What Does My Site Cost?(whatdoesmysitecost.com)
whatdoesmysitecost.com
What Does My Site Cost?
https://whatdoesmysitecost.com/test/210707_AiDc36_6f01cdff93b8299725303f88e60febbc
302 comments
I can't imagine paying $10/GB for data, wow!
For reference, I'm paying about $23/month for unlimited everything in NL. I'm pretty sure that's not even the cheapest plan you could get, I just haven't switched providers in a couple of years.
For reference, I'm paying about $23/month for unlimited everything in NL. I'm pretty sure that's not even the cheapest plan you could get, I just haven't switched providers in a couple of years.
Cell phone plans in Canada are a joke. I pay around $80CAD a month and I get 10gig data, no ability to buy more once I run out either (only my carrier does this though, most you can buy per gig after you run out, but it's extremely expensive) - It's cheaper and better for me to get an ATT sim from the US and use it in Canada (and that's indeed what i've done).
I've got a Rogers 50GB 'Unlimited' plan, with the phone financing I'm paying just north of $175/mo - when you approx the 'max-speed limit' they send you a text offering 3GB for $10, or 10GB for $30, just reply A or B and it'll automatically go on your plan on your month. There's no limit to the number of times you can do this, but it's a little sickening paying that much money for such little data.
I should do that, I just moved back to Canada having been gone for a very long time, so I don't have credit here - it was way easier to go on a bell prepaid plan. Wait till the europeans heads exploding see our prepaid plans.. haaaah....
Do you find you go through that much data? Do you do a lot of tethering?
I have been quite happy with my grandfathered 6gb for $30 plan from Freedom Mobile. Their currently available plans aren't so bad either. In the past they have had poor signal compared to Rogers but these days it's fine for me in Toronto.
For example you might want to consider their current 10GB for $40 plan here: https://www.freedommobile.ca/en-CA/plans?planSku=Freedom%202... (note there are some conditions to get the full 10GB of data)
For example you might want to consider their current 10GB for $40 plan here: https://www.freedommobile.ca/en-CA/plans?planSku=Freedom%202... (note there are some conditions to get the full 10GB of data)
Agreed, thought I think you're in a special sort of hell. I'm on Bell and I'm at $75 / 20GB "Unlimited". After the 20GB I'm reduced down to 512KB/s so I never actually get cut off or a huge additional charge.
Yikes. Even in Germany, which is probably the most expensive EU country for mobile plans (yay...), and using the most expensive carrier (Telekom DE), it's €39.99 (CA$58) for 6GB, €49.95 (CA$73) for 12GB, €59.95 (CA$88) for 24GB, and Unlimited for €84.95 (CA$125). Plus you can get additional SIM cards (for an Apple Watch or an iPad, for example) for €4.95 (CA$7.27)/month.
Do you actually get unlimited data? In the US, we have "unlimited" plans that are only "unlimited" until you hit the limit of a few GB per month. After that, I can still technically get data, but at extremely limited speeds.
It always seemed like calling it "unlimited" was just boldly lying, especially when the limits are there in the fine print.
It always seemed like calling it "unlimited" was just boldly lying, especially when the limits are there in the fine print.
Yes, in the UK I get real unlimited 5G for £30 a month ($40)
Yes. The fair-use policy is 4GB/day, but you can get an extra 1GB of data an unlimited number of times (with a manual action, to avoid abuse).
The policy makes sense to me.
The policy makes sense to me.
I'm in HK and I pay HK$150 ($19) for 20GB full speed, unlimited fair usage policy (capped at around 50Mbit/s)
In the UK, my provider (O2) offer unlimited data but will "move you to a more suitable plan" if you tether more than 12 devices and/or use more than 650GB in a month.
> For reference, I'm paying about $23/month for unlimited everything in NL.
It’s easier and cheaper to provide cellular service to dense populations like NL.
The population density of NL is over 100X more dense than Canada. Of course, once you exclude the largely uninhabited areas of Canada the difference isn’t as large, but it’s still significantly more costly to build cellular infrastructure across large and spread out places like Canada and the United States than smaller, densely populated places like NL.
It’s easier and cheaper to provide cellular service to dense populations like NL.
The population density of NL is over 100X more dense than Canada. Of course, once you exclude the largely uninhabited areas of Canada the difference isn’t as large, but it’s still significantly more costly to build cellular infrastructure across large and spread out places like Canada and the United States than smaller, densely populated places like NL.
Population density in Finland is pretty low and we get unlimited data for about $25/month.
> Population density in Finland is pretty low and we get unlimited data for about $25/month.
Finland population density: 18 per km^2
Canada population density: 4 per km^2
Population density doesn't explain everything, but it's a big factor.
Finland population density: 18 per km^2
Canada population density: 4 per km^2
Population density doesn't explain everything, but it's a big factor.
It would make more sense to compare population density over that fraction of each country which has any coverage at all.
That would be harder, of course.
That would be harder, of course.
I understand why people say "Canada's population density is low that's why prices are high", but in practice only a very small fraction of the country is inhabited so it really just sound like a talking point and not a genuine issue.
Yeah, do you even get cellular signal in these remote areas? If not it definitely shouldn't be taken into account.
We've had providers pop up that have only served the major cities, where people would get a lower fee but have roaming if they go basically anywhere outside the ultra-dense areas. The rates were still astronomical compared to many European countries.
Providers in Canada are a cartel in every definition of the word. The three major cartel members can "compete" in a province and amazingly all have identically bad pricing and policies. Then they go to Quebec or Manitoba (or maybe it was Saskatchewan?) where there is a location-specific alternative and their pricing is significantly better.
Having said all of that, I should be fair and note that some of the providers have "infinity plans" now. So if you got a Rogers 5GB plan and have used 5GB by day one, you still have free data for the rest of the month at a speed of 512Kbps (again, amazingly all three of the major providers have identical policies). Which is still an entirely workable speed for a lot of things.
Providers in Canada are a cartel in every definition of the word. The three major cartel members can "compete" in a province and amazingly all have identically bad pricing and policies. Then they go to Quebec or Manitoba (or maybe it was Saskatchewan?) where there is a location-specific alternative and their pricing is significantly better.
Having said all of that, I should be fair and note that some of the providers have "infinity plans" now. So if you got a Rogers 5GB plan and have used 5GB by day one, you still have free data for the rest of the month at a speed of 512Kbps (again, amazingly all three of the major providers have identical policies). Which is still an entirely workable speed for a lot of things.
Oh wow you're right, I checked Rogers where the price is 90 CAD for 25GB in most provinces, and 75 CAD in Quebec. The exact same price as Videotron (which I suppose is the alternative you were talking about)
For perspective:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Collines-de-l%27Outaouai...
The county I live in, is 2200 sq km, with a population density of 24/sq km. This is in Quebec, at 1.5M sq km in size, and beside one of the largest metro areas in Canada, the National Capital Region of Ottawa and Gatineau, 5th or 6th largest.
NL is 423/sq km density, 20x. It is only 40000sq km, or about 18x larger than my county.
Quebec is 35x larger, Canada 230? 240 times larger.
Further point, my municipality is in a populous province, and effectively a suburb of the nations capital.
Lots of places have far lower population densities, and we have parks, and counties larger than the Netherlands.
Lots more area to cover, for sure.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Collines-de-l%27Outaouai...
The county I live in, is 2200 sq km, with a population density of 24/sq km. This is in Quebec, at 1.5M sq km in size, and beside one of the largest metro areas in Canada, the National Capital Region of Ottawa and Gatineau, 5th or 6th largest.
NL is 423/sq km density, 20x. It is only 40000sq km, or about 18x larger than my county.
Quebec is 35x larger, Canada 230? 240 times larger.
Further point, my municipality is in a populous province, and effectively a suburb of the nations capital.
Lots of places have far lower population densities, and we have parks, and counties larger than the Netherlands.
Lots more area to cover, for sure.
The legal structure around telecoms in Canada also requires providers to provide at least phone service everywhere, so margins have to be extremely high in the dense areas to make up for the unprofitability of servicing remote areas.
