Cell Phones: Japan vs. the United States 539
Stirland writes "Cell phones/Connectivity: Japan and the United States: Worlds Apart on Wireless. Interesting analysis of the economic and cultural reasons for why the Japanese kick Americans' butts when it comes to wireless cell phone technology and usage."
There's a reason for all of this... (Score:4, Insightful)
The United States has a very, very, very large land mass compared to Japan or Finland, or any other country in Europe that has cooler cell phone technology than we do.
It's simply very, very expensive and time consuming for companies to roll out services that *might* get the public interested...
So while I would very much like to have video on my phone or simply be able to buy a Dr Pepper out of a soda machine, the sheer size of the United States makes it difficult for such widespread agreements on standards or progress in new technology...
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:2, Interesting)
I think the 3 countries in the world with the biggest cell phone usage (as by percentage of ppl owning a cell phone) are Sweden, Finland and Austria. Both Sweden and Finland are only lightly populated in their northern parts, and Austria is covered by a lot of mountains. I've been to two of these countries, namely Sweden and Austria, and the networks are great. Even at the top of some mountain, you have clear quality.
The neat thing, however, is the pricing, this is where some countries are really ahead. For example, if you are a company, some providers don't charge at all for calls within the company, all you pay is the monthly fee. That's really a big advantage for companies.
There are even similar offerings for private persons, ie, an Austrian provider let's you phone within their network for free during night hours if you've charged your prepad phone with at least 25 within the last 30 days.
your numbers (Score:3, Insightful)
Finland: 16.9
Sweden: 21.6
Japan: 415.0
US: 30.4
Of course, as you say, the density of major urban areas is in many ways more important than overall density. But it's still worth noting the difference in Japan -- I'd count a 13.7x difference as significant enough to have an effect.
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:2)
Satellite has advantages over cable - cable is a big investment, and when you eventually finish laying the cable the city might have moved or become a ghost town like Atlantic City. The telcos use actuaries to make these risk assessments.
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:2)
The curvature of the earth is of absolutely no significance - what matters is latency, bandwidth and costs, and for everywhere outside the radio access network fixed lines are superior for these factors.
i would have to agree with you... (Score:2)
"I'm very disappointed to see that the majority of phones in the U.S. are black and white and four lines (of text)," said Satoshi Nakajima, chief executive officer of UIEvolution, a Bellevue company that develops software for Japanese wireless companies. "Then you'll never succeed."
well it depends on how you define success. if you define success as video at 1fps, then yes we will never succeed. if you are trying to give people phone access, then four lines of text are enough to succeed. personally i dont want a hot pink phone, with a hello kitty theme and a ringer that playes the theme from shaft. i really dont need the aformentioned phone with streaming video.. it's simply not necessary... for me.
just because someone has different needs doesnt mean the have failed. i guess you could say linux has failed since it's not running on the hello kitty phone.. i would say it's a success since it runs my webserver very well.
Re:i would have to agree with you... (Score:2)
I agree with that completely. The whole tone of that article is that the U.S. is failing to keep up with Japan when in fact we don't have the need to keep up. Our phones work just fine. We don't need LCD displays that can show DivX movies downloaded from ph0n3.l33t-pr0n.net. I don't own a cell phone only because I don't need one, but I know that they can be very useful in emergencies and for business. People tend to forget that there was a time not very long ago when there were no cell phones. We still got along fine. I would argue that anything beyond standard phone/pager functionality is extra and not necessary for anyone. Just my opinion.
Re:i would have to agree with you... (Score:3)
What a dumb ass argument when replying to a post about the necessity of cell phone features. I didn't need to post that message or this one. It didn't make my life any better, especially since I got a response that was less than life changing. That comment had nothing to do with mine. Besides, it wasn't even an argument. It was a statement of fact. We *did* get along fine without cell phones. I don't remember any mass suicide because of a lack of portable communication devices in my lifetime.
"Gee, could it be that people just like to communicate with each other. Technologies that enable more communication, easier communication, new forms of communication become popular."
Congratulations, you told me that technology that enables people to communicate more, easier, or differently becomes popular. Now explain to me how that new technology (feel free to reference the article) is necessary to communication which was, of course, the point of my post. Then, for extra credit, feel free to tell me how the U.S. lacking any of your referenced technologies is hurting the country (or yourself in particular) in any way, shape or form. Not having as "neat" of stuff as the Japanese doesn't count. Here are some choices:
Hello Kitty screensavers
an endless variety of ring tones
the video camera in a phone
send e-mail
play games
Everything I found in that list I could do at home or through any phone book/gas station and I can't think of any important reason why I would have to be able to do it anywhere in the world. Once again, I've got no problems with cell phones and their usefulness. My original point was simply that not having all of those extra features does not make any country lesser than another because they are unnecessary to the services that cell phones provide (mobile communication/notification).
If you feel like being stupidly insulting and sarcastic, at least go to the effort of backing it up. Or log in. That would substantially raise your ability to communicate.
Re:i would have to agree with you... (Score:2, Insightful)
JOhn
Re:i would have to agree with you... (Score:2)
No, you're cut off because you refuse to use a perfectly good functioning land line phone. Don't want to spend money on an international phone call? That I can understand. Prefer to send a message? I have yet to visit a public library that will turn down computer access to someone with a passport or at least some valid form of identification, but that may have changed drastically in our now assume-everyone-is-a-terrorist-that-isn't-America
Re:i would have to agree with you... (Score:2)
Well, there's just not much that I can really say to that, because after all is said and done, I live here so I'm apparently accustomed to whatever "limitations" we have *and* I don't have a cell phone. I could probably sit here and bicker until this thing is archived but what would the point be? I'm obviously in a completely different situation than you without the advantage of being able to experience the very thing I'm arguing, whereas you claim to be able to experience every single thing you're talking about (not doubting it, but this *is* the internet). And besides, this has gone from me saying that the extra features for cell phones in the article are unnecessary to you talking about how you feel when you travel to the U.S., and arguing about feelings is just about as ridiculous as it gets.
And I won't argue against convenience. Who the hell would? Convenience is great!
