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Comment by cuteboy19 | Hacker News Reader

It always feels like US carriers compete on anything BUT price. It's always this bundle or that free** phone

** Carrier locked

For anyone who lives anywhere else the situation in the US is a complete mystery. It's more expensive and order of magnitude shittier than pretty much anywhere else in the west

I mean, T-Mobile was pretty good for a long time. You could buy a carrier unlocked phone direct from manufacturer and it was $70/month for unlimited everything with no contract.

But now that their CEO has quit, they've solidified as a leader the brilliant business geniuses are going back to business as usual which is what got them in dire straits in the first place.

The truth is, the entire "phone" system in 2022 is ridiculous. The fact that we still make normal phone calls not over the internet is absurd. When I buy a data only plan in another country, it comes with an assigned phone number. It has to, it's how the system works. It's so anachronistic.

The US always seems to suffer from this the worst, because we usually adopt new technology first.

$70/month for unlimited everything doesn't sound like that much of a deal to me. That's about the going rate for every major carrier, no?

Price transparency is a huge obstacle for me when I try to compare carriers. Somehow there's always a data cap, or at the very least a deprioritization cap, and it's basically impossible to find out what it is from any carrier.

> It has to, it's how the system works. It's so anachronistic.

And yet, based on the proliferation of SMS 2FA, it seems like cheapest and most effective way to prevent spam and bad actors. As well as track people.

> we (the US) usually adopt new technology first.

Evidence for this? Compare to Japan, to Sweden?

And in the East! In Asia I pay $4 per month for more data than I know what to do with. Service is a bit spotty, but it's quite a lot cheaper.

As usual, it comes down to density. Asia, even including some vast expanses of wilderness, has a population density 3 times that of the US.

It is not like the service is cheap in cities

> the situation in the US is a complete mystery

It's because in Europe the caller of a mobile pays, while in the United States the receiver pays. So plans are much more expensive because the owner of the mobile has to pay for all usage.

I do wonder how much the actual real bill is at the end for a typical mobile user in Europe with all the charges they have to pay when calling other people

Not unlike Canada's landline internet. Usually due to monopoly or collusion. In this case, I have no doubt the carriers collude with manufacturers to increase their profits.

The US is about the same size as the entirety of Continental Europe with less than half as many people and there is an expectation of good cellular service basically everywhere. It's much more expensive, but I've had very annoying service quality issues in Europe that I never encounter in the United States.

Europe and the US are just different places.

>I've had very annoying service quality issues in Europe that I never encounter in the United States.

Care to expand? I travel all over eu and haven't had an issue for years. Even in the zone 3 'eu' countries (algeria, kosovo, libya, morocco, tunisia)) €9.99 a month for 290gb and 1k sms and calls. Roaming? €0.0030/mb to €0.00238/mb.

When a family member calls me from Floridia...bag o'shit connections that regulsrly drop.

Same as a business you would run. It's usually a fools errand to compete on price and race to the bottom. Compete on something else.

"usually" should not pertain to utilities like internet, electricity, calling, etc.... the US is the worst western country when it deals with scams in cell and internet service

In India this was the situation before 2016. Calling was expensive, data was a luxury. All telcos were rent seeking parasites who just wanted to extract as much money from their customers as possible while providing the bare minimum service.

A small company called JIO realised that people actually like it when they are not being abused this way. It launched a cheap service with a very simple payment model. Fast forward 5 years and all the other telcos are bankrupt or nearly there. Data is dirt cheap, calling is free. Even the remaining telcos have switched to the JIO model (and pricing)

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