Will Europe Reach U.S. Scale; Will U.S. Data Prices Reach Europe Levels?

In Europe, more than 100 mobile service providers, owned by some 40 companies, serve a population of 505 million. In the United States, four national providers, with market share between 93 percent and 96 percent, serve most of a population of 314 million. 

Regulatory fragmentation, in the form of 27 separate and sovereign regulatory entities is another problem service providers say has to be addressed. Service providers would prefer a single European regulator and consistent policies across EU nations. 

European service providers say their situation is untenable, and are lobbying regulators very hard for permission to rationalize the business by significant merger and acquisition activity. 

In a scale business, those differences probably account for the better financial performance of U.S. mobile service providers.  

For U.S. service providers, there is a different sort of concern, namely a convergence of prices for mobile data services that might potentially entail EU prices rising a bit, and U.S. prices declining more substantially. 

In part, that could come from more severe price competition in the U.S. market, in part from changes in device portability, in part from changes in device subsidy policies and possibly from a shift of end user mobile data demand (offloading to Wi-Fi).