>There are considerably more providers than actual carriers in Germany The same is true in the US, they are called MVNO's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_

>There are considerably more providers than actual carriers in Germany The same is true in the US, they are called MVNO's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_mobile_virtual_network_operators http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_mobile_vi... >What you say about subsidized phones is patently false You are most likely talking about carriers allowing people to finance their phones in europe. Where you can pay an additional 20 euros a month to get the new iphone or whatever. This is not at all what i'm talking about. In the US, when you open a cell phone contract, you get a new phone at a discounted price. You sign a contract and you get to choose from the carriers selection of phones, older phones being completely free, newest phones costing 200 dollars. The rest of the cost of the phone is hidden inside of the cost of the plan itself. There is no line item for how much you are paying for the phone each month, it is simply part of the pricing of the service itself. When your phone has been completely paid off, you will never know because your plans price will not change. In europe, you finance phones, when they are paid off you stop paying for the phone and you then own the phone. your bill goes down. This is not at all the same behavior as the subsidized phone system in the US. >German providers offer unlimited low-speed data with a varying amount of high-speed data This is what im talking about, this does not exist in the US. There is no variation of speeds, you either have data or you dont. There is some subversion by carriers using 'throttling' where they slow certain lines down to a crawl when the carrier decides they've used too much data for the month, but that is by no means a part of how plans are priced. >So, yeah, your information seems to be a bit out of date admittedly so, i haven't been in europe for more than a week since 2013 - and have never spent much time in germany