Re:i would have to agree with you... (Score:2)
No problem. It's just internet conversation. It's not like any of you guys stole my wallet or anything.
As a broad response to everyone that has responded to what originally was just a lame "I agree" post, not once have I said that cell phones are inconvenient. They're very useful tools and lifesavers in emergencies (I would like to buy one of those disposable ones just for that reason - and for the record 9mm I agree with your response completely). I'd personally prefer that people be a little more courteous with them in public places, but whatever. I've got no issues with the phones or the techonology. All I was trying to say that was just because our cellphones can't play freaking Doom 3 != U.S. is a failure. That's it.
*sigh*
I'm going to go do something productive now.
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:5, Insightful)
The United States has a very, very, very large land mass compared to Japan or Finland, or any other country in Europe that has cooler cell phone technology than we do.
IMHO that's not the issue. First of all, Finland has a population of roughly five million with a density of about 17 people per square kilometer.
Why's that important? Because if these services can be rolled out (profitably) in Finland, then the following technique could be used in the US:
1. Define one single national standard.
2. Try it out in one city that has an insane population density.
3. If it's profitable, start expanding to other places based on the already defined national standard. Each and every company could compete using the same standard.
Instead, this is what I think has happened:
1. Company A decides to implement a standard of its own for voice calls. Company B does the same.
2. Very few people buy phones because of major interoperability issues. (This is not the case in Finland, to continue using it as an example. A Finnish GSM phone will work anywhere in Europe, and around most of the world. Virtually everyone has one.)
3. Because of the slow growth, a mobile phone culture hasn't yet formed in the U.S, slowing down the growth even more. Thus operators have less resources to implement new features, and even if they did they'd probably be proprietary, worsening the already bad situation.
What we need is a worldwide standard that everyone would adhere to. What we have now is a bunch of companies trying to out-Microsoft each other. And yes, I do realize that's easier said than done, but it should at least be given some thought.
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:2)
And by the way, there is already a world standard for mobile phones - GSM has over 70% of the world market by number of subscribers, and it works in virtually every country you can name, including the US and Canada as well as most of Europe, Asia, Middle East, Africa and Australasia.
Another example is TCP/IP - there were many competing network protocol stacks in the 70s and 80s, but IP has won out, resulting in a hugely competitive market for equipment and networks.
Standards don't necessarily impede development - for all its benefits, GSM will soon be superseded by W-CDMA, a 3G standard that will be implemented by most GSM operators.
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:2)
The pager presence is a good point; Analog mobiles is not. Sweden and Finland, two of the most GSM dense countries since the start of GSM, both had a very successful analog mobile net called NMT. In fact it is still in use in the northern parts simply because of it better range.
I am not sure why GSM so quickly replaced NMT, but I think the GSM phones were smaller right away.
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:2)
In Europe we have one digital cellular technology: GSM. This means that I can use my phone on any network. The R&D cost per phone is lowered and the competition is increased.
To some extent, I believe, the same is true in Japan, with J-Phone and DoCoMo sharing the same technology. (And with DoCoMo being, by a mile, the largest cell phone company in the world.)
If, in the UK, I wish to change my operator, I can go to one of the other three 'real' operators or one of a couple of virtual ones (which lease capacity off the real networks.) This has created price and service competition. That I can take my number with me between operators helps too.
And the 'half'... easy, I don't pay to recieve calls. There is no incentive, other that avoiding my ex-girlfriend, to turn my phone off.
*r
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:2)
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:2)
mobile phone technology hasn't succeeded in america because american wireless operators have failed to understand the benefits of a standard. the fact is that my gsm phone will work around the developed world (and some days i feel the need to explicitly include the words "and here in ireland..."). if i see a good deal on a newer mobile phone i can buy it and take my gsm chip out of my old phone and stick it in my new phone. i can easily send text messages to my friends with no concern as to who their network provider is. i can take a call without worrying about how much it will cost me.
mobile phone technology is archaic, fractured, poor, and a national disgrace. the wireless companies in america were short-sighted and greedy. the best thing that could happen to them (at least for the american people) would be for european and other wireless providers to come in, buy them, and sort them all out.
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:2)
The largest cellular phone company in the US is Verizon. It is owned in part by various companies, but mostly by Vodafone Group (UK), which is the largest cellular company in the world, bigger even than NTT DoCoMo. Vodafone's wireless companies use GSM exclusively... except for its holdings in the US, Mexico, and China, where it uses CDMA. Sprint PCS is the other CDMA company in the US, probably soon to be bought out by Verizon.
VoiceStream/T-Mobile is the largest GSM-exclusive company in the US, though it also has the smallest marketshare of the six national providers. It has GSM in almost all major markets, California being a notable exception. To make matters worse, in the US, we use GSM 1900, incompatible with the rest of the world; one of the best features that GSM could advertise, "Free world roaming, one phone #", therefore doesn't work quite so well.
The second largest cellular phone company in the US is Cingular. SBC has a controlling stake in the company, and BellSouth owns the rest. Unlike Verizon, therefore, the entire company is American. In most markets, Cingular uses TDMA; that's as much digital (pardon my analogies) as Windows 95 is 32-bit. But GSM is available nationally. Any market where VoiceStream doesn't have a network, Cingular does.
Cingular is gradually converting its entire network to GSM, and will hopefully be providing all new customers with GSM by, IIRC, January 2003. Also, Cingular convinced VoiceStream to enter into a European-style shared network agreement, so that VoiceStream could provide service in California/Nevada, and Cingular could provide service in NYC/Northern New Jersey, without building any new towers.
There's also AT&T Wireless; there is a rumor that ATTWS will soon buy Cingular, and keep its 100%-GSM strategy for the new company, and all evidence (mainly financial) suggests that the rumor is true. And finally, there's Nextel. It uses a custom technology (iDEN) and caters to business users who use their cellphone enough to warrant a $150/mo plan and want to-the-second billing. It is essentially a niche carrier, with very loyal customers, and as many of those customers travel the world, it may soon switch to GSM itself.
Vodafone has repeatedly pressured Verizon to switch to GSM; its efforts have been unsuccessful so far.
