reason for low mobile phone penetration in the US

On my daily reading I stumbled upon a posting on Russell Beattie's weblog, where he thinks about the possibility of Apple developing a mobile phone with CDMA technology. That started me thinking. Will mobile usage in the US, even if it uses GSM technology, ever reach such high percentages of the population as in Asia or Europe? I don't think so and the main reason, why not everybody in the US will switch from landlines to mobiles is the following: in the US you have to pay, if somebody calls you. Mobile phones in the US have an area code just like normal landlines, so you normally don't even know you are calling a mobile number. It costs you the same, if you call a number in a certain area code, no matter if it is mobile or landline. In the rest of the world, if you call a mobile phone it normally costs you more than calling a landline, at least when the call originates on a landline. Mobile operators have special "area"-code blocks, so you normally know, where your call goes. But as mobile phone usage is overtaking landline calls nearly everywhere in the world, soon the cheapest calls will be, if you stay in the same network. So how could the US get higher mobile phone usage rates? Use special "area"-codes for mobiles and get rid of "called party pays" on mobile phones.