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To: Ruffian who wrote (24168)	3/13/1999 4:49:00 PM
From: limtex	Respond to of 152472

mp and Maurice - I was in Germany recently and I thought I would buy a mobile for use there and on a pay as you go basis in order to avoid having to sign up for twelve months at a huge rate. The rate for a pay as you go mobile was 4DM per minute for a call the the US, or any other international destination for that matter. IMHO you can forget about the standard definition of competition when it comes to mobile telephony in Europe. It simply doesn't exist and neither is it likely to. Before liberalization companies like BT, DT and France Telecom used to make an easy living by charging per minute to businesses and in the week and grandmothers on weekends that liked to talk to their grandchildren in Australia and New Zealand. Now with liberalization the amount they can get for international is reducing by the week. So they turn to mobile where the opportunities competitors to come in and reduce prices is limited by Geovernment regulation, capital cost of systems and all sorts of other hidden hurdles. The Europeans couldn't stop competition on the legacy networks but they sure can and have on the mobile ones. Further more the GSM service is simply awful. More than 50% of calls break off mid call and the times when the system is busy and you can't make a call increases with every passing month. The only hope for the hapless ripped off European consumers is G* which hopefully will allow release from the stranglehold that the present EU mobile operators have on their poor victims. Best regards, L