So much for Europe coming in and making things better.
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:2)
Classic - although probably unintentional...
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:2)
WAP is such a disaster because it is not a standard at all. Each phone and each service has
enough random incompatibilities that the chance of
successfully reaching a given WAP site is about 30% or less. In Japan, all imode sites are
essentially compatible, plus cHTML is a much better page description language than WAP for phones. WAP has basically torpedoed the entire
cell phone industry in the US. Thanks guys!
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is not a problem. Similar problems were experienced in Poland about 8 years ago when GSM networks were deployed. Standard procedure was to first cover the most populated and rich areas - this would be Bay Area and New York. DCS (GSM 1800) system is used - it needs more base stations but has more network capability. Then after generating some revenue, suburban areas are covered using GSM 900 (less base stations needed). The phones are compatible with both frequencies. Rinse, lather, repeat. Area is not a problem.
Also, you don't roll out a service then wait for the people to come. You advertise it. It works in much poorer countries like Poland. Cell phones are big here.So why won;t USians want to use cell phones? I have no idea.
I consider my cell phone one of my basic tools. I talk to people with it. My servers report status via SMSes so I know if they are OK. I can pay for things with it (with cooperation of my bank and my GSM provider).Not to mention Internet access for use with my notebook and Palm. And it is not a bleeding edge phone - it was when it was new (it is a US design - Motorola), but now it lacks Bluetooth, multimedia messaging and some cool customization options. It isn;t expensive. It works everywhere in the world, even in some areas of US, where GSM 1900 is avaliable. Since it is private, I can switch it off when I'm not at work, so my employer can;t reach me everywhere. Since I can switch caller ID on and off, it won't advertise my pnone number when I don;t want to. I can't imagine living without one. Why americans don't want to use them is a mystery to me.
Better reason for this: cheap landline costs (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the biggest reason why the USA hasn't really adopted cellular phones on a scale like they do in Japan and Europe is the fact the USA has probably the cheapest landline telephone costs in the world.
Remember, in the USA for the most part local calls up to 10-12 miles from where you call are not billed by the minute. This is why Internet access took off in the USA using landline voice telephone connections. Also, long distance calls within the USA are really cheap, too; the various 10-10 service allow you to call anywhere in the USA for under US$0.10 per minute 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Because landline telephone calls in Japan and Europe are billed by the minute even for local calls, when cellular systems were introduced there the pricing structure between cellular and landline phone service was not that much different, so people in Japan and Europe took to cellphones very quickly.
Re:Better reason for this: cheap landline costs (Score:2)
Even though Europe (I am in Sweden) does not have flat rates, I have never ever heard anyone feeling constrained by land line phone pricing. And the mobile phone pricing is/has been up to 50 times the cost of a local call. The price different is significant and often discussed. Mobile phone calls cut deeply into peoples pockets. Same price structure? Perhaps, but the dynamics are vastly different. BTW, I call the USA for less than ten cents a minute. Relatives in USA does not seem to be able to get same price for calling here though.
Re:Better reason for this: cheap landline costs (Score:2)
Sure, the same goes for Sweden. It does not have any bearing on mobile phone usage though. I'd say that few individuals get a mobile in order to get internet access!
Re:Better reason for this: cheap landline costs (Score:2)
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:2)
USA [cia.gov]: 27805881 people / 9158960 km = 30,4 people/km
Going strictly by even this inaccurate measure (it should favor USA even more since the big cities are *big* and the people density is much higher there), it should be much more cost effective to cover all of USA in a cellular network than all of Finland. And we've had complete GSM900 coverage for several years now. How can this be?
Of course, the numbers for Japan are ridiculous, but we'll leave that out of the comparison:
Japan [cia.gov]: 126771662 people / 374744 km = 338,3 people/km
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:3, Insightful)
The FCC decided, on digital cellular technology, to not specify a single standard, but rather allow companies to choose whatever standard they wanted - as long as it met spectral efficiency and a few other requirements.
This had two effects - one greatly detrimental to the US, and one of great benefit to the rest of the world:
First, the phone companies adopted several standards... three modulation standards (TDMA, CDMA and GSM) on two bands. Thus phones purchased for one company are rarely useful with a competitor's system. So, if you switch providers, you have to buy another phone. The phone companies take advantage of this to reduce churning (people buying the service, and then dropping off shortly afterwards). In fact, they are so vicious about it at this point that many will not even allow *compatible* phones if you first bought it through a competitor. More about that later...
Second, the freedom to innovate meant that the technically superior CDMA standard was given a chance. Without the deregulation, TDMA would have been chosen as the standard (as it was for GSM - although not a compatible TDMA). With deregulation some companies (typically the old land-line companies) went with TDMA, and others with CDMA. CDMA has shown what its inventor (the president of Qualcomm) claimed: it provides a higher spectral density than TDMA - more phones per megaHerz per square kilometer. As a result, future standards are all based on CDMA. This is a benefit to the whole world....except that in the US we will still have a whole bunch of non-interoperable standards.
The large number of standards is the problem. It reduces consumer incentive to buy fancy phones, because they cannot take them with them if they change providers. It reduces manufacturer incentive because the market is split across a whole bunch of different standards, so the production runs are smaller. In addition, the companies may never develop adequate interoperability on the backbone level for data and messages... thus instant messaging may only work if the person you are messaging is with the same vendor. In other words, the US phone system is developed as if the lessons of the internet never happened (standards, interoperability)!!
One gratuitous comment...
I had a CDMA phone from Sprint. I changed service to Qwest, which has a technically compatible system. But Qwest was unable to use the phone, because Sprint refused my request to provide the programming unlock code for my phone. Not having time to get into hax0ring it, I bought another phone.
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:2)
Some of the reasons that the US is behind include lack of a single standard (Analogue, TDMA, CDMA and GSM are all out there, unlike Europe with only GSM and Asia with mainly GSM and CDMA), and charging for incoming calls. If a new set of area codes had been allocated for cell phones in the US, it would have been possible to charge the caller for calls to cell phones - instead, someone in the same area code as your phone number cannot be charged the actual cost (due to free local calls typically), so the person called is charged. The result is that people don't give out their mobile numbers very much, and tend to encourage people to call them at home or work first.
