Why so many Cell Phones in EU?

If we are to believe the US reports the first thing that happens to a European child after birth is, like with a Borg child, they screw in a cell phone into their head and all people in Europe thus have cell phones. {;^) The question is why does Europe have such a dense usage of cell phones even compared to the USA? Is it because the rate on a cell phone is not that much, if not less than, the regular phone. Where unlike the USA you must pay by the minute. Also another question is, if you have such a dense usage of cell phones, has that also equated to a larger use of wireless internet usage, and if so, what companies, if any, offer wireless internet and what is the expected cost, as compared to dial up?

I hate to say this, but it seems the Europeans do everything they possible can to ruin the growth of the economy. They charge by the minute on phone calls, thus no one wants to make orders over the phone, they heavily tax everything you buy so you don't buy things unless you need them, a foreign concept for the Americans, that buy just to the fun of it. They tax the gas, so people keep their products local. I mean what's up with Europe, don't you want to make money? The EU is still acting like a third world country in its actions toward economic growth.

Anyway, the real question is are there wireless internet connections and how much and how good are they, if any. Thanks.

Resistance is futile, We are Euro

Reply to
David.Callyar
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I think they stopped being business tools about 10 years ago and after that the prices got very low.

Depends which country you are in, and which network you are on. In the U.K. it is quite cheap to use one and it is charged by the second.

3G is just about to be lauched here properly for internet acess and the speeds are quicker than DSL, check out
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Hmm !

That's not quite true (Europe isn't one big country) competition is everything and there are lots of companies catering for different things. As far as landlines go check out

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and see how many different price plans there are ( all charged by the second i might add ). Free local calls, business plans for calling abroad etc.

I think most people prefer to be taxed heavily and have things like welfare provided for them. If I have a heart attack I don't have to worry about the bill, when I'm old I have a free pension. Suits me fine. I think it just depends which side of the fence you like sitting on, if i didn't like it i'd move !

Check out SwissCom for a pan European wireless company (WLAN) , Vodafone.co.uk and t-mobile.co.uk for a GSM/ GRPRS connection or have a look at three.co.uk for a launched 3g company.

Reply to
John Smith

Define cheap, in the USA I pay $25.00 for my month phone bill, and I stay on it with dial up from the moment I get up in then morning until I go to bed at night. And hopefully charge by the second means they only charge exactly what you use, not $1 per second. And what countries or networks have flat charges?

Thanks

Well I would not mind to pay a bit more to get good health care, instead of, at 2 billion dollars a pop, the B2 Stealth bombers, that had no purpose but to bomb the former USSR with nukes, and are loud as hell, and not stealthy in the rain. The only explination I have heard that even comes close to making sense to me, (hey, I was educated in the USA so forgive me a bit) was that you have so many dole systems, if you tried to have an income tax, instead of VAT etc. no one would be paying into it. I still think it is a loopy way of doing it. It seems very counter productive. Like India making it so hard to open a business no one does. Then they wonder way they can't get their economy going.

thanks

Reply to
David.Callyar

O.K. for my £35 a month I get 8.5 hours on my mobile phone & 500 text messages to any mobile phone or landline in the UK.

Calls are charged slightly differently here in Europe, you pay for the call you make which I guess is equivilent to your 1-900 calls. All mobile numbers here start with 07 so that you know that you are calling a mobile number and it will be charged at a higher rate than a normal call.

Because of the way the telecoms companies differ here no company will at the moment give flat charge. It is possible if you pay £75 per month ($125) but not really reasonalbe for most people.

I think that you want to know why the mobile market has expanded here rather than in the US which is because the operators here were doing Pay As You Go services about 5 years ago to appeal to the other markets. If you do your research you will find that it is only the US that has been left behind. E.G. I was in Africa recently and they all had mobile phones because the land lines were so bad ! I gather that Japan has the highest uptake of mobile phones per capita in the world.

Reply to
John Smith

Here is it, I am going to Europe long term. I probably will be living out of maybe hotels and/or short lease apartments. I need to have a daily internet connection, if I use the hotel phone it will cost a fortune. I need a way to get the internet at a reasonable price and be able to be mobile with it. I thought I might get that in a wireless connection. I need to be able to use my lap top not just a phone. That is where I am at. How does the average Joe traveling in Europe on a business trip (let's say) access the internet at a reasonable price, throughout Europe?

Reply to
David.Callyar

If you can make local calls without unreasonable hotel surcharges, in many countries there are "free" ISPs (actually getting a kickback from the telco out of the charges on local calls). They used to require registration (specifying residential address, tax code etc.), but some do not any longer: see e.g., for Italy,

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But I must remind you that if you are looking for low communication charges, low taxes (you won't be able to escape at least the payment on your consumptions of Value Added Tax, which is in the neighborhood of

20%!) and little red tape, you shouldn't really think about Europe...

Enzo

Reply to
Enzo Michelangeli

Reply to
David.Callyar

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No, actually (if I remember correctly) the installation just downloads some patches to the Windows Registry to create a dial-up connection icon and make it the default one. The username/passord pair is automatically generated, and the phone number is the same over all the Italian territory, with calls billed as a local.

Hey, I had recommended Hong Kong, remember? :-) Communication costs here are quite low: I have 1.5 Mbps ADSL for about USD 20 per month, a local wireless provider offers GPRS for USD 5 (i.e. HKD 38) per month (flat rate:

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), and the Pacific Coffee cafe chainhas workstations to access the net free of charge. Enzo

Reply to
Enzo Michelangeli

"Enzo Michelangeli" wrote

How much is their coffee? ;-)

Reply to
Tim

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