alicia and rick

since i will be moving to a new company soon, i will be changing mobile phone numbers. this means i finally signed up with 3 to get a monthly plan. for those of you who are unaware, mobile phones are as common in hong kong as sunny days in southern california. service is pretty cheap when compared with the states, and many other countries from what i hear. as an example, 1200 minutes a month costs me about HK$100 (US$12.50).

the difference is in phone prices - there are not really any "free" phones, although there are some where you can pay US$100 for a basic nokia and then get it rebated back to you in monthly installments (incentives which keep users like a contract). for most service providers, however, there are no contracts. this makes it easy to switch to other carriers if you want.

3g service here is fairly popular, but i would guess only about 20% of hk users have 3g phones and service. this allows fast data transfer speeds for internet use, video calls and tv watching. the prices for data usage are still relatively high, so it's not really something i'm attached to. at the same time, i see bits and pieces in the news about this stuff taking off in the states - is that right?