Another example is texting (short message service) - Europeans and Asians have had this simple 'short email in your pocket' service for some years, and it is incredibly popular across the board. This is due to adopting the single GSM standard, which used SMS initially just for voicemail notifications; a few years ago, the wireless operators enabled interoperability between networks, and traffic rose significantly. The US is beginning to catch up here by enabling SMS interoperability.
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:3, Insightful)
The real reason is the pricing of cellphones compared to land lines. When you are going to be charged for an incoming call there is absoultely no incentive for anyone to buy a phone so people can keep in touch with them. One day a provider in the US is going to figure this out and make a lot of money as half the population switches.
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:2)
some nations are wider than others.
also consider the benifit/cost ratio in countries that don't already have a nationwide coverage with land lines compared to those that do.
if a country starts with little infrastructure, it makes sense to pop up a wireless network. if you have a huge country that already has landline service, it's just not that financially feasible to construct a nationwide wireless network.
couple that with the nonstandard services and you are where we are today.
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:2)
if a country starts with little infrastructure, it makes sense to pop up a wireless network. if you have a huge country that already has landline service, it's just not that financially feasible to construct a nationwide wireless network.
I fail to see how that would be related to Finland then. Finland has had nation-wide landphone infra from 1950. It costs about $60 to get a land-phone. and then there's localphone rate at about 1 cent/min (or less, i dunno, haven't had landphone for 7 years).
AFAIK GSM network doesn't have to be very dense. It's sensible to make it dense only in areas where there are many talkers -> even cheaper. Areas woth popoulation of under 5ppl/km2 can be handled by small 'power'. (I mean antenna in cellular would show up small, dunno the right term). It would take more juices out of phone, but it would _at least_ work. More than you have now.
Frankly, At the moment I can SMS fellow programmer in Latvia, former USSR resp. I can't do that to our subdivision in US. That mean I must either phone (9 hours difference..) or use e-mail, and the asses won't answer in another 9 hours. That's so lame.
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:2)
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:2)
Let's make a distinction (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, I suppose in 128x128 resolution at 1 frame per second. But in north america and europe where the working week is 60 hours a week, the father (or mother) can actually watch the child and maybe offer a helping hand. Instead of admire a pixelated version.
Perhaps this phenemonon can explain the adoption gap. If we have more time to spend with the ones we love, we don't need to purchase technological replacements for this contact.
Just a thought.
Re:Offtopic: working 60 hours a week (Score:2)
Re:Offtopic: working 60 hours a week (Score:2)
One year in Denmark. (Score:2)
To forestall any comments (Score:3, Insightful)
However, there are significant reasons to believe the claim is true in this case. For instance, consider electric fields. You may not be aware of this or have thought of it this way, but a microwave oven is basically just a big, unmodulated radio station broadcasting in the microwave band instead of the radio band. And what do we use microwave ovens for? Cooking things.
And microwaves, like all electromagnetic radiation, are caused by what? Electric fields. And a major source of electric fields and broadcast power is what? Cell phones. And we put cell phones where? Next to our genitals and next to our brains[1].
So, while I love my personal computer, SUV, air-conditioning and other marvels of modern life I Just Say No to cancer-causing cell phones.
[1] For me this is two separate locations, YMMV
Land line costs are insane in Japan (Score:5, Informative)
The article quotes $700, but if I recall my aunt mentioned it was more than that. Additionally, the waiting list to get a telephone was months and months long.
So, to me, it's no surprise that Japanese are using cell phones for both voice and data more than US counterparts. A big chunk of people there simply can't even make a call from home. So they are used to using their cell phones more than your average American.
I think geography has something to do with it as well. Japan has a much higher population density than the US, so it's easier for the providers. You don't need to erect as many towers to cover the same number of people.
Installing and upgrading cell towers to support higher speed data services costs a fortune, so I'm not surprised it's not happening faster in the US. You'd need thousands of towers in Japan, compared to tens of thousands here.
Case
Tradeoffs (Score:5, Funny)
So in other words, Americans have far more erections than the Japanese, but when they have an erection they do it with more people.
Five rules to successfully owning a cellphone (Score:5, Insightful)
This is stupid.
Also, the US has a large culture of pager use that just hasn't taken off anywhere else in the world. We have cellphones with SMS capability to do the same thing. Forget combining the two products - they're already combined.
There are five stages to owning a mobile phone: This presumes you've got one to make use of it, not to just so you can say you have one.
1: Buy the phone. Many people think this is the only thing they have to do. It's not.
2: Carry the damned thing with you everywhere. Most fall over at this point because they do things like only carry the phone to work or whatever - if it's not with you AT ALL TIMES then people won't get used to reaching you on it. This stage is tricky because you carry it everywhere even when it doesn't ring, and it won't for ages until:
3: Don't be afraid to give out your number to everyone. EVERYONE. Once you've done this you'll actually start receiving calls - it's only at this point you'll be seeing the benefit of having the phone.
4: Don't be afraid to MAKE calls on your phone. The more you use it the more you'll be contacted on your phone.
Re:Five rules to successfully owning a cellphone (Score:2, Insightful)
1) Cost - If calls are cheap enough, then more and more people will have phones.
2) Availability - If it's cheap enough, more people would have cellphones with them then I might need one too (domino effect)
3) Cheaper data services, more flexable service plans etc. might help too.
Re:Five rules to successfully owning a cellphone (Score:2)
sucks eh?
Re:Five rules to successfully owning a cellphone (Score:2)
Cell phone use. (Score:2)
This is stupid.
I'm not sure about that. Firstly, I don't use all of the monthly minutes on my phone. So an incoming call costs me nothing (up to a point). Secondly, cost is 10 cents *Canadian* per minute up here/on my provider, so I could talk for an hour straight for the cost of a submarine sandwich. My conversations are typically 2 minutes or so (arranging to see people in person or conveying quick information), so quantity of calls is simply not a factor.
