Carl Tyler's Blog

1 - I think 'Consumer Protection' laws in Europe tend to force competition between service providers. If one provider is dominant or 'making too much money' or if an industry seems to be acting in an uncompetitive way then the EU steps in and shakes things up a bit.

You can argue the pros, cons and morality of this till the cows come home, but I think that market regulation is at least partly responsible.

2 - I would argue that Kerr's half right.

In Europe, Consumer Protection is (usually) about protecting the actual consumers.

Whenever I see anything in America about these things, I see what should be consumer protection bodies / regulatory bodies effectively protecting the industry they serve, not the consumers.

To put it very bluntly, Carl, America looks amazingly protectionist in the way it does business these days.
Which is not to say that Europe's not also protectionist - nor SE Asia, or anywhere else. There's always a little protectionism. But in America, it's getting worse and worse as political bodies fall into the pockets of corporations...

3 - There could also be another reason. Moving from Sweden to the US, I notice that americans are much more focused on price than quality. That's why "everyone" goes to WalMart to pay $19.88 for the latest DVD, instead of $19.99 at Best Buy... That's why almost no TVs or DVD players in the US support both NTSC and PAL, which is pretty much standard in Europe.
If the US manufacturer can save 10 cent per unit on a $100 product by dropping a (useful) feature that is not used by everyone, they will do it.

Of course, this "penny pinching" means that the companies does not develop new advanced products as fast, since they focus more on cutting cost.
The US cable TV system seems to be pretty old, in Sweden they been running optical fibre everywhere for years, for example.
Sweden was always one of the top countries when it came to cell phone penetration. Incoming calls are usually free, at least in most other countries. Instead of having "regular" area codes, you have special mobile area codes that everyone knows, and you get charged a slightly higher rate when calling. Back in 1994 when I visited the US, most people here used pagers, while cell phones were very common in Sweden, and the pager system was almost dead.
So a combination of being change resistant and focus on cost, not quality or functionality is probably to blame.

4 - @3 I don't think the NTSC/PAL reason is to do with costs in the US. Most people here have no idea there are even different television systems. The reason why most European TVs, Videos, DVDs etc. support NTSC as well as PAL is that there are huge numbers of Videos (ok used to be) and DVDs that are bought in the US because they are cheaper and taken back to Europe and people want to play them. The reverse is not typically true.

5 - "protectionism" often means "protect the few at the cost of the many". look at all the backward compatibility requirments that control television. A broadcast engineer at FOX use to say - "somewhere in Washington in the basement of a big gray building, there is a 1952 RCA Victor round faced TV and everyone must test against it."

Cellphones went the other way in Europe - one standard which everyone competes on. In the USA, we've had 3/4 different incompatible transmission methods for years. Consumers must pick (aka guess) the right provider based on technology coverage.

6 - My understanding has always been that the US lags behind Europe and the rest of the world on mobile phones because we were so far ahead on the *wired* phones. Then when mobiles became widely available, the rest of the world jumped heavily in that direction while we continued to rely mostly on wired phones because we had all the infrastructure in place. Similarly, we were slow on fiber because we had so much copper in place.

I could very easily be wrong about this - it's a "conventional wisdom" sort of thing, and maybe purely a McMerican myth. It doesn't explain why we never managed to catch up, anyway.

In my opinion (but remember, I'm a liberal, at least in US terms), the cable companies are a monopoly and should be regulated much more strictly than they are. The fact that they are not, again IMNSHO, is the reason high speed internet connections are so expensive and also the reason digital TV is so expensive. Those companies haven't needed to provide better service because they had no competition.

7 - I agree with Rob, but there is another factor that often gets overlooked, and that is the sheer size of the US. Upgrading Sweden from copper to fibre is one thing; upgrading the US is quite another

8 - Having lived the first 29 years of my life in Germany, and since 2000 in the USA, I have seen both sides of the pond. I am still scarred by the horrible practices and prices of the German Telekom and won't go near a T-Mobile phone here in the US because of it.

Similar, Sat-TV, Cable-TV and now Phone Company TV systems are competing like crazy on who can broadcast more HDTV stations - did I read this correctly in an article on a german newspaper website that there is NO HDTV broadcast yet at all in Germany? Of course, PAL was always a bit better than NTSC (or a lot) and I read that there is PAL 16:9 (haven't heard of multiple angle broadcasts yet), but I guess its a leap to HDTV....wonder why that is so much ahead in the US - to sell more Flat Screens faster?

9 - I moved back to the U.S. from Europe in 2005 after 15 years abroad. I immediately realized how far behind we were. People were using cell phones that I'd had 10 years earlier in Europe. Also, when I left Rome I was on a T1 Fiberoptic line. Now I live in New York City, and the most advanced technology that exists here is VOIP and DSL!! DSL! Unbelievable. If we are truly first world, then building a First World network shouldn't be that difficult.

10 - I moved back to the U.S. from Europe in 2005 after 15 years abroad. I immediately realized how far behind we were. People were using cell phones that I'd had 10 years earlier in Europe. Also, when I left Rome I was on a T1 Fiberoptic line. Now I live in New York City, and the most advanced technology that exists here is VOIP and DSL!! DSL! Unbelievable. If we are truly first world, then building a First World network shouldn't be that difficult.

12 - I believe 2 things. One is that our government was meant to be "for the people by the people" but now our govermemt doesn't listen to us. Right now (2012) more then 51% of americans want us out of war. But does our government listen to the people? No! My point being is that our government has (to be nice) gotten lazy on standards.

And 2 yeah, MOST americans are scared of change. And what makes it worst is most americans are cocky. They want to believe they're still the best although clearly all the facts are showing other wise. The U.S. isn't even the richest country in the world anymore. However, ask any U.S. citizens if we are the richest country in the world and I bet you most of them will say yes. We're not only scared of change, we're down right blind to it.

Im speaking as a U.S. citizen. I've only recently seen how far behind we REALLY are because I've been googling it. And its not just technology. I want to move to Canada because they have better health care and they have the BEST world reputation. Only thing stopping is the fact that my family and my wifes family lives here.