Following last week's release of FCC data indicating that the United States continues to trail behind Western Europe in mobile phone penetration, LLFCC contacted Princeton sociologist Paul Starr to get his take on the problem. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction for his work on American medicine, Starr's most recent book, The Creation of the Media, compares the evolution of media and national development in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France from the 17th century onward.

Starr's work makes him the perfect candidate to explore this present day situation. Why then, LLFCC asked him via email, does the U.S. find itself following the pack today? Starr replies:

"As you know, the U.S. has lagged in wireless for a long time relative to Europe; this is not a new development. It seems to me that at least three factors were responsible for the disparity.

1. While the U.S. favored competing firms with competing standards, the Europeans set standards that had two effects: a) Wireless service worked better across the continent; and b) Wireless manufacturers were able to achieve economies of scale and cut prices more quickly. This is an instance where competition did not serve the goal of a rapid roll-out of a technology.

2. In some parts of Europe where landline penetration was low, wireless made it possible--as it has in the Third World--to leapfrog a stage in network development. Just as Britain had so efficient a Post Office in 1900 (with multiple deliveries a day in London), as well as cheap postal telegraph service, and consequently was slow to invest in the telephone, so the United States had so extensive a landline network that the demand for wireless was relatively slow to emerge. Make an earlier technology cheap; the next one will come that much more slowly.

3. Finally, and least appreciated, there is an architectural difference between office buildings in Europe and the United States. European regulations, as I understand it, prohibit the construction of office buildings with large floors where most employees work without natural light. The indirect effect of this regulation has been to enable office workers to get good wireless reception indoors, whereas the structure of many U.S. office buildings makes it impossible.

While these factors have depressed the diffusion rate of wireless in the U.S., they are fading in importance, and the long-term trend should be convergence. —Paul Starr"