The real reason I don't give out my cell number much is that there's a select few people who I want to be able to bug me at any minute of the day. Everyone else can just email me.
So I don't think the cost argument holds, in my location and within my peer group at least.
One rule to keep your sanity (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, see the thing is, I don't want to be reached all the time. Right now, there is no reason any one would need to contact me urgently. Whatever it is, it can wait. If it's that much of an emergency that you have to get in touch with me, maybe you should call 911 first.
Thats why my cell phone sits in a drawer, and is only pulled out and activated when I move someplace where I can't get a land line. (I'm a college student, the moving every 9/3 months thing is getting old fast...)
I understand that there are certain careers where you do need to be in touch all the time, but if I'm not in one, the cell phone stays in the drawer.
Why? (Score:2)
I consider it a blessing that I'm unreachable while commuting. I don't give out my cell phone number because I don't want anyone to call me.
My favorite is watching people talking on their cell phone as they walk down the street. The conversation is always like this:
"...no no, not doing anything, just walking down the street...nope, in the city. Nope, nothing going on. How about you? So, what's going on..."
Complete inanity.
I guess if you pay for 9000 minutes a month, you're going to use them no matter how ridiculous it is.
Re:Why? (Score:2)
There is nothing wrong with this attitude at all, however in other countries this attitude is generally not accepted, and that is the reason they adopt wireless technology more quickly.
No this is not flamebait, I'm just pointing out the obvious.
Re:Five rules to successfully owning a cellphone (Score:2)
Try unplugging other devices (phones, fax, etc) that use that line. I have seen a connection speed jump from 19.2 to 28.8 after a few phones get unplugged. Also the latest modem firmware often does wonders. Currently I am looking into the price of getting a T1 and sharing/selling it via WiFi to my neighbours to pay for it.
What american satellite internet service are you thinking of? Starband? Do any of these offer up and downstream through the dish?
The rest of the world (Score:4, Insightful)
And the "large country" argument doesn't hold water. Mobile telephony in Australia is a generation ahead of the US, and we're about the same land mass with one fifteenth the population. Ok, coverage ain't great in the middle, but you can make a phone call in Melbourne, and hold the same connection while you drive 4000km to Cape York.
I once stood on the ancient Greek island of Delos which was once the centre of the known universe, and received a mobile phone call from someone back home in Oz who'd just dialed my regular number. Awesome.
Re:The rest of the world (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The rest of the world (Score:4, Insightful)
There are certain areas where government regulation to protect corporations from their own short-sighted stupidity and the public from the consequences is a very good idea.
EU regulation forced the national (later private) carriers to standardize on ONE cell phone technology.
As a result, there is effectively one cellular network in EU that the different carriers build towers for, and as a result, an EU mobile user can get dial tone practically anywhere. SMS works everywhere. An EU user who wants to change carriers can do so by swapping the SIM card. EU users don't have to pay for incoming calls.
Meaning that just about everyone has a mobile in the more advanced parts of EU, and the same phone that works in Holland works fine in Spain. I have a close friend in Holland. I take it for granted my SMS messages will get to her no matter where in the EU she goes.
"Let the market decide" has put the US a generation behind the rest of the world for mobile services. The major RBOCs got exactly what they paid for, and not only did the public get screwed, but they are not profiting off cell phones the public can't be bothered to buy. Isn't it wonderful having the best elected officials money can buy?
Re:The rest of the world (Score:2)
Hence, the rest of the world had an advantage in being able to build with newer, better tech than the US.
Behind? (Score:2, Informative)
FACT...anyone can go to Japan/Europe/etc. and purchase any of the equipment, but good luck getting the FCC permission to implement it, even for a local market.
The United States is not behind in technology, be 'merely'(I say tongue in cheek) restricted in the area of what technology they are ALLOWED to use.
--Huck
Re:Behind? (Score:2)
Charges for Data suck (Score:2)
more like GSM vs U.S. fsck up (Score:2)
regards
john 'no its not broken' jones
Re:more like GSM vs U.S. fsck up (Score:2)
http://www.voicestream.com/
http://www.att
http://www.gsmworld.com/ro
http://www.cingular.com/
There's a LOT of GSM in the USA.
Re:more like GSM vs U.S. fsck up (Score:2)
Re:more like GSM vs U.S. fsck up (Score:2)
Re:more like GSM vs U.S. fsck up (Score:2)
Re:more like GSM vs U.S. fsck up (Score:2)
Near as I know the reason the US went with a new GSM frequency is because the military makes use of the 1800 bands (and 800 doesn't offer good quality).
Re:more like GSM vs U.S. fsck up (Score:2)
how expensive is home Internet? (Score:3, Insightful)
Umm, except that in most countries people get online and access "data services" through the telephone network. If it is prohibitively expensive to access the Internet from home, due to setup and/or per-minute/per-month charges, it makes sense that people spend more time sending e-mail and accessing information from their phones rather than from home PCs. I don't know if this is the case, but I would like to have seen it addressed in the article.
I know at $700 I would not be ready to add a second phone line for the Net and I don't know how far along the broadband rollout is over there.
Re:how expensive is home Internet? (Score:2)
Umm, except that in most countries people get online and access "data services" through the telephone network
Back to Japan - you don't actually need a PC for email and browsing. The phones themselves are sufficient to the task.
Re:how expensive is home Internet? (Score:2)
It might be invalid, but not because of this line in the article =)
If you start with among the lowest adoption of broadband in the world, it's not hard to create a very high one-year rate; ie go from 300 homes to 30000 and oh my god it's growing 100x per year. I'm not saying that's the case, but I couldn't tell from the article. Also, "equal to Germany's"?? I didn't know Germany was the benchmark for wired-ness, nor that being more wired than France and Italy meant anything.
Anyway, as I said in my post, I have no idea what the broadband adoption rate in Japan is, and the excerpt you provided doesn't tell me that. Still, based on other posts here, they might have plenty of home Internet.
Of course, there was a question mark in my subject line =)
Sigh (Score:2)
This of course would imply that being 24/7 connected to everyone and the internet is somehow a "good thing". Personally I think its a flaw. Don't get me wrong I think the idea of streaming video and web surfing is cool on a phone, its just that in the scheme of things I don't think this is some sort of great positive influence on society.