Lithuania, around €10/month for everything unlimited. Granted, we have some of the cheapest mobile plans in Europe, but I just can't imagine paying my entire plan's price just for 1 GB.
It seems expensive at first sight, but the $10/GB are world-wide, and limited to $60 per month.
It's not something I would recommend as a substitute for wifi, but definitely worth it if you travel to multiple countries, and don't want to deal with getting and/or swapping sims at every destination.
It's not something I would recommend as a substitute for wifi, but definitely worth it if you travel to multiple countries, and don't want to deal with getting and/or swapping sims at every destination.
Similarly in Ireland, I'm paying €20/month (prepaid) for "unlimited" (T&Cs: 30gb) data. Even including the cost of my purchased outright phone amortised over the expected lifecycle (€450/36 months) leads to €32.50/month.
Bill pay plans end up way worse on the low end though. The cheapest bill pay plan from my provider is €40/month, only includes phones that are €30 outright, and comes with 20gb of data. A year or two ago it would have been €30/month with only 1gb of data included.
Bill pay plans end up way worse on the low end though. The cheapest bill pay plan from my provider is €40/month, only includes phones that are €30 outright, and comes with 20gb of data. A year or two ago it would have been €30/month with only 1gb of data included.
UK here, I pay £25pm for unlimited data that I use in a 5G router, speeds top out at 240Mbps
And that's on top of the actual service, which is $35/mo for 2 lines.
It still ends up cheaper than our previous unlimited plan because we just make sure to use Wifi whenever possible.
Fi has an unlimited plan, but it costs more and it doesn't include roaming (outside of country) data.
We've got a huge credit because we got deals on a couple expensive phones, but after that credit runs out (in like a year, I think) we'll probably re-evaluate.
It still ends up cheaper than our previous unlimited plan because we just make sure to use Wifi whenever possible.
Fi has an unlimited plan, but it costs more and it doesn't include roaming (outside of country) data.
We've got a huge credit because we got deals on a couple expensive phones, but after that credit runs out (in like a year, I think) we'll probably re-evaluate.
I pay $44 per month for unlimited data/phone in US/Canada/Mexico with ATT Unlimited Plus Multiline. But that is because I have 6 people in my family plan. An individual with my plan would be paying $133 per month.
Also, I assume mobile networks are doing heavy QoS when towers get congested, where people who result in more profit for the mobile network get higher priority/more bandwidth.
Also, I assume mobile networks are doing heavy QoS when towers get congested, where people who result in more profit for the mobile network get higher priority/more bandwidth.
I pay aprox $8/3GB for data in Argentina, which is OK considered most of the time I'm using wifi at home (and I usually don't consume media if I am outside). Also, companies here offer Whatsapp (including media) without cost, that means it doesnt consume your data (so your dat consumption only applies against YouTube, Spotify, browsing, etc...)
France isn't bad also, right know I have a plan with 150gb for 20€, and 50gb abroad (roaming) which includes US. I think there are better plans but I've chosen this one also because I'm planning to move to the US and I'd like to test if keeping this plan would be a cheaper viable alternative to local contracts.
Is that 4G?
Mint Mobile in US is $15/4GB/mo , which is plenty for everything except extensive video chat/streaming movies.
Your deal seems far better than all the plans mentioned here:
https://prepaid-data-sim-card.fandom.com/wiki/Netherlands
Mint Mobile in US is $15/4GB/mo , which is plenty for everything except extensive video chat/streaming movies.
Your deal seems far better than all the plans mentioned here:
https://prepaid-data-sim-card.fandom.com/wiki/Netherlands
There is always a difference in price between a prepaid SIM and a monthly contract with some minimum period.
Yeah that's 4G in NL and in the rest of the EU
Yeah the mobile data price in NA is insane.
I will be honest, it usually isn't too bad when I am in my work-home routine due to having Wi-Fi in most of places, but becomes quite obvious (and painful) once I travel.
I will be honest, it usually isn't too bad when I am in my work-home routine due to having Wi-Fi in most of places, but becomes quite obvious (and painful) once I travel.
In Japan 3GB/month is about 15 USD so it's not that much cheaper. There are usually "unlimited like" plans for 40/50 USD.
[deleted]
Mint mobile in the US is $30/month for unlimited everything which is a bit more but still not terrible.
In Italy I get 30 GB/mo at 5€, we are doing exceptionally fine in this department.
They also seem to use the <total amount paid> divided by <total amount of data used> rather than the marginal cost of downloading a single MB. For example, with 3 lines, my family uses 1-2GB of data per month and we pay around $40. That would imply a price of $20/GB using their model, despite the fact that if we were to use 1GB more we'd only pay $5 more.
What about https://old.reddit.com/ ? I find the mobile version of the site unusable as it’s an infinite scroll that forces you into the app to see any restricted content (which can include some mundane topics). The previous version of the site is far more useable, even on mobile.
Interesting way to put this data, but it’s outright wrong in most cases in day to day life. The plans most people purchase has much better Data/$ ratio.
And this conclusion is the opposite:
> Because these numbers are based on the least expensive plan, they are best case scenarios.
They are the worst case scenarios at the very least in Brazil where I have purchased such packages
And this conclusion is the opposite:
> Because these numbers are based on the least expensive plan, they are best case scenarios.
They are the worst case scenarios at the very least in Brazil where I have purchased such packages
I get the cheaper combo plan of the provider with best local coverage and very rarely exceed my quota. Most of the time I use less than 25% of it. I'm on Brazil. Can't speak for everyone but I see similar cases distorting the data.
Submitted title was "Reddit.com weighs 1.39MB. Here’s what that costs around the globe". Since this has nothing in particular to do with the ever-sensational Reddit, that counts as linkbait. (Also, "Blah blah. Here's what that blah" is a linkbait headline trope in its own right.)
We've reverted the title as the site guidelines ask:
"Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We've reverted the title as the site guidelines ask:
"Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Deck for Reddit [1] is even worse [2].
Thanks, super useful, now I know I gotta work on some assets optimization.
- [1] https://rdddeck.com
- [2] https://www.webpagetest.org/result/210707_AiDc8S_8ed51fd2240...
Thanks, super useful, now I know I gotta work on some assets optimization.
- [1] https://rdddeck.com
- [2] https://www.webpagetest.org/result/210707_AiDc8S_8ed51fd2240...
Bear in mind that the smallest data plan is a pathologically bad case. For instance in New Zealand 40GB is $80/mo - so almost exactly 1USD/GB. So 1.39MB is $0.00139 but is listed at $0.05.
Apparently, my website's heaviest page costs 0 to 1 cent. Smaller pages are a fifth of the size.
It bothers me that many similar websites (i.e. text content) load 2-5 MB of data for just text on a page. Pretty much everything past the first few kilobytes are useless to the reader.
These websites fall apart when you're not on a recent Macbook with a wired gigabit connection. Developers forget that people browse the web in the subway, on intercity trains and on crappy hotel/airport internet.
It bothers me that many similar websites (i.e. text content) load 2-5 MB of data for just text on a page. Pretty much everything past the first few kilobytes are useless to the reader.
These websites fall apart when you're not on a recent Macbook with a wired gigabit connection. Developers forget that people browse the web in the subway, on intercity trains and on crappy hotel/airport internet.
Past related threads:
The cost of using different sites on mobile networks around the world - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14192503 - April 2017 (90 comments)
What Does My Site Cost? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9187128 - March 2015 (1 comment)
The cost of using different sites on mobile networks around the world - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14192503 - April 2017 (90 comments)
What Does My Site Cost? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9187128 - March 2015 (1 comment)
The $0.01 number for India is off by at least two orders of magnitude.
I use a telephone plan that gives 1GB/day for 3 months for 8USD. That comes to around $0.0001 cents per MB.
I use a telephone plan that gives 1GB/day for 3 months for 8USD. That comes to around $0.0001 cents per MB.
So happy I have my grandfathered unlimited Verizon. I know I'll lose that when I move to 5G, based on what I'm seeing. Enjoying it for now though. I am excited to see the number of free municipal wi-fi growing [1], though none are near me yet.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_wireless_network#Uni...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_wireless_network#Uni...
