Dave Wong in a comment at TheFeature writes:
I live in Hong Kong, a highly competitive city with 6 mobile carriers… not only is airtime 8x cheaper than in the US (US$0.01 per minute on postpaid plans) but handsets are also very competitively priced. While networks have a great deal more geographic area to cover in the US, Asia and Europe have proven that number portability and unlocked phones on GSM networks are clearly the more cost effective solutions going forward for consumers.

Indeed, handsets are usually cheaper in Hong Kong than anywhere else, although that has as much to do with its proximity to Chinese sweatshops as with fierce competition. That said, his numbers do check out: the postpaid plans, even for ultra-high-tech Three, seem almost reasonably priced by US standards even before the US$1=HK$7.8 conversion. There are probably four to six mobile carriers in most US cities, and yet prices here are stuck in the stratosphere — because of the high infrastructure costs associated with sending crews out to stick cell towers atop every grain silo and Interstate-facing billboard in the land. Meanwhile, city dwellers like me (and I don’t even use coverage along the interstates!) are roped into “national” rate plans that just barely underwrite those costs.

Perhaps there’s an opening for a local carrier to rent spectrum only in the large cities, make clear that its coverage isn’t for everyone, and sell it dirt cheap — that is, unless it runs afoul of universal service regulations, but isn’t that what I pay fees for?

Incidentally, I stumbled across TheFeature in the course of a Google search. It’s certainly an interesting idea and looks like nice software: the karma and ranking of Slashcode, plus more in-depth user profiles (bordering on blogs?), intelligent ranking of stories, and an explicitly professional audience (a relief compared to the countless mobile-customer sites out there, filled with .sigs of people’s hot rods and atrocious spelling). All in all, a nice community service from Nokia.