The NY Times on LTE service pricing and the impact of competition. In the US we effectively have little competition and the prices are much higher than areas where it exists. That and the carriers bundle the service with other services that the user doesn't need or is paying way too much more (text messaging and conventional voice).
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Through June, there were 27 million LTE subscribers in the world, about half of them in the United States, according to TeleGeography, a market research firm based in Washington. South Korea is the second-largest market, with 7.5 million users, and Japan, with 3.5 million, is the third, according to the company.
LTE services are available in 21 European countries and used by 1.5 million people, TeleGeography says. Germany has the most users there.
A comparison by Wireless Intelligence, a unit of the GSM Association, suggests that being in the biggest LTE market has not brought low prices to U.S. consumers.
According to the study, Verizon Wireless, which is a joint venture of Verizon and Vodafone, charges $7.50 for each gigabyte of data downloaded over its LTE network. That is three times the European average of $2.50 and more than 10 times what consumers pay in Sweden, where a gigabyte costs as little as 63 cents.
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