New Apple Lust Objects for 2010 and onward

population dens of australia much more concentrated in partic areas than US

http://i.imgur.com/M25DAmQ.png

http://i.imgur.com/12VOVoY.gif

yours truly, 乒乓, verizon and AT&T apologist

yes, that was my actual oblique point

(can't speak to Russia and their phone infrastructure)

here's an argument why the problem shouldn't be population density: each town of 10,000 people needs a cell phone tower. you can't serve many towns with a cell phone tower, so assuming the town is not completely off the pre-existing physical grid, how far apart the towns are is irrelevant. to first order, it costs no more per person to serve 100 million people living in towns 100 miles apart than in towns 30 miles apart.

here's an argument why the problem cannot in fact be population density: no one has become a billionaire building a network that costs $10/month to use that serves "only" 95% of the population, which should be a piece of cake if the problem weren't a structural one with the market, or a legal one.

i'm using australia and russia as examples to prove that, absent structural or legal problems, it is possible to run a profitable cheap network by ignoring a few % of the population.

I think that is exactly the way that Vodafone undercuts Telstra in Australia though, by providing cheap plans but less coverage

exactly. why doesn't someone do that in the US?

well, you can always sign with t-mobile or sprint

lock-in is also a problem, since i think... all 4 of the big carriers use different technologies

hence why there are 2 different iphone models in the US, one of which is not available unlocked despite being more practical for global use

also: these networks that spend all this money serving little towns, don't actually do a good job of covering the little towns i go to in west texas. they don't do a very good job of serving big cities tbqfh. i mean you can run an advert about how you don't drop calls in cities in the US and that's considered a good use of your advertising budget?

t-mobile, the cheap one, is still expensive even if you just convert it to euros/pounds. if you compare it to the cost of living it's crazy.

yeah it's a p big mess

yeah, the CDMA/GSM thing is definitely a big part of the problem.

also i should have ordered free sim cards when they were still doing them dan. they cost $10 now afaict.

Does the widespread use of 4G in the USA explain increased cost perhaps?

yikes

for cities, i think a big problem are zoning regulations (see also why US cities [well, at least NY] can't get it together to build cheap affordable housing stock... it's hard to keep on adding cell towers

Does the widespread use of 4G in the USA explain increased cost perhaps?

― badg, Thursday, May 23, 2013 2:22 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

4G isn't really that widespread

it is possible to run a profitable cheap network by ignoring a few % of the population.

― caek, Thursday, May 23, 2013 2:10 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think that is exactly the way that Vodafone undercuts Telstra in Australia though, by providing cheap plans but less coverage

― badg, Thursday, May 23, 2013 2:14 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark

this kind of exists in the form of carriers like cricket, simple talk, boost mobile, who all target 'urban' markets, but afaict they just rent time from the big 2's network

http://www.simplemobile.com/

i think we're still kind of in the deployment stages w/4G

fwiw I was not trying to defend the US system as being awesome

anyway, population density absolutely impacts Australia because you have most people living in concentrated areas, meaning more efficient use of cell towers, plus you are also talking about a population that is 15 times smaller than the US so it shouldn't be THAT surprising that you can build a cheaper network there

there's also a carrier "lock-in" for people who still actually use their phone to talk, most networks give you free minutes of mobile-to-mobile only if you're on the same network (or you're forced to put certain people on a favorites list)

yeah... even if this were true:

here's an argument why the problem shouldn't be population density: each town of 10,000 people needs a cell phone tower. you can't serve many towns with a cell phone tower, so assuming the town is not completely off the pre-existing physical grid, how far apart the towns are is irrelevant. to first order, it costs no more per person to serve 100 million people living in towns 100 miles apart than in towns 30 miles apart.

the raw # of cell towers you'd need in america vs. australia would still be by a couple of factors, i think

the day that they sell data-only plans for the iphone will be a great day

caek i think there are a few threads in the macrumors iphone forum talking about cheaper providers like simple talk etc.

probably the service in and around NYC is pretty good

ok last thing: the population of the us is 15 times bigger so there are 15 times more customers

Yeah I just remember this every time what apple should do next gets interpreted solely through the USA, which is such an effin weird telecoms market and as cook was saying just this week well under half and dropping of their revenue. Like Belgium or South Africa or something is probably a more useful country to understand well than the USA if you're trying to figure out apple under Tim cook.

iPhone already available unlocked and no-contract on Virgin Mobile, which rides Sprint's network. Think their plan is ~$35/mo.

anyway, population density absolutely impacts Australia because you have most people living in concentrated areas, meaning more efficient use of cell towers, plus you are also talking about a population that is 15 times smaller than the US so it shouldn't be THAT surprising that you can build a cheaper network there

the biggest factor iirc is getting the network out there in the first place. no problem rigging up a handful of 850 mhz cells through e.g. alice springs and no problem making money there, but linking that to the rest of the network and maintaining acceptable data speeds is costlier per capita in those regions.

indigenous communities are a whole different story though: recently some colleagues went out to wtf creek in the middle of buggery plains and saw first hand how bad landline internet speeds were there, much less any sort of reliable cell network.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-may-22-2013/tax-men---apple

"my point was more that the type of person who wears watches these days is more likely to be the kind of person who does so as a status symbol, not as a utility"

really?? i wear a watch because i need to know the time and i hate pulling my phone out. it's a cheapie digital, and i have three of them because i kept misplacing them, getting a new one, and then finding them.

500 MB of data a month? I go through a GB every day or so

they should really go old-timey and make a digital watch that looks like a gold Moneybags-style pocket watch with chain but it communicates via bluetooth to your phone, which also has the time on it. do you see, man!

re the possible usecases of such a watch -not new and i think it got posted already, but it still contains some valid points throughout:
http://kfury.com/what-an-apple-watch-is-good-for

What's missing from the discussion of profitability of setting up cell towers is that there are tons of places in the US where a single tower serves far fewer than the "10,000" discussed above. Where my parents used to live in rural Michigan, I had service in a tiny radius, in which there were maybe 30 or 40 houses - 50 absolute tops - it was in the woods - and the roads were very low traffic. But AT&T provided service to that tiny population, and there are many, many more like it.

isn't there some law on the books mandating access to rural areas? I thought it only applied to landlines though

i guess it isnt a new thing but its still seems stupid:

http://www.phonesreview.co.uk/wp-content/phoneimages/2007/12/imobile_cellphone_watch.jpg

Are people going to be talking into these things or just poking at them and squinting?

itamagotchiwatch

https://twitter.com/alka_seltzer666/status/338749712595316737

also tim cook will be at d on . . . tuesday

http://allthingsd.com/conferences/d/d11/schedule/

had no idea elon musk was gonna be there

when is next apple event

wwdc. keynote june 10.

here's a partial preview with spoilers basically: http://9to5mac.com/2013/05/24/jony-ives-new-look-for-ios-7-black-white-and-flat-all-over/

sounds good (and logical), and i don't think anyone on the planet will miss the bulldozed visual junk

it really does look not great

it'll be interesting to see these changes inevitably come to the mac