How's that for a Fox News style headline? But I'm sick, sick, sick of a particular meme coming out of mobile phone news stories, mostly from Europe. It's bad and factually wrong. The quote from our Reuters story goes:
"Europe, which is ahead of the United States in building new networks ..."
There's no attribution or explanation for this assumption, which is provably false. It's an old myth which doesn't give US carriers enough credit, and clouds the debate over where US mobile consumers really do need help.
(By the way, I hate those wire stories without bylines. The reader should know who's responsible for the words you're reading.)
The US now has three nationwide 3G networks - Verizon's, Sprint's, and AT&T's. Among smaller carriers, Helio, US Cellular, Alltel, Cricket, ACS and Cellular South all have 3G. That's up to nine different 3G options for US consumers, depending on where you live. T-Mobile has just started rolling out their network, making 10. And unlike with European networks, you don't have to pay roaming fees if you travel a few hundred miles (unless you live near the Canadian or Mexican borders.)
Verizon led the way with their 3G rollout, at about the same time as the first major European carriers. For instance, Three launched their UK 3G network in 2003. Orange launched their UK network in July 2004 and their France network later that year. Verizon launched their first US 3G city in October 2003, and started rolling out nationwide in January 2004.
Moreover, Verizon's EVDO Rev 0 system in the US was twice as fast as that original European 3G system. The EVDO Rev A systems used by Verizon and Sprint, and the HSDPA/HSUPA system used by AT&T, are just as fast as anything in Europe today.
US and European 3G deployments have continued apace. Our network AT&T launched HSDPA technology in December 2005, just a month after Manx Telecom launched the first (tiny) HSDPA network in Europe and before most of Europe's major carriers. AT&T is right now upgrading to HSUPA, just like the European carriers are.
Part of the myth of US inferiority comes from naming. For some reason, all the European carriers coalesced around the phrase "3G" for their 3G services, but US carriers didn't. Verizon and Sprint like to custom-brand their networks, so we've been getting a lot of marketing around "V Cast" and "Power Vision" for years. Know what they are? They're 3G, chumps.
The network debate also gets clouded by the geographical nature of US and European networks. US networks tend to look like cheesecloth - lots of little holes, weak areas, etcetera. European networks are denser. So people think the Europeans have "better technology" when they don't - they just have "more towers."
The Europeans are indeed ahead of us in certain things which are not "building new networks." They have a more open handset marketplace with more handset choices. They are ahead of us in high-megapixel camera phones and Symbian smart phones. We tend to be on par with them, and sometimes ahead of them, in music phones and deployments of products based on Windows Mobile, Blackberry, and Apple technology.
We definitely have something to learn from Europe in terms of broadening the number of phones available. But in "building new networks" with more advanced technology? Let's put that lie to rest.
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June 3, 2008 4:35 PM
Good post, I'm a little prouder to be an american now.
June 3, 2008 4:57 PM
Which US network has 7Mb download. Where is TV on the phone like in europe?
June 3, 2008 5:20 PM
AT&T and Verizon both offer mobile TV. I've reviewed both of them, here's the most recent link: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2289602,00.asp
Which European wireless network offers a 7 megabit download speed? I don't know of any current existing standard with that speed. If you mean HSDPA 7.2, that "7.2" is a theoretical speed - real-life speeds are generally half that. Only some European networks have gone to 7.2, and AT&T will start making the switch by the end of this year, as far as I know. We aren't ahead of them - we're on the same time frame.
June 3, 2008 6:20 PM
Having lived and travelled in Europe and the US, I have to say the spottiness of European coverage is a pain, but US coverage is worse. 3G networks - well whoopie do. In some cites maybe, but only about a quarter of the places I travel to in the US.
In fairness, the US is more spread out than Europe, with a much lower population density. But tooting trumpets about networks only makes sense if the coverage is actually forming a network, rather than polka dots :-)
June 4, 2008 5:47 AM
Fine, the line may be not correct, though I did not read the full article to put it in context, but if the line is "Fox News style", your line is even beyond that: "Reuters Spreads ANTI-AMERICAN lie"... whatever, they spread some news that may not be correct but I see nowhere the Anti-americanism you quote. Or The USA should always be bigger, better, faster, more beautiful whatever reality is? If I say that the bahamas have a larger surface than the USA, am I commiting the Crime of Antiamericanism or I am just wrong?
