In the land of the free, home of the "open market economics", they've never really "got" mobiles properly. Charging for incoming text is a sure fire way to kill it, and they did, and it did. Likewise didn't they charge for incoming calls in the US?

I suspect their initial pricing model has stymied their growth prospects for quite some time. I'm not surprised that the uptake of modern services is lagging.

Then again, it might be because they still have this bizarre addiction to Motorola cack handsets and don't know how good things can be.

In summary, Apple style & ease of use + decent tarriffs (probably arrived at through recent adoption of european collaboratively-produced technology like 3G and EDGE instead of their god-awful hotch-potch of technologies) = take up.

America is finally waking up to mobile use... so the EU should make sure it profits from the US business inertia and make a packet out of american consumers (well, their govt tax handouts anyway)

Paris, because even she needs to know she can read the news on her mobile if she _really_ wanted to.

In the US, they have appalling and draconian providers, restrictive contracts and third-world phones.

In the UK, we have decent phones for comparatively acceptable prices.

Of course more of us (Brits) use mobiles, for a start we have always had better coverage. The UK is a waaaaay smaller area to have to cover than the US. operators arent just going to start putting up cell towers in the middle of Hicksville where there may or may not be enough users to justify costs. This means that its taken longer for enough coverage to make it worthwhile owning a phone in the states. If you look at it this of course a higher percentage of Brits have them - a large percentage of Merkins live where coverage has been shoddy for years.

As a side point - why should you pay to recieve calls as well? That'd put me off getting one if I didnt have one. Not sure if this is still the case in the US but it was when I lived over yonder.

Not to mention that our coverage is way better than theirs. One of the advantages of living on a small overcrowded island.

.. statistics for Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, .... South Africa, Australia, Togo.... etc.

Why do we always compare with the US? They aren't even part of Europe, for gods sake!

IQ is higher in the UK isn't it therefore making technology more easily accessible to people?

I remember being in San Diego back in 1999 when one of my american colleagues pulled a humongous brick of a mobile and made a call. After he finished I asked him what the hell that was. He then went on to explain to me (in the simplest terms possible) the concept of cell phones and how you can make phone calls now anywhere and without wires. "No" I said, pointing to his brick phone "What the hell is that?" and pulled out my mobile (an Ericsson SH888 if I remember correctly) which was about 10 times smaller than the device he was using. He shut up after that.

Later on that day I used it to receive email- Which really pissed him off ("Oh, don't you have mobile email in America? How strange...")

not surprising at all. look at home many years behind the rest of the world they were at getting into texting. I hear quite a few of them STILL carry pagers as well!

We also had a european standard ... something the US (I understand) stifles innovation.

God, what a lot of sad fecks.

I called a Brit friend of mine and he showed me how to make this post from my PC. This world wide web thing is awesome. He told me that some day stupid markins would even learn how to make a post from their mobile phone. What will you guys think of next? Stands to reason that us markins are a bit behind you, given the time difference.

While it's true that US mobile providers have worse coverage and price plans, I think the most important factor that's slowed growth in the US mobile sector is the fact that in the US you don't pay for local calls made on a landline. Given that any landline you pay for will have unlimited free local talk time - erm ... why would you bother with mobile call charges and texting, exactly? In addition, what counts as 'local' will sometimes cover something like 1/4 the size of the UK.

Yep agree, Andy but we get a lot of gimmicky handsets in the UK that crash so I'd rather a boring handset that performed its core function of being a phone well and dispenses with the gimmicks.

My plan charges me $0.25 to receive a text.

The purchase of Alltell by Verizon means there is only one cell provider in large parts of the plains areas. Therefore there is no real incentive to make it any better.

Verizon's idea of a phone upgrade is the "New Every 2" scheme where you get $50 off one phone every 2 years - oh! and you have to renew your contract for another 2 years to qualify. So you need to spend $100 to get a half decent phone (relative to the paltry selection in the CDMA market). That, plus the tariffs make you think very carefully about stuff like data features.

We have people here that dont want cells phones. They thinks its an electronic leash .

Does not seem all that long ago that I tried to explain the concept of Teletext to relatives in the US.

if you loose you're job in briton and dont manage to pay BT plugging you're mobile into you're pc/laptop is the only domestic way of using the net while calls are just a phonebox in you're pocket

1. We don't get free incoming calls without spending over $100/month per line. That is most definitely considered a premium feature and is generally only advertised towards the business folk.

2. When I lived in Arizona (our 8th largest state), local calling was the entire 245,000 square kilometer region. We could call anywhere in it for as long as we wanted with our $20/month phone lines. (if you round the numbers, the UK is the same in terms of area)

3. My EvDO handset beats out most other HSDPA phones I've seen when tethered to a PC. I don't expect that trend to continue, however, but it's worth noting.

4. When you aren't talking about international travel, there is no clear advantage to either GSM and derivatives or CDMA and derivatives, other than the phone offerings and mobile operators. I personally will probably end up getting a 3G GSM phone when T-Mobile (Deutsche Telecom) finally finishes the 3G rollout as I'd like to be able to travel.

5. I'm curious about who it is they were talking to. I've yet to meet anyone at university that doesn't have a cell phone, or know how to text.

6. Also, I find text messaging to be abhorrent. Why waste the money texting when instead we can just talk via IM for free? Most decent phones have that capability now, after all. (granted, I don't have a text messaging plan, so it costs $0.35/message to send AND receive)

7. As for the TV thing, remember that we have always received our local stuff for free. Quality varies based on where you are of course but many areas get some really nice channels. Some places even get local 24hr news channels, and I imagine that'll become more prevalent with the additional bandwidth available due to the off-air digital broadcast switchover.

alot of american cities are smaller in population then GB london, which added together would only be roughly 100m people, leaving room for 200m hillbillies

They're an alien people who don't consider the countires beyond the atlantic/pacific unless there's some gain they can make from them. Their national game of rounders has a 'world series' where the world doesn't care or watch it. They have the audacity to fingerprint us when we go to their country and complain like hell if we do it to them. Let them stew in their own juice.