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Here in the UK, it's better, but not by much. I remember reading a study a while back that historically, the UK mobile costs tended to be lower than elsewhere i

Here in the UK, it's better, but not by much. I remember reading a study a while back that historically, the UK mobile costs tended to be lower than elsewhere in the world. My defense is this: as the cost of technology is constant going down, we the customers are not seeing any corresponding drop in costs. And that with the introduction of new operator (called 3 Mobile). In my mind, such a competitive market would transfer these savings to customers. Examples: A 200-minute (ish) any time any network plus some included texts price plan has stayed at around £25 for the past 6 years. More recently, they started experimenting with 18-month plans. These tend to give much better call and texting costs but when you factor in the "free" phone, they sometimes end up costing more than a comparable 12-month plan.

tptacek 19y ago
Price needn't track cost, especially in technology. Services are often deployed with low margins for the provider, with the expectation that margins will drop over time as technology gets cheaper. Consumers benefit from this if it means they get access to new technology at a lower price than they would if margins were held constant.
- pierrefar 19y ago
  In a competitive market, margins would be squeezed. It would be hard to keep them constant, let alone increase them.
  - sprig 19y ago
    Which is problematic when to have the market in the first place, huge investment in infrastructure has to be made.
thorax 19y ago
Most phones these days can use the web. Theoretically they can bypass this all on a data plan and send text messages as large as you want via email/apps/etc. At a minimum this gets around sending costs assuming you can find a site service that will send for free.