And by the way: to prove it wrong you have to quote independent sources that demonsatrate your point, it does not sufice to say so.
June 4, 2008 7:00 AM
lol 3G eh? That has been around since 2004(Portugal, Germany & others).
reuters:
"Europe, which is ahead of the United States in building new networks ..."
you:
"There's no attribution or explanation for this assumption, which is provably false."
also you:
"Only some European networks have gone to 7.2, and AT&T will start making the switch by the end of this year,"
As you said, some european networks ALREADY offer this service, in the US only by the end of the year they will start implementing it. *hint* *hint*
I, for one, am using one of those rare networks.
June 4, 2008 9:19 AM
The quality of an argument is always improved by good criticism, don't you think?
Obviously a given US network isn't more advanced than the most advanced network in Europe. That's not what I'm arguing. I'm arguing that our three largest carriers are pretty much middling in respect to network technologies, compared to the large body of European carriers. We're not ahead, we're not behind. We're in the middle of the pack.
For instance, while mobilkom Austria has HSDPA 7.2 (for one example - I know there are more), O2 in the UK has HSDPA 3.6 just like AT&T in the US does. Orange in France has just started their HSDPA 7.2 launch and says they'll hit 71% coverage by the end of 2008, according to a March 11 press release of theirs.
(By the way, why does nobody ever give Telstra any credit? Now, they have a fast network.)
As I said in my story above, the first major 3G rollouts I could find in Europe occurred at the same time as Verizon's in the US. Not ahead, not behind, in the middle of the pack.
The "anti-american lie" is to take a very diverse marketplace called "Europe," lump it all together, and say that it's somehow "ahead" of another diverse geography called "the U.S." for the purpose of some sort of continental mine-is-bigger-than-yours contest. This lie doesn't make any good technological point, so it seems to exist just to tear down the U.S. for some reason.
If the Reuters story had said, "Austria's mobilkom introduced HSDPA 7.2 in March 2007, a full 18 months before the US's AT&T," that would be good journalism (and true!) But no, it says that vague-lumped-together Europe is vaguely and unsupportedly "ahead" of vague-lumped-together-US, making it an ethnic boast rather than a tech story.
Part of the problem is that the Reuters story was an iPhone story, and for reasons I don't understand, several of the iPhone carriers in Europe don't use Europe's most advanced technologies (O2 being a major example.) What the reporter probably wanted to say was that "iPhone buyers in X, Y, and Z European countries have access to more advanced networks than iPhone buyers in the US," but then s/he would have had to deal with the confusing fact that it's not true in the UK, for instance.
June 5, 2008 8:20 AM
As a regular visitor to the USA from South Africa I can just mention that the South African mobile phone networks are far superior to what I have experienced in the USA. We have full 3G coverage, we do not pay for incoming phone calls or SMS's, our networks are reliable and stable. The iPhone is a joke around here because of all the American hype and excitement about a phone without 3G capability! Unbeleivable!
June 19, 2008 10:15 AM
@Steve,
I am guilty of bashing AT&T from time to time and when I moved to the US in 1999, was aghast to find myself on analogue roaming during a trip to Kansas City with my then TDMA phone.
I have had an Option GT Ultra Express for the last six months and taken it to Denver, Dallas, KC, Atlanta, Iowa, and South and Central Florida. I have had at least HSDPA coverage everywhere but Iowa. I had HSUPA in KC and Denver. YMMV.
January 6, 2009 5:33 PM
When I lived in Germany for two years starting in 2000, text messaging was a really popular thing in Europe at a time when it was virtually nonexistent in the US. And the best part? It was practically FREE!! None of the European phone providers charged much to send a text message! And the only person who used minutes to make a call was the sender not the answerer also! Typical greed on the part of US companies has led to a stagnation of technology compared to Europe. They hoard the profits to pump up stock prices. And now that it has been revealed that it costs them virtually nothing to handle text messages lawsuits are coming in force! I am a proud American but sometime I shake my head at our greed and steadfast belief that we are "better" than everyone esle in the world at EVERYTHING