3 ms·
I can tell you what world that is. It is the 'old world', Europe. I live in Germany. I have an iPhone. I have 'net access virtually everywhere including all of
by Derbasti 16y ago
I can tell you what world that is. It is the 'old world', Europe. I live in Germany. I have an iPhone. I have 'net access virtually everywhere including all of western Europe. I pay 30$ per month for it.
I have lived in the US for a while, and I can tell you: US mobile carriers offer incredibly bad service for incredibly high prices. All of western Europe is way ahead of AT&T or Comcast in these regards. I have not had a single 'dropped call', ever. This problem just does not exist outside the US (except when you enter a tunnel, of course).
Hence, I can always send emails, or even Facebook or Twitter updates from anywhere. Why would I want to send an SMS instead?
- jarek 16y agoYour "old world", western Europe, is an outlier. Head out into the middle of nowhere in northern Norway and see how your Facebook works.
- Derbasti 16y agoYou could argue that Norway would be 'Northern Europe', but I guess that is hypocritical. Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, Netherlands, Belgium and England have very good coverage, though.
- jarek 16y agoThose countries combine for approximately 242.63 million people and 1,236,644 km^2, or 3.5% of the world's population and about 0.8% of the world's total land area.
- dagw 16y agoPerhaps England has gotten better of the past few years, but I found that 3G coverage in northern England (outside of larger towns and cities) was very spotty about 3 years ago. Hell even GSM was spotty in quite a few place.
- dkersten 16y agoIn Ireland the service is much worse than mainland Europe. Also, "anywhere" in your last sentence does not include large parts of: Africa, The middle-east, Asia, Central and South America, large parts of Australia. So, the problem does exist outside of the US. Ok, Ok, I get that you mean in equivelent non-US places the problem doesn't exist.
- gst 16y agoI can fully confirm this (I've too lived in Europe and the US). Europe (Austria): I currently get data traffic at 4 Euros per GB. No monthly costs. Alternatively I can also get 9 GB for 8.80 per month. Also possible in combination with 4 Eurocents per minute for voice calls - of course also without monthly costs (or alternatively: 8.80 Euros per month for 1000 minutes AND 1000 SMS). Usually you've got cellphone coverage _everywhere_ (this also includes many mountain tops in the Alps). US: I wasn't able to buy just a GSM SIM but had also to buy some cheap phone to get the SIM. Data rates are just crazy - something like $20 for 100 MB IIRC. Coverage is quite poor outside of metro areas: In Austria I would get upset if I don't have 3G coverage, in the US I was happy when I had GSM coverage. And of course, T-Mobile and AT&T use incompatible 3G frequencies - meaning if you buy a phone with one of them you cannot use it with the other one.
- dagw 16y agoExtrapolation from a small and rich country like Austria to the entirety of Europe is very dangerous and quite likely to give inaccurate results.