Adam Thierer

Mobile Market Snapshot: U.S. v. Europe

Over on Verizon’s PolicyBlog, Link Hoewing, VZ’s Assistant Vice President – Internet and Technology Issues, has posted an interesting comparison of the US and European mobile markets. He’s put together a side-by-side chart comparing contracts, competition, coverage, prices, new services, and more. He’s asked for input from others, so take a look.

July 16, 2007 | Comments |

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    Interestingly, he says that the price per minute is much higher in Europe, but fails to mention that cell phone users in Europe do not pay for incoming phone calls, the same way they do in the US. At least, that's my understanding from speaking to cell phone users from Europe (UK predominantly). I wonder how the price comparison looks once you factor in the free inbound call, making calls in the US really twice as expensive as what is advertised on paper (although, with unlimited calling plans being more pervasive, this becomes a tricky calculation).
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    It is absolutely incorrect to say incoming calls are not paid for. Incoming mobile calls are paid for by the calling party (rather than by the called party) on a price per minute basis, and they are much more expensive than wireline calls. Assuming you as a consumer in Europe will be making calls to other people's mobile phones, your overall telecom bill will be much higher than in the us, where the local calls to mobile phones are free to the calling party.

    Unless you only receive incoming and never make outgoing calls.... the European rules don't help you. The one exception is mobile-to-mobile, where in Europe it is just a singe charge. In the US most operators offer free mobile-to-mobile within the same operator. Bottom line is that mobile phone usage in most of Europe is more expensive than the US, except for UK which similar to the US.
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    Does Verizon allow you to transfer your pictures over Bluetooth these days or is it still verboten?


    Oh and can I run things like truphone on their devices?

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