Topic: European Cellular Phone Prices

[teethering]

I have a friend who works on the technical side in the mobile market, from what he tells me Canada is more expensive than US and US is still more expensive than Europe in terms of service charges.

The reason for that is that the infrastructure cellular companies build gets a lot more bang for the buck in densely populated Europe, so they can afford to charge less.  There are other issues with lack of competition, which are intertwined with being able to recoup investment into infrastructure.

[amysrevenge]

The reason for that is that the infrastructure cellular companies build gets a lot more bang for the buck in densely populated Europe, so they can afford to charge less.  There are other issues with lack of competition, which are intertwined with being able to recoup investment into infrastructure.

The contestant wins a cigar!

The surprising thing, really, is that we don't have to pay even more in Canada than we already do.  It's all about population denstiy.

[Miisanthrope]

Having downpaid the phone, I now pay for the subscription alone, which is now 49$ pr. month with 1200 minutes of included talking time, 600 included SMSs and one gigabyte of data.

This is in Norway, btw.

Whoa. I just checked our operators and a similar deal here in Finland (found pretty close with 1000 minutes, 500 texts and no limit of data at 1 Mbit/s) is 19.90€, so about 25$ per month.

[Johnny Slick]

I have a friend who works on the technical side in the mobile market, from what he tells me Canada is more expensive than US and US is still more expensive than Europe in terms of service charges.

The reason for that is that the infrastructure cellular companies build gets a lot more bang for the buck in densely populated Europe, so they can afford to charge less.  There are other issues with lack of competition, which are intertwined with being able to recoup investment into infrastructure.

That makes a lot of sense. As it is, here in the USA the "network" of the major companies is really a patchwork of dozens of smaller companies which over time merged, sold out, or liquidated their assets to the major players (actually, there are still a few smaller indie cell companies; the one that instantly springs to mind is Citizen's Mojave Cellular which operates in Kingman and Bullhead City, Arizona).