There are other reasons not mentioned (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest reason why cellphones have not taken off in the US in comparison to Europe, at least, is simply price -- or in particular the *way* they are priced.
In Germany (and, I believe, in most other European countries), cellphones are charged exactly the same way a fixed-line phone is charged. You pay a basic monthly fee, and you pay per second or 10 seconds for calls you make. There are no "airtime" fees or other gotchas. The rates are also easy to understand, more or less -- for a call within your provider's network, you pay a "local" call; calls within your country are "long-distance"; and calls outside of your country are international. Quite rational.
My provider also has the added perk that I can choose either five fixed-line numbers or one area code to get discounted calls. So if I choose Berlin's area code -- 030 -- I can call anyone in Berlin for a much lower rate.
In comparison, my family in the States has a blizzard of confusing fee schedules, with plenty of "gotchas" built-in.
Another problem is the lack of standards across the States. Europe has the GSM standard, and your phone will work across nearly all of Europe. The USA has no such common standard, and even if you're smart enough to get a dual-band or tri-band cellphone, you get hammered on the roaming charges in the States.
I'm actually not that much of a fan of cellphones-as-portals, though -- WAP seems such an abortion of an idea and so far navigating the Web with a keypad is just a non-starter (and, like the article says, Americans tend to drive and not take public transport, so they have less time to fiddle with the things). But it is often a nice option to have. I use it to check what movies are playing (and to reserve tix), check train times (OK, that's not too useful in the States ;-P ) and sometimes to check the news, but that's about it -- I would never buy anything with it, because the technology is so far rather insecure.
i-Mode was also recently introduced in Germany by my provider (they licensed the technology from NTT-DoCoMo), so Europe is close to Japan's level now, though it remains to be seen if i-Mode and other 2.5G technologies take off in Europe (let alone 3G).
GPRS and HSCSD are also well-established, so I can go online at 56K digital with my Nokia and Powerbook via infrared and OS X (haven't gotten it to work with Linux, tho). GPRS is *very* expensive, though -- 2.5 Eurocents per 1K of data -- but HSCSD is fairly reasonable (why the difference, I don't know -- both give you the same speed AFAIK).
Cheers,
Ethelred [grantham.de]
Re:There are other reasons not mentioned (Score:2)
I have a Voicestream phone... er I mean Deutsche-Telekom... er I mean T-Mobile... here in the states. For US$40/month I get 600 minutes during the work week and unlimited on weekends.
I get free long distance, and if I stay within GSM providers I get free roaming.
Now, yes... the US is a large country and we don't have 100% coverage on any given standard. Generally only in the major metro areas and along connecting interstates.
Re:There are other reasons not mentioned (Score:2)
The biggest reason why cellphones have not taken off in the US in comparison to Europe, at least, is simply price -- or in particular the *way* they are priced
For that to make sense, you have to believe that cellphones have not been widely adopted in the U.S. And that is simply not true.
A very large percentage of people have cellphones, and among people in their late teens through early thirties, *most* people have cellphones.
What hasn't "taken off" is the newer cell technologies, which is caused more by the plethora of inconsistent standards and the mistaken attempts of service providers to lock their customers in and make it difficult to switch. It's also related to the sheer size of the country and the fact that the population is so mobile. It's impossible to deploy a new infrastructure all at once nationwide, and few people want to sign up for a service that has limited area. The adoption of digital PCS caused companies to resort to abominations like my phone, which can communicate on three different types of networks.
PCS deployment is actually still rolling out; large areas of the country are only covered by analog cells. That being the case, it's hard to get cell companies excited about dropping yet another large pile of cash into new infrastructure that covers territory they've already populated with at least two kinds of networks.
Re:There are other reasons not mentioned (Score:2)
This is yet another reason why mobile phones are not nearly as popular in north america compared to europe/asia. In Canada and the USA all landline phones have a 'local' calling area (usually your city and a bit of the surrounding area) where calling costs exactly $0.00/second as long as you are paying the monthly charge for basic phone service. This means that for dialup internet, you can stay connected for as long as you want and you don't run up big phone bills unless for some reason your are dialing long distance to an ISP (which is insane.)
The landline networks in Canada/USA are extremely reliable and cheap to use so we have less motivation to switch to mobile phones.
Re:There are other reasons not mentioned (Score:2)
I challenge anyone to count the number of phone service 'plans' in Canada and the USA. Some like you say have many 'gotchas' while others were made for the purpose of being simple - you just pay $x.xx/month for so many minutes plus extra $0.xx/minute for long distance. No nonsense. The same situation exists for landline phone service. except that local (non-long distance) calling is not limited in any respect.
Basically I'm saying that there is great variety in north american landline and mobile phone plans.
Simple (Score:3, Insightful)
Having someone around who actually knows how to build something is important to the empire-building, plant-watering donut list and their bonuses.
Japan in particular probably has a much better developed sense of loyalty and business ethics as well. Of course, the suits will disagree, but when was the last $4 billion "accounting error" in Japan?
Re:Simple (Score:2)
But thanks for playing.
Re:Simple (Score:2)
Not This Boring "Story" Again (Score:2, Insightful)
Why do seemingly well-intentioned and intelligent people assume that distinct and different cultures should enjoy a technological homogoneity?
Is it that difficult to understand that not everything that works for Americans works for Japanese or Europeans? There are many factors that determine which technologies thrive in different countries. This article both acknowledges these difrerences and at the same time dismisses them. Why? Probably because a rationale article doesn't pay the bills for a freelance writer compared to a doom and gloom article.
The Japanese like their cellphones? Good for them. I like my broadband connection.
He's got to, got to, go -- Godzilla! (Score:3, Funny)
Data point... (Score:3, Insightful)
The demos were given at 120k bps over a cell phone that flipped open and plugged into a pcmcia slot in our laptop.
That freakin' rocked. We (USA) didn't have anything even close.