>So happy I have my grandfathered unlimited Verizon. I know I'll lose that when I move to 5G, based on what I'm seeing.
By "unlimited" you mean an unlimited plan that does not throttle/deprioritize after ~50GB of usage, right?
I pay $23 a month for two Sprint unlimited lines, but both deprioritize after 50GB (although I think I only exceeded 10GB a month once for unusual circumstances, and I hear that in many places deprioritization never happens anyway). On the other hand, there is no obstacle to my purchasing and swapping in a 5G phone on those lines.
By "unlimited" you mean an unlimited plan that does not throttle/deprioritize after ~50GB of usage, right?
I pay $23 a month for two Sprint unlimited lines, but both deprioritize after 50GB (although I think I only exceeded 10GB a month once for unusual circumstances, and I hear that in many places deprioritization never happens anyway). On the other hand, there is no obstacle to my purchasing and swapping in a 5G phone on those lines.
Highly recommend this pertinent and brilliant talk from several years ago:
video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYpl0QVCr6U
text: https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm
video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYpl0QVCr6U
text: https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm
Considering the second most popular website in the world sends a gigabyte per hour (youtube) is this stuff a concern anymore?
Brutal. I'm on Mint which costs something like $240 a year for 2x 10GB plans. But they don't cut you off or charge you more if you go over. They just throttle you a bit more during congestion events. It costs me less than a cent to visit reddit, under the pessimistic assumption that they throttle me to zero after I use my 10GB.
>I'm on Mint which costs something like $240 a year for 2x 10GB plans. But they don't cut you off or charge you more if you go over.
Further, I bet that 10GB is effectively equivalent to unlimited for 90% of people.
Further, I bet that 10GB is effectively equivalent to unlimited for 90% of people.
It is at least for me. I never use more than a GB.
fighting global warming starts from here, we should punish the bloat culture advocators
I feel this is more an indictment of Canadian data prices than Reddit’s bloat.
Why on Earth is it so expensive?
Why on Earth is it so expensive?
To put it in perspective, the average website costs $0.12 in Canada.
Both an indictment of general bloat and Canada data prices.
More interesting is how much it costs for people in poorer countries — Where the absolute value of visiting a site is less, but relative to income is far greater.
Understandably you don't see much about this online — people with expensive data plans don't use it all up complaining about it online.
Both an indictment of general bloat and Canada data prices.
More interesting is how much it costs for people in poorer countries — Where the absolute value of visiting a site is less, but relative to income is far greater.
Understandably you don't see much about this online — people with expensive data plans don't use it all up complaining about it online.
Poorer countries (let's say those in the middle) quite often have newer network infrastructure, so prices are actually much better, even relative to income.
In Poland it's around 0.25$ per GB for mobile networks. So 1MB is 0.00025$ and a visit to reddit according to the above calculations would be 0.0003475$.
The prices in the US and Canada are ridiculous from that perspective.
In Poland it's around 0.25$ per GB for mobile networks. So 1MB is 0.00025$ and a visit to reddit according to the above calculations would be 0.0003475$.
The prices in the US and Canada are ridiculous from that perspective.
> The prices in the US and Canada are ridiculous from that perspective.
The prices in the US aren't actually a serious problem any longer (they were if you go back 10 years, before T-Mobile's climb changed the market). Americans can trivially afford it given their disposable incomes at the median are among the highest on the planet. US plan prices have declined over the past ten years in nominal terms, while inflation has eroded another 30% of the price. $50-$60 is a nearly meaningless part of the average person's monthly budget in the US now (the median full-time income is $50,000, and Americans have low taxes at the median, which is where the high disposable incomes come from). Nobody is better at wasting money than Americans, they're thrilled to do it, you can tell judging by how they so willingly vaporize their disposable income on consumer garbage. And US plans typically have plenty of data with them these days, whereas Canada gets the worst of both outcomes (terrible data packages and very high prices).
People come on HN and say things like: well I'm in Latvia and I pay €12 and get unlimited data. Well yeah, adjust that to the US and it's €48 (~$56). Now you've got a T-Mobile plan in the US at that price, so what. Or someone will say I'm in Britain and I pay £25; yeah that's not cheap either, that's about $50x when you adjust it to the US for USD and incomes.
The prices in the US aren't actually a serious problem any longer (they were if you go back 10 years, before T-Mobile's climb changed the market). Americans can trivially afford it given their disposable incomes at the median are among the highest on the planet. US plan prices have declined over the past ten years in nominal terms, while inflation has eroded another 30% of the price. $50-$60 is a nearly meaningless part of the average person's monthly budget in the US now (the median full-time income is $50,000, and Americans have low taxes at the median, which is where the high disposable incomes come from). Nobody is better at wasting money than Americans, they're thrilled to do it, you can tell judging by how they so willingly vaporize their disposable income on consumer garbage. And US plans typically have plenty of data with them these days, whereas Canada gets the worst of both outcomes (terrible data packages and very high prices).
People come on HN and say things like: well I'm in Latvia and I pay €12 and get unlimited data. Well yeah, adjust that to the US and it's €48 (~$56). Now you've got a T-Mobile plan in the US at that price, so what. Or someone will say I'm in Britain and I pay £25; yeah that's not cheap either, that's about $50x when you adjust it to the US for USD and incomes.
>The prices in the US aren't actually a serious problem any longer
I pay $23 including taxes and fees for two unlimited Sprint lines.
Admittedly, one is the $15 Kickstart plan available for two weeks in June 2018, and the other is a free line that Sprint last year gave out to almost everyone with at least one paid line.
But if I didn't have such plans, I'd pay $25 (after joining a discount group, which is trivial) for unlimited prepaid service from Visible. Or $30 for unlimited from Mint. Etc., etc.
>People come on HN and say things like: well I'm in Latvia and I pay €12 and get unlimited data. Well yeah, adjust that to the US and it's €48 (~$56).
Correct. Further, that US plan provides service everywhere in the country, from San Diego to Portland (either one), from Seattle to Miami, from Honolulu to Anchorage to Charlotte. Yes, there are European mobile plans that also offer all-inclusive coverage across the continent, but the super-cheap plans that are cited in these sorts of discussions usually aren't among them.
I pay $23 including taxes and fees for two unlimited Sprint lines.
Admittedly, one is the $15 Kickstart plan available for two weeks in June 2018, and the other is a free line that Sprint last year gave out to almost everyone with at least one paid line.
But if I didn't have such plans, I'd pay $25 (after joining a discount group, which is trivial) for unlimited prepaid service from Visible. Or $30 for unlimited from Mint. Etc., etc.
>People come on HN and say things like: well I'm in Latvia and I pay €12 and get unlimited data. Well yeah, adjust that to the US and it's €48 (~$56).
Correct. Further, that US plan provides service everywhere in the country, from San Diego to Portland (either one), from Seattle to Miami, from Honolulu to Anchorage to Charlotte. Yes, there are European mobile plans that also offer all-inclusive coverage across the continent, but the super-cheap plans that are cited in these sorts of discussions usually aren't among them.
The average prices in the US are a bit inflated though because of older people on plans that are priced like it's 10 years ago.
I agree in general. I have added a 3rd line to my plan and am spending less than 1/3 of what I spent 10 years ago on 2 lines.
I agree in general. I have added a 3rd line to my plan and am spending less than 1/3 of what I spent 10 years ago on 2 lines.
I should have said, some specific poorer countries.
India has incredibly cheap data. While Mauritania has the most expensive in the world compared with the average income.
India has incredibly cheap data. While Mauritania has the most expensive in the world compared with the average income.
No matter what the cost per MB, why is it completely normal for everybody nowadays that websites can be multiple million bytes in size? It's text after all. Boggles my mind.
This is why I only use old.reddit.com. If they ever stop providing the old Reddit, I doubt I'll keep using it. Sure the old one isn't perfect, but I find the new one borderline unusable, even on a modern laptop.
