as long as Americans do not reject verizon and at&t pricing they have no motivation to lower rates. also few people seem to have a clue what they pay anyways. when i ask my friends they divide the allocate minute bucket by the monthly fee without thinking about all the unused minutes or the occasional overages. when they really look at it most would be better off with even the large operators overpriced pre pay plans.

use pageplus and buy one $80 refill and two $10 refills. it comes to 360 days and almost 1600 minutes. as an added bonus your SMS come to under $0.04 each. for me the main thing is that these deals are nothing new; but everyone i mention them too is very surprised they even exist. i have lived in many parts of the world and back here at home in the USA I have to say that when it comes to mobile phones we do far less research on the less known services; nearly everyone just goes straight to the big guys with there overpriced plans and lack of customer service.

spg

p.s. also companies like pageplus or stimobile answer the phone when you call them instead of letting you sit on hold for 45 minutes; and they let you use any phone as long as it can be unlocked and the PRL(cdma roaming list) updated.

My plan has 120 minutes and 90 sms per month included. After that I pay about $0.10 per minute for voice, a bit less per SMS.
How much is the flat fee per month for this? $0. I don’t use that many minutes, and haven’t paid a phone bill for years

Pay some small flat fee per month, and you get much lower rates.

Oh, and our GDP per capita is higher than the US.

@stefan and @anthony: Yes, I know Indonesia has a much lower GDP per capita than North America, which is why I said it wasn’t *exactly* an Apples to Oranges comparison. Pricing is one thing, but the whole business model–pay for what you use versus buying “bundles”–is another.

People *think* they are getting a good deal in the U.S.–and maybe some people are–but the vast majority would do better under a pay-per-use regime. Anyone with a $40 (or cheaper) price plan is probably *very* profitable for the carrier. Why? Because they don’t use a lot of minutes.

However, I also agree with Stefan. The GDP per capita income for Indonesia is very low. Stefan’s number, $3900, is a bit optimistic in my opinion. The GDP for Indonesian should be lower than this. Wikipedia mentions something around $1800 for year 2006.

Btw, I am originally from Indonesia although I live in North America now.

the thing about prepaid in USA is you need to deal with the little companies that do not spend there whole budget on advertising but give good rate instead.

A reader sent me some information about mobile phone charges in Indonesia, which is the forth biggest country in terms of population, behind the U.S., India, and China. Quoting from my piece on phoneboy.com: Each outbound minute of calling to……