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Mika, I would humbly suggest to keep in mind that the US is a HUGE place. I live in Texas, one of fifty states, and it is the size of France. I believe the state's GDP (or GSP) is equivalent to around 10th in the world among all COUNTRIES. I would guess Austin, a relatively small city that has no major league professional sports teams and only recently got an "international" airport, has a greater GDP than Finland. CA and NY are probably in the top seven compared to other countries' GDP. All this without much (if any) GSM. The US has confounded skeptics by not going metric--a case where the world's technology is inherently superior. Now why should it go GSM just to provide, effectively, European roaming (since Japan and Korea--frequent US destinations and much more important to people on the west coast of the US than Europe is, I might add--are CDMA) for a few business people? I would guess far less than 1% of US pop. Surely that segment can be addressed by multimode phones. International roaming is a much bigger deal in Europe, where countries are midgets and the standard a giant. In the US, where standards are midgets (to use Tero's word) and the country is a giant, it is INTRAnational roaming that is most important. Next, Japan roaming, at least for the west coast business people. JMHO, Greg |