There's a furniture chain here that has a website so terrible, I just gave up on trying to buy what I wanted from them. So much happening in JavaScript to make things happen on the page. I have to imagine it's also terribly written, since it freezes up the tab most of the time, and Firefox suggests killing the script.
There's a furniture chain here that has a website so terrible, I just gave up on trying to buy what I wanted from them. So much happening in JavaScript to make things happen on the page. I have to imagine it's also terribly written, since it freezes up the tab most of the time, and Firefox suggests killing the script.
It won't be around for much long I am afraid.
Now to accept cookie policies you need first to accept being redirected into the new site, and then manually return to old version.
I bet in about one year time the old is gone.
Now to accept cookie policies you need first to accept being redirected into the new site, and then manually return to old version.
I bet in about one year time the old is gone.
Reddit on mobile is a disaster. It's clearly designed with one goal in mind: pushing as many people to their app as possible. You can't even read threads without logging in.
Yes it (new reddit) even brings my i5 to its knees... Way overbloated with javascript. Also in FF by the way. Perhaps Chrome is better but I won't use it.
I relate to this a lot. reddit.com struggles to load on my MacBook Air 2015, or a Windows with 9th gen i5 with 8GB RAM.
I have an extension on my Firefox to always load the old reddit. There is an account-specific setting to always load old reddit, but there are times when I browse without an account.
I have an extension on my Firefox to always load the old reddit. There is an account-specific setting to always load old reddit, but there are times when I browse without an account.
Especially reddit which has such a simple UI that no frameworks are needed.
If you drop support for MSIE 11 and only support modern browsers the modern javascript is surprisingly compact.
But then your CV looks stupid: no frameworks on the list. How would you ever get a job again?
How do you get any respect if you say "I just code javascript directly on the browser", sounds like you're too stupid to learn a framework.
You will only get respect from the very best developers but not all the copy/paste 'developers', no respect from the HR department nor mediocre managers.
It's an uphill battle.
If you drop support for MSIE 11 and only support modern browsers the modern javascript is surprisingly compact.
But then your CV looks stupid: no frameworks on the list. How would you ever get a job again?
How do you get any respect if you say "I just code javascript directly on the browser", sounds like you're too stupid to learn a framework.
You will only get respect from the very best developers but not all the copy/paste 'developers', no respect from the HR department nor mediocre managers.
It's an uphill battle.
Use of frameworks is often blamed for bloat, but the two are completely independent.
React is about 110kB. Vue is 33kB. It's perfectly possible (and really not that hard) to write fast, small web apps with the big popular JS frameworks. It's the thoughtless stuff people do—pulling in huge libraries for tiny features, mandating the use of huge analytics packages, etc—that cause the bloat.
Whether it should all just be server-rendered is a whole other argument, but if you're going to build something the size and scale of reddit as a client-rendered app, you'd be crazy to not use one of the existing frameworks IMO. If for no other reason than you're likely to end up just re-creating a worse version of them.
React is about 110kB. Vue is 33kB. It's perfectly possible (and really not that hard) to write fast, small web apps with the big popular JS frameworks. It's the thoughtless stuff people do—pulling in huge libraries for tiny features, mandating the use of huge analytics packages, etc—that cause the bloat.
Whether it should all just be server-rendered is a whole other argument, but if you're going to build something the size and scale of reddit as a client-rendered app, you'd be crazy to not use one of the existing frameworks IMO. If for no other reason than you're likely to end up just re-creating a worse version of them.
I think bloat really means two different things. One is the obvious "file size" issue, and as you are mentioning it's quite possible to write small sites even using heavy-weight frameworks.
But a lot of the complaints in this thread boil down to modern sites being slow to run on computers that are only a few years old. If modern frameworks are to blame for that, it's not because they're a hundred (or more) KB. It's because they require the end user to run way more Javascript in the browser and consume far more memory than a site with minimal Javascript requires to accomplish the same thing.
As a random example, Firefox's about:performance page says that the three YouTube tabs I have open are each consuming about 50 MB of my computer's memory. That's obscene. (None of the tabs are open on a video, so this is not the result of storing videos in RAM.)
Also, I did a Lighthouse analysis of the Reddit home page in Chrome (on Desktop, but targeting mobile). The page scores less than 20/100 on performance, and takes almost twenty seconds to become interactive!! The biggest problem Lighthouse sees with the page is not the file size, but the amount of Javascript being executed. There's ~25 seconds of "main thread work" being done in my test.
But a lot of the complaints in this thread boil down to modern sites being slow to run on computers that are only a few years old. If modern frameworks are to blame for that, it's not because they're a hundred (or more) KB. It's because they require the end user to run way more Javascript in the browser and consume far more memory than a site with minimal Javascript requires to accomplish the same thing.
As a random example, Firefox's about:performance page says that the three YouTube tabs I have open are each consuming about 50 MB of my computer's memory. That's obscene. (None of the tabs are open on a video, so this is not the result of storing videos in RAM.)
Also, I did a Lighthouse analysis of the Reddit home page in Chrome (on Desktop, but targeting mobile). The page scores less than 20/100 on performance, and takes almost twenty seconds to become interactive!! The biggest problem Lighthouse sees with the page is not the file size, but the amount of Javascript being executed. There's ~25 seconds of "main thread work" being done in my test.
Great point. React's DOM-diffing algorithm does many unnecessary computations that make websites run slowly compared to targeted DOM manipulation.
If you drop support for MSIE 11 and only support modern browsers the modern javascript is surprisingly compact.
On the contrary, I'm pretty sure you could make Reddit a usable site in everything down to text-based browsers (static HTML + small bits of JS), and still have it be faster and smaller than what the new version is today.
"Modern" development is a horrible bloated mess.
I agree with the rest of your comment, however; and perhaps the solution is to not hire only "web developers", as those whose full-time job isn't to work on that stuff seem to be far better at not adding "padding" for the sake of "CV-driven development", when they are actually asked to work on websites.
I've had a few experiences with that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23590137
On the contrary, I'm pretty sure you could make Reddit a usable site in everything down to text-based browsers (static HTML + small bits of JS), and still have it be faster and smaller than what the new version is today.
"Modern" development is a horrible bloated mess.
I agree with the rest of your comment, however; and perhaps the solution is to not hire only "web developers", as those whose full-time job isn't to work on that stuff seem to be far better at not adding "padding" for the sake of "CV-driven development", when they are actually asked to work on websites.
I've had a few experiences with that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23590137
The people who develop said sites live in a bubble where high speed computers and internet are the norm, and many of them are too young to remember when computers were actually slow, so they don't really understand how unbelievably wasteful their product is.
“Developer experience” they chant, as they sit in cushy chairs, and post on social media in between grunt builds.
Indeed. Compare to https://teddit.net (no-js reddit front end), and you can see the vast difference in bandwidth and performance.
Some of the cause of all this has to do with market forces and prioritizing speed of development over customer experience. But I don't think that's the whole story.
Some of the cause of all this has to do with market forces and prioritizing speed of development over customer experience. But I don't think that's the whole story.
Jira (ticketing system - all text) is like 30 MB on first download, most of it javascript. It also barely runs on 2017 MB Pro.
Yes Jira is terrible, not just from a javascript point of view but usability as well. Unfortunately we have to manage our hours in it.
I have to work with that daily, and yeah, it drives me insane.
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For perspective, a common high-density floppy disk is 1.4 megabytes. A whole operating system, complete with GUI, could fit in that space.
Software is a gas, and our containers keep getting bigger.
at the same time, which GUI applications on your computer are only 1.3mb?
1.3mb seems optimised to me at first glance
1.3mb seems optimised to me at first glance
Many of them, thanks in part to dynamic linking. (I don't think excluding DLLs is too unfair, after all the browser constitutes an enormous Javascript runtime environment.)
VLC is one of the more complex programs out there, and yet the VLC binaries and the libvlc libraries they ship with total only 1.295 MiB on my computer.
The main application for Scid, a chess database program, is only 1.1 MiB. (The program also comes with a simple test chess engine and some opening books, so the overall package is somewhat larger.)
The binary and libraries for hexchat, an IRC application, total 1.22 MiB.