Re:Data point... (Score:2)
Its funny, we use the same hardware as the UK Telecoms, the same phone vendors, but we are 6+ months from deploying (or trial) UMTS that will put the UK telecoms to shame. American pricing is all you can eat, unlimited service. I will have high speed wireless to my apartment, before Verizon gets me DSL. (Verizon has some messed up lan lines in seattle/bothell areas)
GPRS is an easy mod for GSM phones, this is why your seeing UK style phones with color displays now. Nokia, Ericcson only has to modify a phone, not re-invent it.
6 months till 2003, it will be an Interesting year...
How much do they pay TOTAL? (Score:2, Insightful)
Free WiFi at Narita airport (Score:2, Interesting)
Narita airport, I tried plugging in my wireless
card just on a lark. I was surprised to find that
the card saw an access point plus dhcp gave me
an address and a full connection to the net. I was
able to spend the rest of my wait doing email,
IM, and sshing back home. Investigating later, it
seems that something called the IPv6 Promotion
Council, along with assorted agencies,
is sponsoring a free wireless LAN trial at
the airport and on some trains and train stations
until July 31, 2002. (See http://www.nex.v6pc.jp/)
I wonder if we can every expect such experiments
in the US?
things are different here (Score:3, Insightful)
Also smaller cell sizes, as present in Japan, makes phones smaller because they don't need to output as much power thus requiring a smaller battery.
However looking back, it sure would be nice if we had a single unified digital standard like the Europeans, but does that really inhibit people here?? If I have a TDMA phone, that doesn't stop me from calling my buddy who has a GSM phone?
2) We already have an efficient land-based voice&data infrastructure that is cheap and omnipresent. Everybody, I mean everybody including your grandparents, already has land-based voice service. This isn't the case in other countries where land-based service is costly or unavailable.
3) We have the space, and the money, for computers in our households. Why surf the internet on a 2" screen when you have that Gateway sitting in your living room at home?
4) A multitude of other socio-economic/cultural reasons that are on the tip of my tongue but I don't feel like delving into. For example, I did away with my cellphone because I would rather spend my money on DSL at home. Even if my cellphone had the nifty Japanese features, I still would choose my PC at home with DSL. Some may not agree with me, but I believe that many do. If I had a little more money to spend, a cellphone with basic voice service would suffice.
(one of the) reality of cell phone Internet access (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure, your phone is capable of connecting to the Internet, but typically, most regular websites are not accessible from your phone, as it is bigger than the maximum size that your phone is capable of handling. I have found less than 1% of normal websites are accessible from my phone. So, you are basically limited to i-mode only sites, which are not very accessible from your computer. I suppose this is one of the reason why many people doens't realize i-mode is connected to the Internet.
Also, as far as the e-mail goes, I have personally found it useless. For one thing, your mail has to be less than 250 characters (2 byte Japanese characters, so you should be able to write up to 500 characters in 1 byte English characters, I think), so you cannot send a long e-mail message. At least for me, it doesn't take long for me to fill up the 250 character limit!
Inputting the text is pretty bad, if you ask me. You basically have to enter it by pressing the bunch of buttons on the phone multiple times, scrolling many times, etc. It is very inefficient to type anything into that. I think most Japanese don't think it is all that bad, as very few Japanese can type, so they find that entering text in their cell phones aren't all that worse than pecking the keyboard to enter text on their PC.
I then thought maybe I could use my cell phone to access to my servers via ssh (my phone is capable of using Java applications designed for cell phones known as "i-appli"). Well, turned out, apparently there is no way of connecting standard ssh port numbers (actually, I think you can only connect to a handful of port numbers on these cell phones). So, here again, I have found it useless.
I personally don't use i-mode access very much at all for the reasons that I listed above. Why do I have that? Well, when I got the phone last fall, there was no way not to have that, and I cannot unsubscribe from it for a year no matter what I do! That's how their contract works! I would be happy to lose the ability to connect to the Internet on my cell phone.
So, the story here is, for most of you who are used to connect to the Interent via computer, you may find the model they have in Japan is very inadequate for what you use for.
The Real Reason (Score:3, Funny)
The real reason America is so far behind in cell phone technology is obvious: We're all afraid of being beaten to death with our own phones by one of the thugs who were posting to this story [slashdot.org]
Key to Japanese cellphone usage is innovation (Score:2, Insightful)
1) Don't underestimate the value of good quality, large, color screens on a phone. It makes *everything* much easier: using the built-in phone book, navigating menus, etc. Try a mapping application on a screen with 4 lines of b&w text.
2) The Japanese phones are generally more *fun* to use. Screensavers, games, ring tones, etc. add a lot more variety, innovation, and tend to drive handset upgrades.
3) They work better for voice calls. The sound quality is better. The batteries seem to last forever.
4) The revenue sharing model means that there are more content providers, this leads to competition among them, hence better services.
5) Close collaboration between the operators and the handset manufacturers has led to standardisation of things like batteries, cables and headsets, which makes life easier for users, and also promotes upgrades - after all, you can keep using your old accessories.
6) Operators are willing to take ownership of the correct functioning of the entire service - they will help configure your PC (in fact, some have dedicated ports for mobile phone connection), troubleshoot the correct functioning of services, etc.
I would have to agree with the main premise of the article, which is that lack of innovation by the operators has forced them in to the trap of bulk selling minutes at ever-lower prices. I find the quality of the basic service superior in Japan, and the supplementary services are actually useful.
Sum it up (Score:5, Interesting)
2. US providers charge for incomming calls, so no one gives out their number, and often leave their phone off.
3. US workers tend to drive to work. So less idle time to play with phone features.
4. US system is disorganized so your services and messaging often do not work across providers.
5. US has FAR higher ratio of PC owners than Japan. So many features like email/messaging are done from PC.
6. US is a very large place, with many different providers often with incompatible networks. So access/reception is not reliable enough replace land lines.
To those who say use in the US is low because voice rates are too high here. They are not, they are often cheaper than other countries like Japan, Germany and Finland. But a fixed line is FAR more expensive in those countries than the US.
Anyway, standardize the system, make rates competitive with land lines and you will see an explosion in use (but that raises the other issue, capacity).
