What does it say when cell phone service is cheaper on a middle of nowhere island than it would be making a local phone call in the good old U.S. of A?

The PhoneBoy blog breaks down just how cheap it is to use telecommunications in Indonesia:

"...a minute of calling to a landline costs less than $0.06 a minute, a minute of mobile calling costs less than $0.09, SMS costs $0.03 within Indonesia, $0.05 outside. The access fee is nearly $0.04. And, of course, these costs are for outbound only calls/SMS, incoming calls/SMS are free as they should be."

So factor in that in the States cell phone plans start off at $39.99 a month, with overage charges like .40 cents a minute and text messages .20 cents per and you get the feeling that with great privilege comes a greatly inflated phone bill.

Granted there's a lower cost of living in Indonesia but even putting aside for a second the obvious price gauging, look at a story like how Sprint is planning to spend 100 million dollars of the marketing of the Instinct alone, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that unnecessary expenses are adding a huge burden to our cell phone bill.  

Via