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Two Countries, Two Vastly Different Phone Bills

nytimes.com

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Re: Two Countries, Two Vastly Different Phone Bills

#41

Post by martinald »

chrismeller wrote: post #37
potyl wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that area is a main factor. If that would be it then Russia would have higher prices and less subscribers, yet SIM card penetration approaches 170% (see http://www.budde.com.au/Research/Russia-Mobile-Market-Insigh... ).

You're not taking into account population density. Russia's population is very heavily concentrated in relatively few areas... Not much need to blanket all of Siberia with cell towers.

Same as the US surely? There's huge swathes of the US which has very limited cell coverage. Looking at a map, the majority of OR/ID/MT/ND/SD doesn't have cell coverage, not even 2G. Apparently more than 83% of the US population lives in urban environments, compared to 73% in Russia. In fact, it's more than the UK too (80%).

Re: Two Countries, Two Vastly Different Phone Bills

#42

Post by aceofspades19 »

Falkon1313 wrote: post #4

I've always gone with the no-contract plans. I pay $35/month for the same phone and unlimited service that one of my family members is paying $100/month for. Really I don't see the point of the contract plans.

I got my nexus 4 for 'free' on a contract and even if I bought it outright and got on the cheapest plan with roughly the same features, I would've only saved $5 a month. 5 * 24( 2 year contract) is only 120 so by going on a contract I saved at least $100 on the cost of my phone. If you are smart you can save money by going on a contract.

Re: Two Countries, Two Vastly Different Phone Bills

#43

Post by xSwag »

cstross wrote: post #36
petercooper wrote: post #17

Three is awesome. I actually tether through my phone at work because getting ~10Mbps to myself over 3G beats sharing a 10Mbps leased line amongst about 20 offices. I always have YouTube or Twitch on in the background, etc, and never run into any problems. I pay something like £20 a month. To balance though, historically Internet access options were not good.. I was on dialup until about 2003, and then pretty horrific…

Other things about Three: * The monthly contracts (and higher value pay-as-you-go top-ups) come with "Feel at Home" roaming -- in about 12 countries worldwide you can use your inclusive minutes, texts and data with no international roaming fees, i.e. you get that all-you-can-eat data overseas . Countries listed include the United States; on one recent 2-week trip to the USA I was able to use my iPhone for data as if…

> The all-you-can-eat is capped (small print) at a "fair usage" of 25 Gb/month.

I can tell you that this is wrong, I've personally had months where I've used 100GB+ of data over 3G and had no problems (this is on a £15 top-up). I don't know if they throttle or not, I've never really noticed it.

> Tethering is disabled while roaming overseas on "feel at home", but not prevented at home.

I didn't get my handset from Three but I've been able to tether in Paris and used at least 2GB when I was there.

Re: Two Countries, Two Vastly Different Phone Bills

#44

Post by martinald »

chrismeller wrote: post #24
maxxxxx wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the area argument was true then areas like Los Angeles or NYC would see cheap prices and great coverage.

No it wouldn't, because that's not the only area your plan covers. We all acknowledge that we are averse to limits of any kind (hence unlimited calling, even if we only ever use a couple hours a month!), and that includes area restrictions. Imagine if your cell phone required that you pay some outrageous roaming fee or get a special temporary pre-paid package if you drove out of NYC into NJ. Edit: Typo.

Or driving from Seattle to say, Vancouver, BC? That would be crazy if you had to pay a roaming fee.

Re: Two Countries, Two Vastly Different Phone Bills

#45

Post by martinald »

ksec wrote: post #2

Britain has forced companies to lease their networks to competitors at cost? So anyone could just enter the market?

The article is wrong. It's for fixed line broadband.

Though there are a lot of cell/network sharing agreements in the market (to various extents - some are actually cell roaming but some are just sharing backhaul/fibre/the physical towers):

O2 and Vodafone Orange and TMobile (merged to form EE) Three and TMobile (may or may not include ex-Orange sites, not sure).

Re: Two Countries, Two Vastly Different Phone Bills

#46

Post by PaulHoule »

maxxxxx wrote: post #23
chrismeller wrote: post #19

I would think that one of the "several factors involved" may dwarf regulation: area. The UK operators have 94,000 square miles to cover while US operators have a little over 3.1 million, just in the lower 48. Obviously no single carrier is ever going to cover 100% of either country (and in the US in in particular they don't come even close), but the simple size of the problem in the US drives their infrastructure cos…

If the area argument was true then areas like Los Angeles or NYC would see cheap prices and great coverage.

