It looks like North Americans pay more for cell phone service than our European counterparts

New OECD data has come out and it is suggesting that wireless subscribers in North American countries like the United States and Canada, along with one European country — Spain– all pay the most for cell phone service out of the 30 countries that are ranked by OECD. In Europe, customers don’t have to, and aren’t expected to pay to receive messages like customers in the United States and Canada.

The findings showed that Americans pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $636 a year on cell phone service. This is compared to the lowest ranking the Netherlands, whose citizens only pay $131 per year for service. Swedish users don’t pay much more at an average of just about $138 per year for their cellular service.

In the study, it shows how prices have decreased for all those tested, no matter what the usage. Those who use their phones the least at around 360 calls a year and 390 text messages have seen a 21% reduction in their cost. The cost savings is 28% for those who are medium users and 32% for those who are high users. A medium user in the United States who makes 780 calls per year, sends 600 text messages, and 8 picture or video messages pays $53 a month for their service while their counterpart in the Netherlands only pays $11.

I find these usage details to be a bit off. I don’t know anyone who makes more calls than they send or receive text messages. I have gotten where I don’t really use my calling plan anymore and almost do nothing but send text messages. This also doesn’t take into account data usage. Or, what about how much it costs for a carrier to cover the thousands of rural miles that carriers have to cover in the United States and Canada versus the more densely populated European countries.

I don’t know why carriers in the United States and Canada have started charging more for text messages though. The price to send and receive text messages has jumped from $.10 since I started paying attention to the price of text messages to $.20 right now with my carrier. This fee is outrageous when you consider that the cost for a carrier to send text messages is minimal…it actually costs them less to send a text message than to make phone calls. Of course, this has led many customers to end up getting text message packages that include several text messages and multimedia messages bundled together. Adding this to the cell phone service does increase the price of the plan overall.