[wolfbln]

As a matter of fact, prepaid users are considered 2nd class citizens in most parts of the world by the providers. But I personally agree with your 2nd posting much more than with your first.

I appreciate T-Mobile US for taking these innovations and their US numbers are excellent now. Living in their home market in Germany, I'd be delighted to see similar things from this company happening here. You probably know that the history of T-Mobile/Telekom is very different on either side of the Atlantic. In Germany, it's the old incumbent ex-state telco - in your country it meant fight or die after the merger with AT&T was banned. Since their new strategy in the US has been so successful, Telekom may give up plans now to sell their US unit. But this was exactly what I've meant, with a single carrier taking the lead to get an edge over it competitors. These cases are rare in the industry: AT&T is trying to do the same down in Mexico breaking the sort-like monopoly of Telcel/America Móvil. But you can hardly argue, that on their home US market AT&T has proven to be very innovative lately.

We are not all socialists in Europe (even if some Americans think so). But to finally bring down and regulate EU roaming rates by law is a consequence of failure of the market here run by almost the same companies. Competition hasn't brought these exceeded roaming rates down. Probably, because there is no real competition in some markets. And sadly, this is true to most regions of the world. The new trend of merging mobile providers in many markets will not be of any help either.

You can't simply take one example like T-Mobile US and think the industry worldwide is changing accordingly. Surely, they've forced their competitors on their domestic market to offer cheaper roaming at least within the sub-continent so far. But this doesn't have any effect to the 95.6% of the world population not living in the US. Or as they say: one swallow doesn't make a summer.

Just to illustrate how dubious our points are on a global scale: I've just traveled another country, which I don't name. There, the world's biggest cellular provider has now 630 million customers - more than all US providers together. The internet is severely censored, even Google is blocked, VoIP is tapped, SMS and chat text messages are blacked out. Furthermore, they clamp down on VPNs to bypass it. When I take their example, our future and the future of the internet doesn't look very bright. Yet, it's the biggest telco of the world in the most successful economy of the last decade where almost all of our cellular devices are manufactured nowadays. Looking at their numbers, you can easily argue, that they are leading the way.

Personally, I don't hope (and think) so. I'd rather be a T-Mobile/Telekom customer, even if they still block VoIP in my home country.