Today the CTIA – The Wireless Association filed an ex parte communication with the Federal Communications Commission, which continues the heated dialog that the trade organization has with the FCC. According to the CTIA the purpose of the ex parte communication is to refute myths that European wireless users enjoy better service, choice or pricing than American consumers.
Among the data cited in the ex parte are the following:
- The price per minute of service in the United States is lower than every European country, without exception – it is one-half of the price in Finland and one-third (or less) of every other European country.
- Consumers in the United States have the highest minutes of use per month in the world, more than 500 minutes per month more than the next closest European country.
- According to British regulatory authority Ofcom, the United States has the lowest Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (“HHI”) of the nine European countries it recently measured, and when measuring the market share of 53 countries’ top two providers, the United States has the third lowest concentration. HHI is an economic formula used to measure market concentration.
- Contrary to recent reports that the United States trails in the deployment of Wi Fi capable devices, American wireless providers have thriving and growing Wi-Fi offerings, including ten handsets in the market now, with many more on the way.
- American consumers have access to more than 700 different devices – according to CTIA research, more than any other country on the planet. By contrast, the U.K. has approximately 180 different handsets.
Mobile Operators WORLDWIDE have kept the wireless industry in the stone age.
I sincerly hope Google will change things
I think most of mobile operators´ management should be just beaten badly for ruining so many startups who offered them over the years so many good ideas….
it is a pity , a shame
Comment by Fed up of mobile operators — July 24, 2007 @ 3:46 pm
Way to cherry-pick statistics, you pikers. Price per minute of use is irrelevant - what’s the relative total monthly bill? It’s really easy to manipulate price per minute by charging a lot for way more minutes than anyone will ever use. I have thousands of rollover minutes at AT&T, but my monthly bill is still too high. Ten Wi-Fi devices? Big deal. How many more devices have had their wi-fi removed at the behest of carriers? Why does my Blackjack have no wi-fi, but the European version does? And even when the carriers deign to leave the wi-fi in, is it open? Can you bypass per-minute charges via VOIP? Finally, the 700 device number is a huge red herring. How many of those are variations of the same handset? More importantly, of that number, how many had features crippled or removed? The fact remains that because of the carriers, we have fewer choices and fewer third-party services. I should be able to buy any device I want, pop in a SIM, and do anything I want with it. Instead, I can get a crippled, but subsidized, handset from the carrier, and if I want additional services I can buy them from the carrier. $40 a month for unlimited data because the wi-fi was removed. $10 a month for telenav because the GPS was crippled or removed. Overpriced music downloads because the bluetooth was crippled. Overpriced software because the java was crippled.
Comment by Fred — July 25, 2007 @ 5:25 am