While what you say is true it applies to any wireless service (GPRS, 3G, WiFi, Wimax etc.) as well as wired services. Overload any network and it will die, period.

One difference that wireless service encounter and that not applies to wired services is the fact that subscribers farther away require more power or more conservative channel coding which in turn decreases the overall bandwidth available in the cell. Therefore it is correct to say that far away users reduce the bandwidth available for other users in the cell. With HSDPA however, the effect might be weaker as here it’s up to the scheduler in the cell to decide that slow users do not eat up too much bandwidth.

But, and that’s the big but, networks are designed to take far away users into account, so you kind of live with the phenomenon. So the more load gets on the network the more cell sites are of course required or each cell site needs to be equipped with better antennas, more sectors or a second transmitter per sector. But an increase in users will also result in an increase in revenue and will quite likely lead to the operators expanding their network.

I find it also typical that now that there is an service that could fill some of the gao left by the low DSL penetration that the first reaction seems to find fault with it….

E.

Also the EU has not capped data roaming so you can expect to be screwed on this for the next few years, particularly as they have to make up for lost roaming call revenue.

However do enjoy while you still can!