It's not the kind of thing you'll probably want to brag about winning, of course, but, according to new research conducted by the
OECD, people in the US, Canada and Spain come out on the top of the heap when it comes to high
cellphone bills. The research was conducted by categorizing bills into three usage categories, with the mid-range being 780 minutes per year of voice calls, and 600 SMS per year. For that amount, people in the US of A pay about $635 (the highest rate), while runners-up Spain pay just over $500. The countries with the lowest phone bills include the Netherlands and Sweden, where that same usage runs about $130. Yes, that's a huge discrepancy, alright, meaning that in the Netherlands you'd pay around $11 a month with that level of usage, while in the US the same amount will run around $53 a month. Then again, they don't get to watch "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" in the Netherlands, do they?
[Via
IntoMobile]
posted Aug 12th 2009 11:21AM
In the original article on IntoMobile it says "People in the Netherlands and Finland pay the lowest, only $131.44 per year, Sweden is only marginally higher at $137.94."
In your article, you seem to highlight only the Netherlands and Sweden as the cheapest.
A correction: The intomobile article wrongly states the voice units for the categories as "minutes per year of voice calls". If you check out the actual document (http://www.oecd.org/document/20/0,3343,en_2649_201185_43471316_1_1_1_1,00.html) you see that the units should be "calls per year of voice calls."
I was wondering how mid range use could be only 780 MINUTES per YEAR, or about 2 minutes per day! When you see it's 780 CALLS per YEAR, that makes a lot more sense.
This is not a surprise, US has been behind an will fall further behind not to mention more costly services only a surprise if you don't travel and are the common uneducated American.
Hey Jim could you please explain the correlation between education and knowing not the travel rates but the domestic wireless rates in various countries you dont live in.
why the hell would someone think im don louie.. lmao.. im celz my aim account is teknikkle and gaffinent is my email i dont know a blaine or a don louie.. anyway its ridiculous to think there is some connection between education and knowing how much cell phone mins cost on another continent
And whats up with you followintg behind my posts with this penis enlargement crap?? Ive never left a link in any post on any blog/ message board ever.. You need better sources its a little creepy you have a feww of my names right, but most of your info is wrong buddy..
there are so many flaws i can see in this that it makes the report completely unusable.
first of all it SHOULD be cheaper for coverage in a country only 16,000 sq mi (Netherlands) than a country that is 4,000,000 sq mi (USA). as a matter of fact, the USA is about the size of all of Europe. so we are paying for a calling area that is the size of their entire continent. that requires a lot more towers, mscs, pstn connections, etc, etc.
more towers are needed in the USA not only because of the size but also the population density is much more sparse than that of Europe. the population density in the USA is only 80/sq mi as opposed to Europe's 181/sq mi. so it takes an American carrier more than twice as much equipment to cover the same number of people.
this report says that it does not include mobile to mobile and other such calling features. while that in itself is fine, what about the fact that in some countries it costs more to call a mobile subscriber who has a different carrier than your own? in the USA, for example, the rates are always the same regardless of who you call. furthermore, there are countries that charge different rates depending on if you are calling a landline or a mobile phone. so does this report assume every call is based on the lowest available rate? that would be unfair to networks where other call types are built in to the prices.
speaking of other carriers, an important part of mobile phone usage is domestic roaming. the USA was rated highest in call prices, but for most plans that includes no additional cost for roaming on any compatible carrier across almost four million square miles. sure, the price plan may be higher per month than other countries, but is the USA being compared side by side to other price plans that do not include domestic roaming? actually, forget about domestic roaming. what about international roaming? as i said before, the USA is the size of Europe. so our price plans include the equivalent of being able to roam throughout all of Europe without any additional charges. i'm very confident this was not taken into account in this report.
and here is one of the biggest factors right here. lets not forget that most countries operate on a Calling Party Pays basis, whereas two of the countries who "came out on top" in this report, the USA and Canada, bill according to Mobile Party Pays. this is a whole can of worms right here. basically in the USA and Canada the mobile user pays for every call, but in other countries the person who initiates the call pays. this brings landlines into the mix because it is possible in some countries that a landline user called a mobile phone, and the landline user paid for the call. SO THE CALL WASN'T NECESSARILY CHEAPER, BUT RATHER SOMEONE ELSE PAID FOR THE CALL AND IT CAME UP ON A NON-MOBILE BILL! this doesn't work in the USA for two main reasons. the first is that landlines mostly have a low flat-rate charge that includes unlimited calling within a given area. the second is that mobile and landline phones use the same pool of phone numbers, so it would be complicated to differentiate between the two for the purposes of billing. there are pros and cons to each system that i won't get into, but in the end it will definitely always make the USA and Canada look more expensive when a report uses "tunnel-vision" to look at the numbers. it is very possible that the per minute rate of the USA mobile subscriber is actually much cheaper than the rate that the landline CPP user (or even another mobile CPP user) paid. ...and before i get replies about "but this has nothing to do with landlines," it most certainly does (and you are not understanding the point). because in CPP countries, landline users are basically splitting the bill with mobile users and that's why their mobile bills are cheaper.
