Two numbers to show this:
June 2001 Telefonica:
67% (10,000,000) pre-paid
33% (5,000,000) contract

March 2000 Vodafone 58% prepaid

In the US, pre-paid is extremely small -- for example, I don't know anyone with pre-paid and only recently have the companies started advertising it (or offering decent deals, which still aren't as good as pre-paid in Europe).

To get the better numbers, you'll have to be better at googling than me, or pay a lot of money for a market report.

I don't doubt the Euro cell companies are trying to get more people on contract. I also agree with Odlyzko's "Content is NOT king".

I'd also be curious to know more about SMS usage. I suspect it may be most common with pre-paid users -- and by the youth (<25 year old) market. For example, none of people in this discussion seemed really interested in SMS. I didn't see any hard numbers on SMS usage, however.

And, CDMA usage is a lot more widespread than I realized -- for example, in Australia, the Philippines, and other Asian countries, not just Korea. It's also the fastest growing cell technology.

So, as always, the Reg is an interesting read but definitely not the final word.

Tony