The program files for Pinta, an image editing program, come in right at 1.3 MB.
The vast majority of programs are under 10 MiB total. Moreover, I've tried to pick relatively full featured desktop apps, and desktop apps as a rule do more than any 1 MB web page. And these applications come in highly compressed archives, which means that their download size is often significantly less.
Furthermore, I would argue that web pages are rarely comparable to applications. When you're browsing Reddit, if the home page is 1.3 MiB on mobile, chances are the first individual post you click on is also going to be 1.3 MiB, and the one after that, and so on. You don't get the benefits of Reddit by downloading an "application" one time and getting tiny updates after that. If you're lucky most of the libraries being pulled in will get cached, but frequently it doesn't work out that way. On desktop Reddit, a warm refresh of the site still used more than 2.5 MiB for me, and that's with an ad blocker enabled.
VLC is one of the more complex programs out there, and yet the VLC binaries and the libvlc libraries they ship with total only 1.295 MiB on my computer.
The main application for Scid, a chess database program, is only 1.1 MiB. (The program also comes with a simple test chess engine and some opening books, so the overall package is somewhat larger.)
The binary and libraries for hexchat, an IRC application, total 1.22 MiB.
The program files for Pinta, an image editing program, come in right at 1.3 MB.
The vast majority of programs are under 10 MiB total. Moreover, I've tried to pick relatively full featured desktop apps, and desktop apps as a rule do more than any 1 MB web page. And these applications come in highly compressed archives, which means that their download size is often significantly less.
Furthermore, I would argue that web pages are rarely comparable to applications. When you're browsing Reddit, if the home page is 1.3 MiB on mobile, chances are the first individual post you click on is also going to be 1.3 MiB, and the one after that, and so on. You don't get the benefits of Reddit by downloading an "application" one time and getting tiny updates after that. If you're lucky most of the libraries being pulled in will get cached, but frequently it doesn't work out that way. On desktop Reddit, a warm refresh of the site still used more than 2.5 MiB for me, and that's with an ad blocker enabled.
It's possible to create GUI applications with under 10kb in size, if you link dynamically and use raw win32 api. Pretty sure that my personal wxwidget stuff was way under 100kb too back in the days. Never used GTK directly on linux, but again, 1MB is an indicator that you are either linking statically, or doing something wrong.
How much signal is there in that 1.3MB though? We don't think about the weight of websites much nowadays because we have insane bandwidth, but how much of that is actual content? The text on one page can't be more than a few kilobytes, and images don't have to be much more data either if they're just thumbnails.
It is due to the way it is calculated.
> "Prices were collected from the operator with the largest marketshare in the country, using the least expensive plan with a (minimum) data allowance of 500 MB over (a minimum of) 30 days. Prices include taxes. Because these numbers are based on the least expensive plan, they are best case scenarios."
I disagree that it is necessarily the "best case" but it is a sensible way to count. Depending on the specific offering you may get unexpected results. For example, the 500MB plan may be barely cheaper than a 10GB plan, which can make sense if with that 500MB you are mostly paying for phone calls and SMS. Heavy internet users will most likely pick a plan with much more data that will be more expensive per month, but way cheaper per byte.
Also, it is split into two section: prepaid and postpaid, and Canada is at $0.07 postpaid. They just picked the highest number on the list.
> "Prices were collected from the operator with the largest marketshare in the country, using the least expensive plan with a (minimum) data allowance of 500 MB over (a minimum of) 30 days. Prices include taxes. Because these numbers are based on the least expensive plan, they are best case scenarios."
I disagree that it is necessarily the "best case" but it is a sensible way to count. Depending on the specific offering you may get unexpected results. For example, the 500MB plan may be barely cheaper than a 10GB plan, which can make sense if with that 500MB you are mostly paying for phone calls and SMS. Heavy internet users will most likely pick a plan with much more data that will be more expensive per month, but way cheaper per byte.
Also, it is split into two section: prepaid and postpaid, and Canada is at $0.07 postpaid. They just picked the highest number on the list.
Their methodology appears to be garbage.
You have it backwards. The chart says $0.17 postpaid, $0.07 prepaid.
The chart implies a cost of 120 USD per GB, which implies it's based on a 500MB/month plan costing 60 USD. There's no way in hell the cheapest way to get 500MB in Canada costs 60 USD. I'm in Canada and I pay 40 USD for 8GB per month.
The only way I figure they can get to such an absurd number is that no one sells 500MB plans in Canada anymore, so they had to choose a zero data plan + 500MB of additional data to make up a "500MB" plan. With my carrier, additional data is 104 USD per GB.
You have it backwards. The chart says $0.17 postpaid, $0.07 prepaid.
The chart implies a cost of 120 USD per GB, which implies it's based on a 500MB/month plan costing 60 USD. There's no way in hell the cheapest way to get 500MB in Canada costs 60 USD. I'm in Canada and I pay 40 USD for 8GB per month.
The only way I figure they can get to such an absurd number is that no one sells 500MB plans in Canada anymore, so they had to choose a zero data plan + 500MB of additional data to make up a "500MB" plan. With my carrier, additional data is 104 USD per GB.
Spent a few years living in Canada but mostly in the UK. It seemed that Canadian prices were roughly double.
My anecdotal guess is that the infrastructure costs are higher in Canada due to lower population density. Lots more area to cover to achieve the same coverage.
My anecdotal guess is that the infrastructure costs are higher in Canada due to lower population density. Lots more area to cover to achieve the same coverage.
No. It's just utter bullshit due to a lack of competition. The province with the cheapest rates for wireless is not dense, population rich Ontario. It's one of the least dense, least populus. Why? Oh, because they have an extra wireless competitor in the form of a Crown Corp.
Other countries like Australia have similar densities and infrastructure costs yet still have way lower prices. The Canadian telecom industry is sheltered and there's really only 3 big players. Foreign competition isn't allowed so there's no possibility of Verizon or Vodafone coming in and shaking things up.
Other countries like Australia have similar densities and infrastructure costs yet still have way lower prices. The Canadian telecom industry is sheltered and there's really only 3 big players. Foreign competition isn't allowed so there's no possibility of Verizon or Vodafone coming in and shaking things up.
Ontario has 14 persons per square mile. The population density of ALL of Western Europe is 181, ten times greater, Netherlands is 521. Ontario is quite a bit closer to other "less dense" provinces than most countries used for comparison.
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/canadian-provinces-and-t... https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/european-countries-by-po...
I'm not posting enough references here, but this whole conversation has been so limited in facts and proportion.
The point is the government wants carriers to provide service everywhere, which includes places like Nunavut, 0.019 persons per square mile.
There are local initiatives, and some are really fantastic, but it's difficult to bootstrap those everywhere.
Go to https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/comm/fourprov.htm and search for Nunavut and see who comes up.
These prices need to come down, more competition and local initiatives need to happen, and more innovation for systems like mesh networks. It is particularly upsetting when ways can't be found to share infrastructure. But if providing access to every Canadian is the goal (rather than for every person in a city at a cost less than a bag of groceries) there is probably some logic to the existing system.
Some people will say "just pay for Starlink everywhere," but it's really not ok for a country's access to be owned by another country (as long as Musk is still on earth), wired ultimately has advantages, and there are probably benefits to supporting wired infrastructure, and competition and choice are important.
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/canadian-provinces-and-t... https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/european-countries-by-po...
I'm not posting enough references here, but this whole conversation has been so limited in facts and proportion.
The point is the government wants carriers to provide service everywhere, which includes places like Nunavut, 0.019 persons per square mile.
There are local initiatives, and some are really fantastic, but it's difficult to bootstrap those everywhere.
Go to https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/comm/fourprov.htm and search for Nunavut and see who comes up.
These prices need to come down, more competition and local initiatives need to happen, and more innovation for systems like mesh networks. It is particularly upsetting when ways can't be found to share infrastructure. But if providing access to every Canadian is the goal (rather than for every person in a city at a cost less than a bag of groceries) there is probably some logic to the existing system.
