Well here's my two cents.
I agree with some of the article, but the USA has an a considerable land area to cover and comparing the services of densly populated countries that are the size of a couple of states to the entire USA isn't reasonable. That and the fact that we don't have a national policy forcing one type of system or another is very, very expensive.
The carriers have to choose technology that changes so fast, as you start deploying there is a better/cheaper solution available. Buildout costs in the tens of billions of (private-nongoverment) dollars and you have to buy local power and phone service from your competition to get your towers talking. Look at what is available now in data standards, it makes your head spin.
I also agree most people don't want to spend big bucks on a phone as they use it mostly to make voice calls. Look how long it took for the USA to use sms compared to the rest of the world. We don't use as many features in a phone and the carriers aren't going to spend on infrastructure until there is a market. Personally, I think video streaming a waste of bandwidth but it probably gets people using 3g that would be unused and therefore considerably more expensive to get my laptop online.
I think Verizon Wireless is doing a dis-service to its customers only permitting its phones on the service, crippling features and enforcing TOS that are unreasonable. However, the service is very good and that isn't important to people who need a phone to make a call which is the vast majority of Americans. It isn't a matter of "cheap" as it is what do I use it for, IMHO.
What is going on in Canada, China, Russia, Brazil and Australia which have comparable land size; well Russia is much larger. I don't think we're doing too bad here at all.
Regards-Michael G.
|