there is so much more that i could get into, but how much does my comment really even mean to anyone vs. how much thought i am putting into it? now THAT could be a report right there. pay me lots of money like these guys were probably paid, and i'll just compare apples to oranges on an excel sheet and shoot it your way.
i thought of six more things just now. while im on a rant i may as well keep going. lol.
this report has decided that the highest usage is still a set number of minutes, even though the USA has completely unlimited use-any-phone-feature plans available. i'm sure not every country has this (do any?) so that would make this segment cheaper from the start.
this report also doesnt include pre-paid plans. even though MetroPCS is prepaid, you still have to pay monthly. it's not just a pay-as-you-go-when-you-need-minutes type of deal. so i don't see why they should be excluded from this. for about $50 per month you get unlimited almost everything in all of their markets (though the coverage is not the same as competitors).
and while i'm on the topic of an individual carrier, what carriers did they choose to use for their price comparisons? and why did they choose those carriers? did all the carriers include the same type of price models and features? what about if a carrier didn't offer the minute plan that was determined "low," "average," or "high?" did they divide the minutes by the mrc price and just add more minutes? did they add minutes using the pay per minute overage price? did they go to the next available plan? i can tell you right now in the USA it is cheaper to just spend $10 more on the next available plan than to pay for those same minutes at an overage rate.
what about phone subsidizing? did they take into account the estimated amount of the bill that is paying back for the phone discount? some countries actually bill a separate charge that is stated as going towards the phone's price. did they add or remove that as part of the bill in those countries? it should definitely be included if it wasn't removed from other countries such as the USA where it is built in to the mrc.
how did they go about determining what has low, medium, and high usage? was there a study on that too or did they guess? i send & receive about 400 texts per day, way more than they considered high. wait, i just thought of something else... other countries include texts in their rate plans. USA does not, but has packages available from 100 to unlimited. and that includes to any user on any carrier and while roaming. did they simply charge the USA the per text rate? or did they throw a package into the mix? in the other countries where texts are included, did they use the overage rate for each additional text? or did they add a package?
did they include exchange rates in the mix?
my point is not to "defend" the USA or Canada, but rather to show that different countries bill in different ways and provide additional features, roaming, and coverage areas that others may not. i am simply calling into question if any of this was part of their calculations, or if they simply added up mrcs and threw them in a chart. the latter of which would not provide an accurate picture of the difference in prices among countries, which i believe to be the whole purpose of the report.
Sure you can always talk about your population density but since your is 80/sq mi then shouldn't Sweden with 53/sq mi and Finland with 40/sq mi be bad to?
It's the same as with broadband penetration, USA is among the worst and Sweden, Finland and even Canada is among the best and Canada has 8 (!)/sq mi.
that is not the only factor. did you not see the dozen other things i mentioned? or how about the fact that the 1st and 3rd largest carriers use cdma, while the 2nd and 4th use GSM? so instead of having that double layer of roaming availability, carriers had to build out more infrastructure? ya, it's not the customer's fault. but in the end we have to pay for things like that. businesses are here to make money. but at the end of the day, i simply don't believe we are paying the most. maybe not the least, but definitely not the most. when i can drive from San Diego to Augusta and be on the phone with a friend in Seattle or Miami and it is all included in my plan for one price regardless of who called who or what network my phone is currently on or what network my friend is on, then there is no way in the world we are paying the most. especially considering i can do all that at night or on the weekends and it won't even take a single minute from my plan. or i can do it any time of any day if they are on the same carrier and it won't cost me anything.
and then for only $10 per month i can add up to four more phones to my plan and they have all the same advantages. for $100 per month i can have FIVE phones with AT&T that share 700 minutes and each have unlimited in-network calls at any time, unlimited night and weekend calls to any carrier, and nationwide coverage with free roaming on any roaming partner's network. by the way, in-network calls includes more than 120 million wireless, landline, and business phone numbers. All for only $20/month per line. it seems impossible to me that this is the most expensive of any country.