Some people will say "just pay for Starlink everywhere," but it's really not ok for a country's access to be owned by another country (as long as Musk is still on earth), wired ultimately has advantages, and there are probably benefits to supporting wired infrastructure, and competition and choice are important.
Ontario has a density of 14 people per square km, not square mile. Saskatchewan has a density of 1.9 people per square km yet has cheaper rates. And go look at a coverage map. The big 3 don't cover huge swaths of places including most of Nunavut, heck even Northern Ontario is not well covered. It's an excuse. Again Australia has similar low density with people mainly concentrated in a few cities yet rates are considerably cheaper. Taking a quick peek at Telstra and you can get a 40GB a month plan for 55AUD (51 CAD) while Telus/Bell/Rogers charge $80 CAD for 30 GB. And I'm pretty sure the Australia price includes taxes in the price unlike the Canada price.
You're right about km vs mile, but it's consistently km in the comparisons so the same proportional result. The telcos don't need to provide coverage to every square meter, but they do have to reach many sparsely populated areas. The large carriers have it as a goal to cover areas like Northern Ontario better. I don't know what Australia's policies are, but they would have to be part of the comparison.
The cost difference between Telstra and Telus/Bell/Rogers is double, but over a month tens of dollars is not a significant part of a budget, and when consuming video &c there's really not that much different between 30 - 40 GB (unlimited is another story). For people on a very limited budget, there are lower cost plans, but even with the Telstra plan it's not comparable to wired.
Don't get me wrong, I think Canada, right or wrong, coddles these big carriers as a defence against international players, which creates an uneven playing field here (sharing infrastructure at competitive rates seemed like a fair recourse). I am just trying to bring more perspective to the table than "Ontario has a high density so should be cheap," besides the obvious "we are not just talking about Ontario or Toronto here."
Wired is the real thing to discuss here, and what may get lost in the shuffle.
The cost difference between Telstra and Telus/Bell/Rogers is double, but over a month tens of dollars is not a significant part of a budget, and when consuming video &c there's really not that much different between 30 - 40 GB (unlimited is another story). For people on a very limited budget, there are lower cost plans, but even with the Telstra plan it's not comparable to wired.
Don't get me wrong, I think Canada, right or wrong, coddles these big carriers as a defence against international players, which creates an uneven playing field here (sharing infrastructure at competitive rates seemed like a fair recourse). I am just trying to bring more perspective to the table than "Ontario has a high density so should be cheap," besides the obvious "we are not just talking about Ontario or Toronto here."
Wired is the real thing to discuss here, and what may get lost in the shuffle.
In addition to the comment salamandersauce made in reply to yours, I'd also add that comparing the raw population density of the province of Ontario like that is highly misleading. There's absolutely massive tracts of land that are largely uninhabited up north and something like 95% of the population lives along the great lakes, the American border, or the Ottawa river, comprising approximately 30% of the land within the boundaries of the province.
The population density of the areas people live (that actually have telco service) is much much much higher than 14 people per sq. km.
The Greater Toronto Area has a population density of 849/sq. km[1]. Why are its prices not lower than, or at least comparable to all of Europe?
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Toronto_Area
The population density of the areas people live (that actually have telco service) is much much much higher than 14 people per sq. km.
The Greater Toronto Area has a population density of 849/sq. km[1]. Why are its prices not lower than, or at least comparable to all of Europe?
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Toronto_Area
See my [comment below](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27761413)
And it’s the same for banks in Canada..
Revolut had to quit the canadian market because of the cartel banks..
Revolut had to quit the canadian market because of the cartel banks..
I have heard this argument and the counter is that Australia has low population density like Canada and significantly lower costs. It all comes down to competition. We Canadians love our oligopolies!
From my understanding, there are varying reasons ranging from monopoly, to having a relatively small population spread across a large area.
There is one thing to note is that there are similar observations for other market segments like cars. People will pay up to 20% more for the same car in Canada vs. the US. I remember when I lived in Canada I saw multiple news segments with the gov't getting angry that Canadians were going to the US to buy new cars in order to save money. During one news segment, the Canadian car dealer being interviewed replied with "Canadians are just willing to pay more," when asked why cars are more expensive in Canada.
There is one thing to note is that there are similar observations for other market segments like cars. People will pay up to 20% more for the same car in Canada vs. the US. I remember when I lived in Canada I saw multiple news segments with the gov't getting angry that Canadians were going to the US to buy new cars in order to save money. During one news segment, the Canadian car dealer being interviewed replied with "Canadians are just willing to pay more," when asked why cars are more expensive in Canada.
My guess is monopolistic power at play
Hugged to death (for me). It took a few cracks to get this screenshot.
https://imgur.com/a/9QlY5xt
https://imgur.com/a/9QlY5xt
So... from a really quick search I'm guessing there's more to the story in practice. Knowing nothing about Canadian carriers, I went to https://www.whistleout.ca/CellPhones/Guides/best-cell-phone-... and saw a 1G/$23 plan. That gives $0.022 / MB = $0.03 for Reddit, so much less than $0.17. Is it the choice of the largest carrier that breaks the comparison in Canada's case? Or am I missing something else?
Probably - I don't know which is the largest by marketshare but just tried a couple big enough I've heard of (I'm British) - Bell starts at $80, ok for 30GB sure, but still that's an insane starting point to me; Rogers also starts at $80, for 15GB or currently 30GB on offer.
How many people even need that much? In the UK I would guess most people are on 1-3GB plans; these cost <£10pcm.
Edit: or maybe I'm horribly out of touch? In the age of TikChat and Snapstagram, maybe most people (shudders) need 'unlimited'/lots more than that?
How many people even need that much? In the UK I would guess most people are on 1-3GB plans; these cost <£10pcm.
Edit: or maybe I'm horribly out of touch? In the age of TikChat and Snapstagram, maybe most people (shudders) need 'unlimited'/lots more than that?
I've had an (truly) unlimited plan in the UK for less than 25£ for about a decade now.
The <20£ plans often have caps but it's not so much more for unlimited.
The <20£ plans often have caps but it's not so much more for unlimited.
Yeah, I know they're available, I just don't think most people need/have them. (Modulo my edit that I might be extremely out of touch because I don't have any desire to.. I don't know, watch short clips of funny dances or whatever while out and about.)
The killer in Canada (at least, from the big two providers I checked above) seems to be that low-limit plans aren't available. They start at 30GB, and charge roughly double.
The killer in Canada (at least, from the big two providers I checked above) seems to be that low-limit plans aren't available. They start at 30GB, and charge roughly double.
There is low limit plans, just only on the sub-brands of the big 3. They all operate multiple MVNOs with a low-end tier like Lucky Mobile and Public Mobile, a mid-tier brand like Virgin (in Canada completely run by Bell Canada, only license name and logo), Fido and Koodo. These cheaper brands have cheaper plans like 5GB for $50 or 1GB for $25. But they are also artificially locked out on features. You can't have an Apple Watch on the low end brands, there's no visual voice-mail support, no RCS, etc. Phone choice is limited although that's less of an issue than it was.
Yeah Three offer unlimited 5G for £20/month.
I get 160GB 5G with EE for £20/month but it's a much better network.
I get 160GB 5G with EE for £20/month but it's a much better network.
I wonder if the price of mobile data per megabyte depends on the population density and larger metropolitan areas vs. rural. I.e. the higher the density the cheaper. At least intuitively should be the case, because otherwise why would the prices vary so widely?
Lack of local competition.
The methodology is a bit odd. As best as I can tell it looks at the cheapest data plan that offers >500MB. If there's a plan that's $1 more per month but offers 100GB of data, the price per visit would drop rapidly but this tradeoff wouldn't be reflected in their price.
They say it's "best case" but that appears to be based on the minimum hurdle to get a data plan, rather than the minimum data price.
I think a better measurement would be a range based on a few different price levels (cheapest/most expensive/modal) but I understand that would be much harder to implement.
They say it's "best case" but that appears to be based on the minimum hurdle to get a data plan, rather than the minimum data price.
I think a better measurement would be a range based on a few different price levels (cheapest/most expensive/modal) but I understand that would be much harder to implement.
