But Luckmann, arn't your european phones all awesome anyway? I was under the impression that our 3G phones were "catching up" to what europe already had.
No, your entire system is behind. The phones themselves should be virtually identical. And as far as "catching up" on the phone-front is concerned, your iPhones should be identical to our iPhones.
I mean, listening to Brad's post.. I think you'd be hard pressed to find anywhere in Sweden except the most remote parts of the north not having coverage. There's actually been issues of overlapping coverage between nations, even. Besides, a 3G phone should be able to hop over to the old GSM net if the 3G coverage disappears (of course, loosing all it's 3G benefits in the process, but you can still make phonecalls).
America have been behind in cellphones since day one, due to your inability to force a nation-wide standard early on, but technologically, there's just no difference. iPhones seem to be by far the most spiffy cellphone toy available, and I'd almost kill for one. On the other hand, I'm not rich, and they're expensive as hell. But what iffs me the most is that there's only two retailers in Sweden and all the iPhones they sell are locked to their nets and accounts.
So if I buy a phone from Telia (one of the retailers) I can't just buy a card from High3G (known as "3") and plug it in. The phone is locked for 18 months. I'm just not going to buy that. Completely out of principle (because there's not technically anything wrong with Telia, I just don't like them).
