Sorry Ohnka but I can't let your ill-informed remark go.
Let's take a typical European market -- Spain. OK, it's not Ireland, but it's better than that -- it's the same population as California spread out over a significantly larger area. Spain's biggest carrier, Telefonica, has more than FIVE TIMES as many towers as California's biggest carrier, AT&T, for about the same number of subscribers. It's an especially good example of how European wireless networks in general have been built. Sure, there have been occasional setbacks, such as the cluster of lawsuits that has delayed 4G rollout in Britain. But the overall picture is very good indeed, and very affordable for the customer. Bottom line, the Europeans have built out more robust networks over which they provide services at lower cost, with stronger competition between the phone companies, and they still manage to make a profit. Why have they done this? Basically because of tougher government regulation, primarily making licenses "use-it-or-lose-it" in that they establish certain minimum standards for network quality and capacity for you not to lose part of your spectrum.
Letting phone companies in the US get by with the excuse that they have to cover more area is a terrible copout. Using West Virginia as an example is an even worse copout; even outside the government's wireless quiet zone in the eastern border area of the state, wireless service there is especially and inexcusably bad.
US phone companies have been provided with very generous license terms at relatively low auction cost by the US government, and they've responded by getting fat, lazy, over-administered and greedy -- rather like too much of the rest of corporate America. Those of our businesses that actually have international competition (e.g. cars) got into serious trouble. Unfortunately, it's not nearly as easy for an outsider to take on the phone company, so if you want to think about what your cars would have been like without international standards of high regulation and high competition, think about your wireless phone service. Frankly it makes me think of a Chevy Vega.