I honestly can't tell if the "least expensive plan" combined with "best case scenario" actually means the lowest total price, or least expensive per MB. I agree that it's either odd methodology or odd wording.
A more representative figure would be to look at the typical data plans actual citizens of those countries have.
Eg. Ask 100 citizens how many gb's they have and how much they pay. Calculate cost per gb for each. Take median.
Eg. Ask 100 citizens how many gb's they have and how much they pay. Calculate cost per gb for each. Take median.
I imagine this assumes you pay for a certain amount of data each month? The standard plan I have here in France has unlimited 4G and 5G data and costs me 15 euros a month (I also use them for the home/office internet for 40 euros a month so it is 15 instead of 20 euros for the cell). The cost of visiting a site on moibile under such a plan is essentially zero.
I think I have the same plan as you (Free 10G-EPON + 5G ?), I've seen lots of posts about broadband / mobile subscription and while prices do seems a bit higher than in Europe what shocks me the most is data caps on home internet.
You’re right - the home internet caps are really unbelievable. It’s hard for me to imagine having to think about whether I should be streaming Netflix in the last week of the month in case I ‘go over’ my limit.
The Free Mobile team email me every couple of years to tell me that my mobile 50GB limit has gone up to 100GB and then transformed into unlimited data. I don’t think I’ve ever gone over about 40GB on mobile, anyway, and a lot less than that in the pandemic - but good to know I don’t have to think about it.
The Free Mobile team email me every couple of years to tell me that my mobile 50GB limit has gone up to 100GB and then transformed into unlimited data. I don’t think I’ve ever gone over about 40GB on mobile, anyway, and a lot less than that in the pandemic - but good to know I don’t have to think about it.
I am in the US and I feel like most people have unlimited data. I am atypical and have Google Fi so I pay 10 dollars per gb. So 1.39mb would be $0.0139 for me. Are Canadians really paying 10x my rate?
In the US, even plans with limited data seem to just cap you at 64kbps when you go over the limit. Thats still very usable for messaging people.
In most of the rest of the world, when you run out of data the only website you can access is your bank to make another payment to the phone company...
In most of the rest of the world, when you run out of data the only website you can access is your bank to make another payment to the phone company...
I keep hearing that, but what country over a million people do you have limited internet at home?
In case you are wondering why that's the case: https://cansumer.ca/canada-phone-plan-pricing/
> The Big 3 Canadian telecom companies (Bell, Rogers and Telus) own 90% of the market and charge higher prices due to a lack of competition.
> The Big 3 Canadian telecom companies (Bell, Rogers and Telus) own 90% of the market and charge higher prices due to a lack of competition.
These prices are batshit insane.
Here you get 20GB for 20 euro on prepaid with unlimited calling (which I never use at all - all my calls are on Whatsapp etc :') ). Or 5GB for 10 euro. I use the 20 euro plan as my 4G backup for when my fibre goes down and I worked a whole week off the 20GB during the first lockdown when there was such an issue (I do shut down some stuff like steam downloads and netflix with a script on my router when it's on failover). It really saved my bacon. The good thing about it is that it's even prepaid so I can just load money up on it when I need it.
Strange thing is, we have 3 mobile operators here too (not counting the many MVNOs). Shouldn't be a barrier to decent competition. If you have more than 3 the available radio spectrum starts getting diluted anyway.
Here you get 20GB for 20 euro on prepaid with unlimited calling (which I never use at all - all my calls are on Whatsapp etc :') ). Or 5GB for 10 euro. I use the 20 euro plan as my 4G backup for when my fibre goes down and I worked a whole week off the 20GB during the first lockdown when there was such an issue (I do shut down some stuff like steam downloads and netflix with a script on my router when it's on failover). It really saved my bacon. The good thing about it is that it's even prepaid so I can just load money up on it when I need it.
Strange thing is, we have 3 mobile operators here too (not counting the many MVNOs). Shouldn't be a barrier to decent competition. If you have more than 3 the available radio spectrum starts getting diluted anyway.
I pay $95/year right now for a prepaid 1GB/Mo, unlimited talk & text plan. Sometimes I go outside of the cellular network and yeah it's only 2G in most areas, but the only thing I need cellular for outside of my home is GPS or to quickly pull up a site for information. The predominant amount of my data usage is through wifi at home and places I trust.
Our carriers argue that the country is huge and the population is low, so providing service/upgrades across it is expensive, in Toronto I'm effectively subsidizing a village of 6 somewhere random up north. However... this explanation is mostly bullshit at this point in time.
in russia unlimited mobile traffic with hundreds of minutes on average among 4 major carriers cost about 6-14 usd
And the only difference in costs for them compared to canada is labor cost, which is not a big part of their business model.
While that is true it is a simplification. There are providers that service only the main populations such as FREEDOM (was WIND). However many people decided against these because they have to pay extra when leaving the city, such as visiting a cottage or going camping. So there is at least some market demand for providing wide coverage included in your base plan.
(I don't really understand it though, because Freedom Mobile has agreements to roam on the other networks and while the cost is much increased, for people who leave the city once every month or two it doesn't add up to the cost of the more expensive providers. These days Freedom even includes some included roaming in their plans, presumable to help customers see this line of thinking.)
(I don't really understand it though, because Freedom Mobile has agreements to roam on the other networks and while the cost is much increased, for people who leave the city once every month or two it doesn't add up to the cost of the more expensive providers. These days Freedom even includes some included roaming in their plans, presumable to help customers see this line of thinking.)
Most people can’t afford to take the cheaper option, because it makes their expenses unpredictable. You need money in the bank if you want to do that.
I believe freedom uses worse frequencies that don't penetrate walls as well. I left freedom when I'd randomly flip between roaming and not inside my house.
I have been to towns up north with larger populations (one to two thousand people) and no cellular service. There are also towns where service means one tower to service the town itself, but no coverage outside of town.[1] I suspect the actual costs come from down south, where there is an expectation of coverage in lower density areas and along transportation corridors.
[1] It is also plausible they installed the tower to reduce the cost of phone service. There are cases where a microwave tower is necessary to deliver any communication service to the area, so the tower is already there to provide cellular service.
[1] It is also plausible they installed the tower to reduce the cost of phone service. There are cases where a microwave tower is necessary to deliver any communication service to the area, so the tower is already there to provide cellular service.
It is bullshit. On regions where there’s a strong local competitor (videotron in Quebec, Sasktel in Saskatchewan) the big three do lower their prices and offer more competitive plans - so they do have significant wiggle room without sacrificing a ton of profit.
There was even a way to, say, register a phone number in Saskatchewan and use it in say Ontario, leveraging a cross-carrier agreement to basically use Rogers or Bell infrastructure at Sasktel prices. I think they found and closed this loophole, though.
There was even a way to, say, register a phone number in Saskatchewan and use it in say Ontario, leveraging a cross-carrier agreement to basically use Rogers or Bell infrastructure at Sasktel prices. I think they found and closed this loophole, though.
Canadian telecom is a racket.
When Wind was around, the Egyptian billionaire owner gave an interview saying that if he could take his entire investment out of Canada at a 10% haircut he would do it in an instant. Wind operates in 170 countries. He compared Canada to China and North Korea.
More here if you're bored. I would also say to Americans looking to move to Canada in light of... recent events, be prepared to be frustrated with the lack of choice in banks, telecom, grocery chains, and doctors. https://financialpost.com/telecom/tight-reins-leaves-our-tel...
When Wind was around, the Egyptian billionaire owner gave an interview saying that if he could take his entire investment out of Canada at a 10% haircut he would do it in an instant. Wind operates in 170 countries. He compared Canada to China and North Korea.
More here if you're bored. I would also say to Americans looking to move to Canada in light of... recent events, be prepared to be frustrated with the lack of choice in banks, telecom, grocery chains, and doctors. https://financialpost.com/telecom/tight-reins-leaves-our-tel...
Out of curiosity, where is 'here'? Germany?
Judging by their username: The Netherlands. Not sure which provider they're talking about though. Those prices suggest it's an MVNO.
