[Someone1234]

Urban parts of the US are subsidizing large rural areas. Almost all plans are 50 state plans, which means you're paying to install and maintain cellphone coverage for mostly corn fields or forests in the middle of nowhere.

Check out this map:

https://i.redd.it/2b7uoxjoprqz.jpg

For costs to come down, you'd need people to adopt single-state or two/three state plans on the East/West coast. But starting such a network would be prohibitively expensive. For example an "only California" plan could likely be very inexpensive and comparable to Europe.

[techsupporter]

> For costs to come down, you'd need people to adopt single-state or two/three state plans on the East/West coast.

That's interesting because VoiceStream/T-Mobile used to offer that exact plan in various clumps of states. They were called "Neighborhood Plans" and varied by area. In my case, I had a three-state plan covering Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. $50/month, as I recall, for 3,000 minutes, 3,000 SMS, included long distance, roaming across all of those states, and some amount of data that I can't remember. The northeast had a similar one for Maine down to part of Virginia.

In the early 2000s, that was a screamingly good deal. Those plans got dumped by the mid-2000s in favor of "unlimited nationwide roaming" and "free long distance to everywhere" and now we don't even think about where our devices work and what it does or doesn't cost to call a given number (or about "calling" in general because I see so many people on cheap mobile service forums who only want a data plan and "I don't need any voice minutes"). I can now get an unlimited-everything plan that works across the entire continental US network of a major LTE carrier for $25-40/month (depending on how many people are in my virtually-constructed "Party"), so at least costs have come down from where they used to be.

[moooo99]

That absolutely makes sense, thank you!

However, I was wondering: How good is the LTE coverage across the U.S? Germany has really bad coverage, even along the Autobahn and train tracks with high traffic. And Germany is pretty small when compared to the U.S

[bluGill]

Nobody wants such a plan. I'd buy a 3 state plan - but the 3 states I need covered are different from my neighbors. Most people in the US have some family member living in a different state, and that state must be in their 3 state plan. Then there is the fact that I also need all the states in between in case I drive - I'd pay extra for the national plan (preferentially including Mexico and Canada) just so I don't have to figure out which route I can drive on my yearly road trip.