At 02:37 AM 1/17/2003, zampano wrote:
>  How come cell phones still are horribly
>unreliable all over the U.S?? When I could use them in Italy,
>Switzerland and Germany 8 years ago on mountain peaks, valleys, subway
>stations, anywhere except tunnels???

Have you compared the sizes?  Germany for example, has a helicopter/trauma
center setup that can get people to a trauma center from anywhere in the
country in fifteen minutes.  This is great, but they have only about
one-eighth the land mass per inhabitant (230/km^2 vs 27/km^2 ten or fifteen
years ago)  UK similar, they put 60,000,000 people in an area about the
size of the State of Maine.  Canada has only 3 inhabitants/km^2, but
they're concentrated in a narrow band so the effective density is much
higher (and certainly our own overall densities are greatly influenced by
the low-population western states).  Anyway, that's certainly not the whole
answer, but it's definitely part of it.

cheers,
david

--
David Beierl - Providence RI USA -- http://pws.prserv.net/synergy/Vanagon/
'84 Westy "Dutiful Passage"
'85 GL "Poor Relation"