes ago, from 228-209-9560
Maybe it is illegal to make all these nuisance calls, but I've had more of them with my new phone over here in a month than I've had in over a decade of owning the same number in England.
Re:Stupid prices (Score:3, Interesting)
The thing is very simple: Competition. This market is so heavily regulated that it clutters competition. In france we are one of the worst country in terms of competition and we have 3 nationwide providers. A 4th one is coming in next year.
It is the same in the DSL market. Back in the 90s, we had only the historic provider. Plans were horrendous: about 50â/month for 512/128kb nude DSL. They have opened up the market and now we get 30â/month for 20MB/1MB, unlimited TV (100channels), and a voip landline with a real number (transfered from my historic line) which is free to call any landlines in about 180 countries around the world. Plus mobiles in the US and Canada. The rest you pay as you use (mainly mobiles outside north america)
The key point in the US is the lack of competition. Just get the government to deregulate a bit or sell more licenses for mobile carriers and the thing will just crumble.
Another comparison (Score:5, Interesting)
Swedish heavy metal: Lots of excellent black metal, power metal, symphonic metal, death metal and Opeth (whatever they fall in)
U.S. heavy metal: Thrash and some of everything else, for about the same total good quality output. But we have 30 times the population.
Now, Finland has at least as much good heavy metal production as Sweden (no Opeth, but Sonata Arctica is almost as good), and they have a little more than half Sweden's population.
Re:Stupid prices (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
wasn't there a good groklaw article on the subject just today?
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090809231252693 [groklaw.net]
Re:Stupid prices (Score:3, Interesting)
I dunno, I use them because:
I guess if I just made a few quick calls now and then to chat with my friends, a mobile would suffice. Since I have to talk to people in many countries all the time for long periods, a mobile is a disaster.
Cell phone charges in India (Score:2, Interesting)