Okay Geek Farm
Hey Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile, and the Rest
Red PandaI was a denizen of Japan from 1999-2005 and we all know about their cell phone technology. But that's not what I'm interested in, I'm more interested in why the hell the major cell phone providers charge an absurd amount for their service. According to this article on Slashdot, US plans are among the highest in the world, at $52.99 per month on average. So what does this have to do about Japan? I would take their service plan any day of the week over what any one in the US provides.
Here was my plan and details in Japan:
- About 2800 Yen per month for service. Around the time I had a cell phone, it would've been roughly $23-$28 per month.
- I believe it was unlimited minutes within the same service, 10 yen (~$0.10) per minute outside of service if you were the one making the call.
- Unlimited texting within the same service (called C-mail). 10 yen a message for texting to another cell phone service numder.
- Your phone had a legitimate e-mail address, which was either the cellphone number or some other set e-mail. This was how cellphones texted to each other outside their service. It also made things like sending data to yourself much easier.
- I don't believe you get charged for web browsing, but it's super limited anyway.
The only thing is is that Japanese cell phone providers don't give much of a discount for phones when you sign up.
And here's my plan with Verizon
- Basic plan is $55 per month.
- I get 450 minutes, unlimited nights and weekends.
- I don't have a text message plan. Otherwise its $0.20 per message, in or out. But I figure since I don't text that much, as long as I don't have 25 texts per month, which is what would've costed to get the 500 messages a month plan, I'm good.
- Any data transfer is tacked on, but I'm not privy to the rate.
My average cell phone bill here in the US is $60 per month. My average cell phone bill in Japan was $30 per month.
So basically I'm getting jipped off here. Not only do I pay more for mediocre service, but I pay more for crappy US cell phone technology (actually the US pretty much caught up with Japan, but they like to charge you for every damned feature).