Useful Feature: Home alarm - cell phone link (Score:3, Informative)
Sure, with a lot of hacking you could set up a similar system here but nobody's put together the full package yet. (AFAIK)
Ttwo additional reasons that might explain this di (Score:2, Interesting)
In most European countries. You can get cell phones with special area codes that will charge the person more money for calling you. I don't know if this is the case in Japan, but in the US, this is simply not allowed and this policy has effectively barred the US from moving into the lower end of the market.
Houses in Japan are very hard to find. I am not kidding. Streets in Tokyo are adhoc. House numbers are not assigned according to geographical locations, they are assigned sequentially according to the time they were built. This reason alone was credited for the early ubiquitous adoption of the fax machine for giving out directions and I wouldn't be surprised if it also helped for the early adoption of the cell phone.
Stephan
Why are these articles all the same? (Score:3, Insightful)
I really cannot understand why these articles keep popping up saying, "Why are cell phones so popular in Japan and Europe when they are not in the US?"
The reason I am so sick of this is that the reasons are basically obvious to anybody that does not have a business degree. There are two main categories for this problem: Greed and marketing stupidity. And these problems are also pervasive in the US broadband market.
The first problem, greed, should be obvious to any customer or individual who has even inquired about cellphones at any store. Every company has their own proprietary cell phones and will not allow customers to use their service without buying a new phone. This was covered in this slashdot article [slashdot.org].
This practice essentially creates a monopoly where the customer must deal with a large expense to switch service providers. Companies might think this is good for business because it protects their customer base, but it, in fact, harms their business because people do not like to commit like that. In this case, the cellphone becomes disposable, and who is going to shell out 300+ bucks for a disposable phone?
The other aspect to this greed was pointed out by Linus himself in his book Just for Fun . He said the fact that all of the service providers had proprietary systems instead of agreeing on a standard, like GSM, caused the market to be stagnant. I agree with this point. In addition to the fact that it would alleviate the problem stated above, it would also have avoided a lot of the other problems encountered by the cell phone industry. The biggest of these problems was the problem of building cell towers. Without a common standard, the companies all had to build their own system of cell towers, so the service varied greatly from place to place. Service was bad, so customers were annoyed.
In a common system where companies would be using compatable equipment, they could just pay eachother for bandwidth usage and compete on price and service. However, they wanted to spend all that extra money to attempt to create monopolies. I really do not see the point of having a monopoly over a small number of customers, though.
The other aspect was stupid marketing. This article talks about what American consumers are doing in their cars. It says that they might want a wireless app to give them a traffic report. This is typical of the marketing decision that was made by some brainiac way back in the early days. Some genius thought that the people who would use cellphones the most would be businessmen. The cellphone industry should find and castrate this guy. He has not only made cellphones bad for business but for the consumer as well.
Why was this guy stupid? Because businessmen know how much work they do for their dollar. They are not going to spend one more second on the phone than is necessary. They also do not care about aesthetics (unless they are in sales, but even then, most business men have notoriously bad taste, and it is often quite entertaining to watch yuppies feign artistic appreciation). Therefore, businessmen are not going to use their cellphones excessively, and neither are they going to pay top dollar for the prettiest phone on the market.
Who is going use their phones a lot and pay for the most expensive ones, then? The article [nwsource.com] has a clue. It says:
The author (obviously someone who has been in the business world too long) talks about "a phenomenon driven by teenage girls." This is not phenomenon. Think back to when you were a teenager and dating. How many times did you get into a serious fight with a sibling over phone usage? How many times did you get into a fight with your parents restrictions on the phone? How many times did you stay up most or all of the night whispering into the phone so that your parents would not hear?Teenagers are the key to cellphone market. They always have been. Teenagers will talk until the battery dies. Teenages will carry an extra battery. Teenagers will buy extra accessories for their phones. Teenagers will use their phones as status symbols to their friends.
But who pays for these cell phones? Well, the parents, of course. The parents will buy cellphones for their teenagers because they want their kid to be safe. They will want to check up on the kid now and then.
Now, we have a responsible group (the parents: those businessmen whose money everyone wanted) funding the excesses of an irresposible group (the teenagers who have a hormonal imperative to generate big bills). A phenomenon? I think not.
As obvious as this may sound, it did not occur to the author of the article [nwsource.com] or the businessmen she interviewed. Cell phones have always been ugly in the US. I will not buy Motorola products because they always released ugly products to the US market (although their cellphones are quite pretty in Asia). I think this attitude that Americans have no aesthetic taste is quite insulting.
In any case, I am sick of this whining about the consequences of stupid business decisions. It sounds like GM in the late 70's blaming Japan because American consumers did not want the big cars that GM could make greater profits on. Did any of these people read Adam Smith? The market cannot be forced to accept a product (unless of course you are Microsoft).
Re:Not only the japanese (Score:2, Informative)
When I was in the states last year I was amazed to find I could not buy a pay-as-you-talk mobile for less than USD200. I wanted one to use for ten days then bin when I left. Here they are E45 from newsagents. Amazingly in the USA you have to pay
for incoming calls to mobiles!! The mobiles have normal numbers mixed in with landlines so you don't know if you a phoning one or not.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
How GSM beat the Euro telemonopolies (Score:2, Insightful)
How did GSM beat the monopoly? Simple, the rule was that any phone line crossing a public street violated the monopoly. Cell towers circumvented this problem.
Price wars between mobile carriers got prices to an acceptable level.
Re:Not only the japanese (Score:2)
Why am I responding to an AC ? Must be time for a break...
Re:Brain Cancer (Score:2)
It is probably too low to measure. Yes, it is true that the cell phones would tend to block background ionizing radiation and cosmic rays simply by virtue of its mass, but I think it would be hard to prove that cell phone usage reduces the cancer rate enough to be significant.
Re:3 simple reasons (Score:2)
You forgot that the landline system in the usa/canada is far more reliable and inexpensive than in most other countries. Paying $0.00/min for 'local' calling in the UK is a foriegn concept over there. Remember also that having a home/apartment/etc without a landline is highly irregular in north america and only starting to appear among people who only depend on the cell.