[andrepd]

In my travels in the EU, I've never had to even lift a finger. It all worked smoothly and reliable. When I stepped off the plane on the other side I got a text letting me know I was in roaming mode and could talk/use data from my current plan. When I returned I got a text saying "welcome back, I hope you had a good trip".

Oh, and this is not a premium plan or anything. I pay 7.9EUR for unlimited calls and texts, and 1GB of data.

[mvid]

Within the EU, yea. The amazing thing about Fi is that it operates the same in pretty much any country with a stable government.

[Shoue]

Three in the UK do the same thing and operate in 71 countries so far, however I get 13 GB of data instead of the unlimited. EE and O2 apparently offer similar deals.

[digi_owl]

The more i learn about US telecom, the more i wonder how the hell they managed to invent both the landline and mobile phone. Their infrastructure sounds like a balkanized mess...

[gsich]

First telephone was invented by an Italian (Antonio Meucci).

Probably the best landline system was/is in Germany. The ISDN was a complete digital system beginning from the 80s, having features that are not present in current mobile technologies. Calling was almost instant, probably only matched with VoLTE or SIP in local networks. Deutsche Telekom tried very hard to adapt most of the ISDN features to SIP.

[digi_owl]

> First telephone was invented by an Italian (Antonio Meucci).

Living in New York and granted a US patent...

[tomcooks]

> In 1834 Meucci constructed a type of acoustic telephone to communicate between the stage and control room at the Teatro of Pergola

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Meucci

[gsich]

You wrote "how they managed" and by "they" I assume you meant US-americans. Which is not the case for Meucci.

[exikyut]

What do you mean by "calling was almost instant"?

[gsich]

You dial a number. The other party will start ringing.

[mhd]

And not just calling. There was no need for a lengthy handshake after the connection was setup for ISDN modems.

[wil421]

Not really a fair assessment. The 4 larger mobile providers are spilt between GSM and CDMA in the past CDMA phones wouldn’t work abroad, except maybe China. You would even have to buy a CDMA version of the iPhone. The big 4 just buy up all competitors and usually one tries to buy one of the others.

Geographically the US is much more expansive than the EU and more robust.

I would not compare infrastructure I would compare the regulations. The telcos created the tech and most likely the laws.

[spiralpolitik]

Regulation was the key difference. The EU mandated a common wireless standard (GSM) to be in use across all countries. The US let the market decide and ended up building 4-5 largely incompatible semi-nationwide networks.

Thankfully time, technology, and consolidation has now reduced that down to 2 (CDMA/LTE - Verizon, Sprint, GSM/LTE, AT&T, T-Mobile). LTE will eventually consolidate that down to 1.

[arcticbull]

CDMA is winding up in the US also as all providers move off to LTE leaving their legacy infrastructure to die off at scheduled EoL.