| > Europeans never paid for speed, that's completely incorrect. https://www.dna.fi/liittymat
https://kauppa.saunalahti.fi/#!/matkapuhelinliittymat I understand that theres a lot of variety in Europe, but to say that tiers by speed doesn't happen is factually incorrect. >There's no tradeoff I never said there was, I am simply pointing out differences in how the markets are set up and function in these vastly different continents >there's not the same quadrupoly that exists in the US This is true, this is the biggest problem with the US cellular market today >That's an interesting attempt to justify the price I'm not trying to justify anything, just explain some of the differences. >but it completely fails to take into account that simply calculating area is nowhere near accurate for the number of towers - it depends on where people live It depends on hundreds of factors - population density, building density, building materials, types of cellular radios used (CDMA vs GSM have different ranges), terrain, interference, number of carriers, etc The difference in land area is definitely a factor - i never said it was the only one. My mistake was obviously saying '26 times more towers', which i admit was a careless thing to say, but i think it still made my point. The US has significantly more infrastructure than any single european country, in part due to its much larger coverage area. >Fortunately people live close together, so towers don't need to cover every square inch of the country. Much truer in Europe than in the US - US: 32.65/sq km UK: 262/sq km [1] >If you look up the number of towers, you'll find that the US has roughly 120,000 mobile base stations I see 205,000[2] - which puts the US at ~10 times the towers of the UK >So your argument does not hold.
do you think that the cost of ~10 times more infrastructure is not part of the higher prices in the US compared to the UK?
My argument was that having to spend much greater amounts on infrastructure is one of the reasons for a price difference, i didn't say it was the only reason or explanation just that it's worth noting. >I'll never understand how people think that you get "low to no cost upgrades" of hardware. This is just the psychology of purchasing. People don't like spending a lot of money at once and would prefer to spread costs out over time - I completely agree that the 'subsidized' model is garbage, but i haven't been able to convince a single family member to switch to buying phones outright no matter how many times i show them the lower cost after the full two years.
Of course by low to no cost i meant when you walk into the provider's location after two years, you walk out with a new phone that you paid very little for during that transaction. It doesn't seem to matter to most people that they end up paying more than the phones full retail cost over the course of two years. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_de...
[2]http://www.statisticbrain.com/cell-phone-tower-statistics/ |