If US wireless companies operated in Europe, they would have been fined and legislated into submission by now. Not here. We have clowns who still believe government regulation is bad. Therefore, the private sector should 'regulate themselves'.
End Result, monopolies like Verizon and the failure of the free market. We have a country of 300 mill with only 4 major cell carriers. While other countries with 1/15 our population have 5 or 6 major cell carriers and are providing 20+ mb data services. Lets not forget services like two way video calling. Which for consumers in the US, is still at the science fiction stage.
Of course, the countries with two-way video calling and higher speed networks than we have also have far less land mass to cover. How hard is it to provide wireless coverage to the major population centers in Japan, for example? We have regional carriers in the US that have to cover far larger footprints than many national carriers overseas.
The financial investment required to be a major carrier in the US is far more than in the UK or most other European countries. That's why there's only four here, not because of magical government regulation. I'm fairly sure you can't consider a company with three major competitors a monopoly, anyways.
Who said they had to provide these features in every single cell zone? As it stands, they already don't. Just look at AT&T's 3G coverage map. Now lets compare any carrier in the states to the services of carriers operating in similar sized countries like Australia. Where 99% of their population has 3G coverage, with data rates approaching well over 21mb. We could even go down the handset route where we are severely limited by what the carriers choose. With a larger population we should have 5 times the handset choices of lets say the UK, yet we have less.
Economics 101. The more equipment a carrier buys the cheaper it is. So these 'population based' excuses simply hold no water. All large cities should have had the latest and greatest. Instead we have 3G networks that are a joke. You can compare a range of large cities or even smaller cities abroad and they usually have much better cell services. I actually achieve greater throughput using a sat service in NYC than I do on a AT&T or Verizon handset. Yet the same 3G handset overseas, in more densely populated cities, achieves 5 times the throughput.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
JKL @ May 15th 2009 10:41AM
Anyone notice this part: "swappable SIM cards will not be able to be used in devices not certified by Big Red"
In a stereotypical Verizon fashion, they will attempt to lock the devices down, again.
What is the freakin logic in doing so? What do they seriously gain by doing that? This is a classic bean counter oriented move.
JKL @ May 15th 2009 10:42AM
If US wireless companies operated in Europe, they would have been fined and legislated into submission by now. Not here. We have clowns who still believe government regulation is bad. Therefore, the private sector should 'regulate themselves'.
End Result, monopolies like Verizon and the failure of the free market. We have a country of 300 mill with only 4 major cell carriers. While other countries with 1/15 our population have 5 or 6 major cell carriers and are providing 20+ mb data services. Lets not forget services like two way video calling. Which for consumers in the US, is still at the science fiction stage.
Rollins @ May 15th 2009 12:51PM
Of course, the countries with two-way video calling and higher speed networks than we have also have far less land mass to cover. How hard is it to provide wireless coverage to the major population centers in Japan, for example? We have regional carriers in the US that have to cover far larger footprints than many national carriers overseas.
The financial investment required to be a major carrier in the US is far more than in the UK or most other European countries. That's why there's only four here, not because of magical government regulation. I'm fairly sure you can't consider a company with three major competitors a monopoly, anyways.
Dan @ May 15th 2009 4:41PM
Who said they had to provide these features in every single cell zone? As it stands, they already don't. Just look at AT&T's 3G coverage map. Now lets compare any carrier in the states to the services of carriers operating in similar sized countries like Australia. Where 99% of their population has 3G coverage, with data rates approaching well over 21mb. We could even go down the handset route where we are severely limited by what the carriers choose. With a larger population we should have 5 times the handset choices of lets say the UK, yet we have less.
Economics 101. The more equipment a carrier buys the cheaper it is. So these 'population based' excuses simply hold no water. All large cities should have had the latest and greatest. Instead we have 3G networks that are a joke. You can compare a range of large cities or even smaller cities abroad and they usually have much better cell services. I actually achieve greater throughput using a sat service in NYC than I do on a AT&T or Verizon handset. Yet the same 3G handset overseas, in more densely populated cities, achieves 5 times the throughput.