So far as I can tell, cell phone technology works best in third- or fourth- tier cities like Rochester, NY. The worst cities for cell phone coverage are cities like LA, NYC, Washington DC, etc.

In very dense areas they have to put in more cells, deal with the fact that there is a lot of metal around, multi-path propagation, more difficulties getting towers sited, etc.

In rural areas I think the cost has more to do with topography than anything else. In a mostly flat area that has an occasional mountain that's taller than anyone else, you can space towers far apart. In the Appalachian mountain region, however, you have a network of ridges that are all about the same height, so you'd need to run power and fiber to the tops of all the ridges - you might as well just run FTTH to all the homes, except you couldn't charge $10 a GB for FTTH.

Re: Two Countries, Two Vastly Different Phone Bills

#47

Post by anemitz »

It's worth noting that the billing methods for US and the rest of Europe are very different when it comes to voice. For instance, it costs between 4c/min to 26c/min to call a UK mobile phone. In the US it's The more interesting question I have is why would it cost 26c/min to call a mobile phone? And since each carrier prefix may have a different cost, how do consumers keep all these prefixes / carrier rates straight in their heads?

Edit: I'm looking at flowroute, plivo, and twilio.

Re: Two Countries, Two Vastly Different Phone Bills

#48

Post by chrismeller »

abritishguy wrote: post #26
chrismeller wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it doesn't. Not knowing much about the UK market, I don't really have enough information to base an opinion on. My first wild guess would again be regulatory: do they have to eat the extra costs involved so they provide you with the same price every month?

>My first wild guess would again be regulatory: do they have to eat the extra costs involved so they provide you with the same price every month? Nope, only one network does it (the same network in the article) and it is one of their many great features.

As cstross mentions in another comment talking about Three it seems to be part of a big "Fell at Home" marketing campaign. With no other obligation to do so, I would simply assume they saw it as a good opportunity to stand out in a crowded market.

The all-you-can-eat nature seems to include voice as well as data abroad, but I haven't seen any mention of international calling. Calling another UK number I'm sure works as normal, but presumably you still pay the regular rates if you call a US number? They certainly do if they call you. If you're just visiting the states for a week or two that's not nearly as big a deal (use the free local calls from the hotel phone to order pizza), but longer trips (school or business) would still involve meeting a larger group of people and become cost-prohibitive (for both parties).

Combined with the limited number of customers who would be traveling internationally at all and likely the ability to get some sort of bulk-purchase agreement with whichever carrier in the US they use and they're probably just happy to eat the (relatively) limited expense to get the added customers.

Like I mentioned in another comment, it also plays heavily into our hatred of limits. If I want to skip off to NYC for the weekend, I don't want to have to figure out what to do about my phone first! The "don't worry about it, we've got you covered" approach is probably working out really, really well for them, even for the large majority of people who never travel... because they might, one day. In the meantime they keep paying every month.

Re: Two Countries, Two Vastly Different Phone Bills

#49

Post by martinald »

anemitz wrote: post #47

It's worth noting that the billing methods for US and the rest of Europe are very different when it comes to voice. For instance, it costs between 4c/min to 26c/min to call a UK mobile phone. In the US it's The more interesting question I have is why would it cost 26c/min to call a mobile phone? And since each carrier prefix may have a different cost, how do consumers keep all these prefixes / carrier rates straight…

Not correct and I don't know where you get those prices from. OFCOM has regulated termination charges (http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/consultations/mtr/statement) in the UK. Right now they are at 0.8p/min but it is likely they are going to rule to drop them to below 0.5p/min.

Edit: these are wholesale prices, so there will be some overheads for whoever provides it to end users, but the crazy termination fees in the UK are long gone.

Re: Two Countries, Two Vastly Different Phone Bills

#50

Post by maxxxxx »

chrismeller wrote: post #24
maxxxxx wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the area argument was true then areas like Los Angeles or NYC would see cheap prices and great coverage.

No it wouldn't, because that's not the only area your plan covers. We all acknowledge that we are averse to limits of any kind (hence unlimited calling, even if we only ever use a couple hours a month!), and that includes area restrictions. Imagine if your cell phone required that you pay some outrageous roaming fee or get a special temporary pre-paid package if you drove out of NYC into NJ. Edit: Typo.

I would take an LA only plan if it were cheap. I think a lot of people would. And why do roaming fees have to be outrageous? How about reasonable ones?
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