HTC One X Mobile Phone on Pay Monthly
I need to move to the UK! Why are we Americans getting shafted? How are they able to pay roughly $55 a month on contract for unlimited everything and get the phone free? Are we just stupid for paying so high or are there other reasons?
We pay for our phones and our communication costs, and a lot of taxes and other stuff.
This is not the case in all countries. Some Telcos in other parts of the world are heavily subsidized by the government. So they are funded by tax dollars, and less out of pocket. (Taxes come out of your pocket anyway, so in the end its all paid out of pocket).
Then there is the bit about not having to have all your own towers, because GSM is the standard in the EU, and towers (in many cases originally government funded towers) are all shared, and instead of having to build out a CDMA network and then a GSM network, and a WiMAX network, then go back and hang LTE on those towers, all the carriers over there just build GSM/HSPA/LTE on their own little fifedom, and roam onto perfectly compatible networks.
In this country we should have long ago told Sprint and Verizon to turn off CDMA and get standardized with every body else. But because you CAN'T take your phone somewhere else, you are stuck, and they can raise the price.
Then there is the sheer size of the network required. Theoretically you would think this would be a wash when you take all of europe into consideration. But its been my observation that my British friends who have visited me in the Western US and Alaska have no concept of the word RURAL.
But yeah, buy and large we pay way too much for Cell service.
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