Stop trying to defend US carriers. They suck.
Your OMG FIVE PHONES 100 DOLLARS example looks expensive to me. 700 minutes on a prepaid card (no monthly rate) costs about $60 in Sweden on a prepaid card that has free in-network calling. So I could buy 5 prepaid cards and stick in phones and they could all call 700 outgoing minutes and I'd pay half of what you do. (and really it's even cheaper since your 700 minutes include incoming).
* US Population density is actually higher than some of the cheapest countries (Sweden, Finland) so that argument is invalid. Not to mention we have better coverage, faster data speeds and networks that actually work.
* And what if I call a phone sex line? What if I send a text to vote for American Idol? I'm sure they took it into account and used standard calling patterns (X% calls to mobiles, X% to landlines etc).
* No other countries (except maybe australia?) have domestic roaming agreements since they're small enough to be covered by each operator. Which means our [european] networks actually ought to be more expensive since ALL our land mass is covered by ALL our operators instead of operators being able to roam on each other.
* The EU is regulating inter-EU roaming, bringing down international roaming costs. And besides, in europe prepaid cards are such a good deal it's easy to pick one up when you go traveling. I got one in Spain with a 1 euro cap on daily 3G data costs - perfect for heavy data use!
* So? Good for us with mobiles, people with landlines can join the 21st century if they wish to.
* Europe also has "completely unlimited use-any-phone-feature plans available", that's not unique in any way
* I agree it's a mistake to not include prepaid. In europe prepaid is a very good deal and usually matches monthly plans.
* They probably chose whichever carriers were cheapest for each plan, that's usually how price comparisons work. Or possible they weighted it to which were most popular.
* This brings up another point that americans usually choose shitty motorola phones that are worth $5 whereas in other countries such as Sweden people choose high-end sony ericsson phones with 8 MP cameras etc.
* Texting packages exist in europe too, that's nothing unique to the US. Not sure if the study used them, but it would equally hurt european plan rates.
* CDMA makes no difference since no other countries have domestic GSM roaming. And in some countries our equiv. of the FCC made demands. E.g. to get GSM or UMTS licenses our swedish operators had to guarantee 99% population coverage within 3 years of getting the license. US carriers have no such stipulations and hence have much worse coverage.
Looking into this more (especially with the CTIA rebuttal) I think it's simply a difference of calling patterns making comparisons worthless.
People in America call a lot more, and their plans are geared to that. People in Europe call a lot less, and our plans are geared towards that. If you only talk on the phone for half an hour a month (like I do), you're still paying $40/mo minimum in the US for a basic plan with a bunch of minutes you'll never do. If you're make 10 hours of a calls a month like americans are more apt to do, you'll be paying lots on a European plan.
The markets are simply adapted to different behavior, and behavior outside of that doesn't fit and will cost you.
youngcali is right i was going to mention some of these issues..
Don't bother. This guy looks sick but it has been a funny stalking ;)
what exactly is your motivation for cyber stalking me.. I dont have any connection with spam or don or blaine.. I know it may be hard but lets act our ages here, im not gonna play name call on the net with some guy who confusing me with other people.. Grow up buddy
With the density its hard to use as 1 the US will have worse coverage based on land mass that other countries based purely on its size, but on population % it would no doubt be right up there possibly on top. Also CDMA has a much large coverage per mast which is why it was chosen, but also why previously the US has had larger form factor phones to cope with the additional radio requirements, all of which does not really come into the cost of ownership.
What I think is more telling is the cost up front to own a phone, as in the US you pay for it, over here its almost always free if you look at the vast majority of handsets in the wild. Ours are being paid for in the contract so really the price charged for our (UK) minutes is not always fairly represented in our contract. Our contract up until recently where almost always 12 months, not so from what I understand across the pond. Another statistic that might also be good to see would be the average cost of ownership compared with the percentage of the population with a mobile phone, all things are relative and tax regimes differ but combine the two and it might show where its relatively cheap or relatively expensive.
It really makes this a very interesting subject as most people believe the grass is always greener, and singling out single facts you could manipulate this either way but the fact is the business models and technological infrastructure is so different that it really is chalk and cheese. Also as youngcalhottie said its about business and making money, the actual cost and what we are charged are totally different and what we are charged is what the carrier thinks they can get as they want profit. I think its a fact that over two thirds of these companies revenue goes on infrastructure purely to be able to do itemized billing, if they where allowed to do a £40 un-metered tariff they would jump at it.