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Comment by potatolicious | Hacker News Reader

Your argument doesn't fly - in the link you claim that wireless service is expensive because we're building multiple redundant networks when we really only need one.

It's a nice theory that works on paper, but doesn't stand up to scrutiny outside of the USA, where people do have incredibly affordable (and quality) cell service in an environment with many players.

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Yes,

Beefman's argument is of the "who you gonna believe me or your own eyes" variety supplemented by an appeal to authority via some link. It's not just an argument I disagree with but an unfortunate style of argument.

Some link? It's a link to something else I wrote in this thread. I thought linking preferable to copy-and-paste.

Such as? (I'm sure you corrected for population density)

Not wireless, but broadband:

http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/28/why-is-european-broadband...

Meanwhile, the size of the U.S. may be a red herring. Most of the region between Boston and Washington is as densely populated as most of Europe and the UK. So is the California coast between San Francisco and San Diego. And so is the region of the Midwest centered on Chicago. Those areas are home to about a quarter of all Americans. In other words, we live in a big country, but a lot of it is relatively empty space.

Loop unbundling is perfectly consistent with my argument, and indeed, the FCC enacted a loop unbundling rule this past April.

The article makes several other oversights. First, the big US carriers do not have regional pricing, and so the population density of the entire country is relevant.

Second, it neglects to mention that CDMA deployment was forbidden by law in many EU countries.

Finally, it neglects to mention that NIMBYism is a major driver of cellular network cost in the US, and differences in the legal climate around tower deployment can account for large differences in costs.

How many European operators have regional pricing? There is certainly no regional pricing in Norway, where half the population lives in about 15% of the land area and the rest is pretty much empty space (a lot of empty space)

Norway (pop density 12.5), Sweden (20.6) & Finland (16), all have better wireless service and are all much less densely populated than the US (pop density 33.7).

Isn't wikipedia great?

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