Mobiles in the US

gizmoleeds

zolablue25 wrote:

Does anyone know of a website that can explain all of the differences for mobiles between dear old blighty and the US of A.

Thanks to all who respond to this forum, your help/opinions are always appreciated

No, but I know some of them so here goes:

1 There are two main different types of mobile phone network in the world, GSM and CDMS. GSM phones have sim cards, CDMS phones do not. European countries will only licence GSM, mainly because it is easier to switch networks with GSM (because of the sim cards) - this motivates competiton between networks by ensuring customers can easily move. In the USA both systems are used by different networks.

2 GSM phones use 3 frequencies: 800MHz, 1800MHz and 1900MHz (those are off the top of my head and may not be correct, but that's not important). In Europe we use 800 and 1800 but not 1900. US networks which use GSM use 1900. A "tri-band" phone is one which can pick up all three frequencies (and thus be used in the USA).

3 US mobile phones do not have their own area codes like ours do - they instead use the local area code of the owner. This means they are cheaper to call but network packages include limits on receivable calls. This is very alien to UK users.

4 Pay as you go has never really taken off in the US, partly due to the above problems of paying for receiving calls.

5 CDMS phones are not compatible with GSM text messages, so these are not commonly used like they are here.

6 Voicemail is used much more in the US. We often turn off our voicemail or ignore messages, and many people hang up as soon as they hear "welcome to T-mobile voic...", Americans don't - no technical reasons why, but maybe to do with the less use of text messages.

7 Because of the sheer size of the USA getting reception is not always as easy as in the UK/Europe.

EdCov

A couple of extra points in addition to gizmoleeds useful post.

Most people think America is ahead in terms of technology and adopting technoogy this is often not the case. Mobile technology is a case in point here.

Americans are not so much in to mobiles. Part of the reason is that Americans have to pay to receive calls, and generally at the same rate or as part of the same allowance as they call out on them. However, calling a mobile in America is cheaper.

Also the technology often lags, an American friend of mine went back to the States and was looking at mobiles and the shop assistant was trying to tell him that a phone was cutting edge and that America led the world on mobiles. My friend was telling the guy (this was last summer) no loads of people have camera phones in Europe. The guy wouldn't believe him, he was telling him no I've been in Europe I've seen it.

Part of the problem is the geography of America and this is not just the wide open spaces of the countryside but the skyscrapers that get in the way of the signals in the big cities. Therefore mobiles do not work in large parts of America (this is improving but is probably a reason why people use voicemail more so that people can pick up the message when they are back in signal).

American companies are often less consumer friendly, because American television is all commercial they do not have the kind of consumer revenge programmes such as Watchdog. The sponsors would not be very happy with someone like MSE Martin appearing on their station. Therefore Americans often get a bad deal from big companies and you need to be a big company to run a mobile (or should I say cellular) operation.

Add to that Americans are not natural bargain hunters, in fact they rather disdain the way the British hunt for bargains.

Looking at Amazon.com you can buy a t-mobile US refill card for $50 t-mobile US refill (top up) card for $50 and that gives you 250 minutes. So that would be in or out minutes and there is then an additional $1.50 if you wanted to call say the UK. If you chose a $25 card you only get 100 minutes. I looked for a Sim but I could not find one.

In other words you may find it as cheap, or are you sitting down, cheaper to use your UK mobile in America than to use an American mobile. Looking for the cheapest UK mobile deal (would have to be tri-band) may be the right path to look down.

There have been and probably still are some free phone free line rental for twelve months on a twelve month contract tri-band phones (cashback deals) to be had. So if you need a new tri band phone that could be the answer.

gizmoleeds

That is very true on the inferior technology - this is also partly due to takeup - the US has ony 160m mobiles for 300m people (about 50%), but the UK has 50m mobiles for 60m people.

gizmoleeds

Just to add - I didn't make those statistics up, they came from the CIA world factbook, which is full of useless stuff like that.