New Apple Lust Objects for 2010 and onward

unlimited 3G data + unlimited tethering w/ the most expensive carrier in HK was $40 a month. i miss based HK

markers arent you like mr. apple products around here? truly surprised that you don't have an iphone!

― we're up all night to get (s1ocki), Thursday, May 23, 2013 11:27 AM

it's a money thing, not a lack of interest or whatever. when the first thing osrts itself out, i'll get one probably.

I have a prepaid sim with data here in france on my IPHONE 5 & it costs 20 euros a month for 1 gig of data

it does seem like you are forced to pay for a lot more data in the us. i am a colossal nerd, and i can't remember the last time i used more than 500mb in a month. thanks at&t, but what on earth am i going to do with 5gb or whatever?

Watch 10 movies on YouTube

i pay €10/month for 500mb, 500 minutes and 500 texts. never anywhere near any of those limits.

why would i pay like 8 times the monthly cost? so i have the option to watch 2.5 youtube movies/week while sat on the toilet?

oh man I used 14gb this month!

my UK sim is £10/month for 1GB, 250 mins and unlimited texts, but apparently you can make it unlimited data instead for an extra £2/month.

man

so forgetting my personal usage pattern, which doesn't involve streaming hdd in wifi blackspots, the prices in the US are still INSANE compared to countries that are otherwise far, far more expensive to live in. i don't get it. i mean i kind of get it. but i don't.

i love imessage, never bumping up against a txt message limit again

we need to solve gun control before we can get around to telecom

I guess healthcare too. we got problems, man

i think one factor is that infrastructure costs for america are so high, it's such a big country. you really need to be a verizon or an at&t to have enough resources to cover the whole country

I kind of hate imessage sometimes although it is useful, everything seems to have unlimited texts now anyway

they manage this in russia and australia xp

what is cell service in the Australian desert like?

yeah... what's the population distribution in australia/russia like? there are like tens of thousands of small towns all over the midwest w/ populations of 10,000 each that need service

iMessage definitely saves me from being forced to pay $10 a month for a text plan, so hooray

dayo: "based"?

lil b (the based god)

i assume cell service in remote parts of australia and russia is terrible. who cares? not 99% of russians or australians. these towns "need service"? is at&t legally obliged to serve them?

if the cost of a network the problem, then it would be possible to build a network that serves 95% of the population instead of 99%, and charge $10/month, and make a fortune. the fact that no one has done that says the problem is because the cell phone market is fundamentally broken.

the UK is #15 here, america russia and austarlia are all in the bottom lower fourth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_population_density

population dens of australia much more concentrated in partic areas than US

http://i.imgur.com/M25DAmQ.png

http://i.imgur.com/12VOVoY.gif

yours truly, 乒乓, verizon and AT&T apologist

yes, that was my actual oblique point

(can't speak to Russia and their phone infrastructure)

here's an argument why the problem shouldn't be population density: each town of 10,000 people needs a cell phone tower. you can't serve many towns with a cell phone tower, so assuming the town is not completely off the pre-existing physical grid, how far apart the towns are is irrelevant. to first order, it costs no more per person to serve 100 million people living in towns 100 miles apart than in towns 30 miles apart.

here's an argument why the problem cannot in fact be population density: no one has become a billionaire building a network that costs $10/month to use that serves "only" 95% of the population, which should be a piece of cake if the problem weren't a structural one with the market, or a legal one.

i'm using australia and russia as examples to prove that, absent structural or legal problems, it is possible to run a profitable cheap network by ignoring a few % of the population.

I think that is exactly the way that Vodafone undercuts Telstra in Australia though, by providing cheap plans but less coverage

exactly. why doesn't someone do that in the US?

well, you can always sign with t-mobile or sprint

lock-in is also a problem, since i think... all 4 of the big carriers use different technologies

hence why there are 2 different iphone models in the US, one of which is not available unlocked despite being more practical for global use

also: these networks that spend all this money serving little towns, don't actually do a good job of covering the little towns i go to in west texas. they don't do a very good job of serving big cities tbqfh. i mean you can run an advert about how you don't drop calls in cities in the US and that's considered a good use of your advertising budget?

t-mobile, the cheap one, is still expensive even if you just convert it to euros/pounds. if you compare it to the cost of living it's crazy.

yeah it's a p big mess

yeah, the CDMA/GSM thing is definitely a big part of the problem.

also i should have ordered free sim cards when they were still doing them dan. they cost $10 now afaict.

Does the widespread use of 4G in the USA explain increased cost perhaps?

yikes

for cities, i think a big problem are zoning regulations (see also why US cities [well, at least NY] can't get it together to build cheap affordable housing stock... it's hard to keep on adding cell towers

Does the widespread use of 4G in the USA explain increased cost perhaps?

― badg, Thursday, May 23, 2013 2:22 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

4G isn't really that widespread

it is possible to run a profitable cheap network by ignoring a few % of the population.

― caek, Thursday, May 23, 2013 2:10 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think that is exactly the way that Vodafone undercuts Telstra in Australia though, by providing cheap plans but less coverage

― badg, Thursday, May 23, 2013 2:14 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark

this kind of exists in the form of carriers like cricket, simple talk, boost mobile, who all target 'urban' markets, but afaict they just rent time from the big 2's network

http://www.simplemobile.com/

i think we're still kind of in the deployment stages w/4G

fwiw I was not trying to defend the US system as being awesome

anyway, population density absolutely impacts Australia because you have most people living in concentrated areas, meaning more efficient use of cell towers, plus you are also talking about a population that is 15 times smaller than the US so it shouldn't be THAT surprising that you can build a cheaper network there

there's also a carrier "lock-in" for people who still actually use their phone to talk, most networks give you free minutes of mobile-to-mobile only if you're on the same network (or you're forced to put certain people on a favorites list)

yeah... even if this were true:

here's an argument why the problem shouldn't be population density: each town of 10,000 people needs a cell phone tower. you can't serve many towns with a cell phone tower, so assuming the town is not completely off the pre-existing physical grid, how far apart the towns are is irrelevant. to first order, it costs no more per person to serve 100 million people living in towns 100 miles apart than in towns 30 miles apart.

the raw # of cell towers you'd need in america vs. australia would still be by a couple of factors, i think

the day that they sell data-only plans for the iphone will be a great day