No I live in Spain but I am indeed Dutch.
And no, it's not an MVNO, I use Orange Spain. The tariff I mean in particular is "Go Fly": https://www.orange.es/tarifas/movil/prepago
It looks like they now upped the allowance to 65GB (35 standard and 30 as temporary "gift" :) ). Didn't even realise that. They often have temporary deals like that. I mainly use my work SIM in my phone.
I think there's even better deals available here in Spain but I use Orange because they have a cell on top of this building and the 4G coverage is full bars (high buildings around so the signal reflects back to me).
And no, it's not an MVNO, I use Orange Spain. The tariff I mean in particular is "Go Fly": https://www.orange.es/tarifas/movil/prepago
It looks like they now upped the allowance to 65GB (35 standard and 30 as temporary "gift" :) ). Didn't even realise that. They often have temporary deals like that. I mainly use my work SIM in my phone.
I think there's even better deals available here in Spain but I use Orange because they have a cell on top of this building and the 4G coverage is full bars (high buildings around so the signal reflects back to me).
Here in the UK I am paying around £23 for truly unlimited, including unlimited hotspot usage (no, not the type with an actual limit in the smallprint).
For a period of about two months I was tethering my smart TV to my phone while the broadband was being upgraded and was a bit shaky. I was using around 200GB a month.
I would never want to go back from unlimited.
For a period of about two months I was tethering my smart TV to my phone while the broadband was being upgraded and was a bit shaky. I was using around 200GB a month.
I would never want to go back from unlimited.
MVNOs are not allowed in Canada. The 3 carriers have even paid for economic studies that state it would be devastating to the the telecom market and innovation. They also own media conglomerates, who 'independently' agree.
MVNOs would only disrupt their ability to buy sports teams. This does come up in elections, but so far they have gotten away with window dressing.
MVNOs would only disrupt their ability to buy sports teams. This does come up in elections, but so far they have gotten away with window dressing.
> MVNOs are not allowed in Canada. The 3 carriers have even paid for economic studies that state it would be devastating to the the telecom market and innovation.
Like the devastation it brought to all the other countries where it's been a success? :D
Sometimes I don't know how these lobbyists manage to make this stuff up.
Like the devastation it brought to all the other countries where it's been a success? :D
Sometimes I don't know how these lobbyists manage to make this stuff up.
Seems like the mobile industry and ISPs in Canada have the same problem as in Australia: too few people across too wide a space. The incumbents will only agree to improve and service their network if they are given protected positions by their government. Leads to results like 10Mbps fibre NBN "broadband" and CAD$80+/mo plans for 30GB of data. Far inferior to that enjoyed by UK and Europe.
The pricing chart on that page is for customers who are not smart enough to shop around. I have lived both in the US and Canada and in the US I used to pay 120USD for 6 lines with 2.5GB data per line(T-mobile). In Canada currently I am paying 20CAD per month for 1.5GB data (Public Mobile).
Telus and Bell partner on wireless so we have even less choice.
And they probably still argue that 1GB is 1,000,000 emails or 100,000 web pages based on outdated number.
The speeds are fast though so you can be sure when you tether just as MS Office is updating you run out of data in about a minute.
The speeds are fast though so you can be sure when you tether just as MS Office is updating you run out of data in about a minute.
In Poland we have 4 big telecoms and they compete like crazy with each other. I can't see why having 3 would be any different.
Do the Polish telcos also all operate in these spaces?
- Newspapers
- TV stations/channels
- Radio stations
- Content streaming services (a la Netflix)
- Land-based telco (phone, cable, fiber)
- Wireless telco
Each of the providers in Canada does all of those things to some degree or other and because they own news outlets they wield a lot of political influence. Combine that with the fact that most of the people who have been in charge of our telco regulator have ties to these media conglomerates, it becomes pretty clear it's a captured market. So much so that it's newsworthy when someone actually doesn't just rubber stamp everything[1]. It also means external competition is limited to being unprofitable, so newcomers who enter the market don't tend to stay long and generally just get bought out by the incumbents.
It's a mess and no political party seems to think it's an issue worth pursuing.
[1]: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/c...
- Newspapers
- TV stations/channels
- Radio stations
- Content streaming services (a la Netflix)
- Land-based telco (phone, cable, fiber)
- Wireless telco
Each of the providers in Canada does all of those things to some degree or other and because they own news outlets they wield a lot of political influence. Combine that with the fact that most of the people who have been in charge of our telco regulator have ties to these media conglomerates, it becomes pretty clear it's a captured market. So much so that it's newsworthy when someone actually doesn't just rubber stamp everything[1]. It also means external competition is limited to being unprofitable, so newcomers who enter the market don't tend to stay long and generally just get bought out by the incumbents.
It's a mess and no political party seems to think it's an issue worth pursuing.
[1]: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/c...
In this case, I think they have an established status quo, with different providers being the clear winner in certain markets, so they don't compete directly. At least, not very much.
No, it's because telcos cartels are illegal in Europe and there are actual consequences. European telcos are no saints at all but they occasionally get fined and things are a little better for a few years.
Just as an example, many tried to shorten the "month" to 28 days and they got a combined €228M fine in early 2020: https://www.repubblica.it/economia/2020/01/31/news/bollette_...
€228M for essentially a 7% hike in pricing.
Just as an example, many tried to shorten the "month" to 28 days and they got a combined €228M fine in early 2020: https://www.repubblica.it/economia/2020/01/31/news/bollette_...
€228M for essentially a 7% hike in pricing.
I think that's what antimonopoly laws are for. As a Russia citizen, mobile and internet prices in supposedly more technologically advanced countries just blow my mind.
It was like that in Poland before Play joined the market, I remember watching TV and there were ads from established network simply attacking Play "In Orange you can have X, which is 15% better than our competitor <Play logo in background>"
Cant edit this anymore. But telecom prices were stagnating in Poland for a long time, then Play joined the forces and in 3 years prices were cut at least 50% on everything. The trick was that Play built their own IT-telecom infrastructure, not based on existing from Orange.
I once read somewhere that it's been observed in many countries that when telecom markets go from 4 to 3, competition tanks.
I don't know about that, but in CZ (right next to PL), there are 3 telecom companies and competition is pretty much non-existent. You can save some money by switching, but you'd need to do that every year, as those better offers come with an expiration. After many years, I've recently started to think about just cancelling it, because that's probably the only way to let these companies know that they can stick those offers up their...
Fixed lines, on the other hand, are fast, cheap and there's no data cap.
Fixed lines, on the other hand, are fast, cheap and there's no data cap.
Because of cartels.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210707105923/https://whatdoesm... (posted another user, I can't load the site)
Out of the countries listed, I only have recent experience with the U.S. It says $0.09 for 1.39MB using "the least expensive plan with a minimum data allowance of 500MB over a minimum of 30 days". That works out to $30.6-$34.2 for a 500MB plan. I'd say the pricing data is several years out of date.
Out of the countries listed, I only have recent experience with the U.S. It says $0.09 for 1.39MB using "the least expensive plan with a minimum data allowance of 500MB over a minimum of 30 days". That works out to $30.6-$34.2 for a 500MB plan. I'd say the pricing data is several years out of date.
should be increased to $100
Curious to see how much of this homepage is thumbnails, how much html, how much js...
The site is ~~wrong~~ somewhat correct about how big reddits homepage is.
~~It seems to not run any scripts when testing, so 1.5MB is the basic JS + CSS.~~
In reality, it's much, much worse. (On a desktop)
Even with an adblocker, reddit.com downloaded 18MB in the first 10 seconds. That would put that cost at over $1.
I stopped after that because it seemed to be just continuously downloading... something.
I know Reddit is quite media driven these days, but it seems to be unnecessary prefetching a lot
Edit: Looks like I was testing the desktop version, see jefftk's reply.
However, it doesn't help reddit's case that much. After looking into what it's actually downloading in my "desktop" test, there are lots of huge PNG images (1000x1000 +) that seem to be displayed as tiny thumbnails.
And for an infinitely scrolling page, it prefetches all the images in the feed at full resolution.
If I turn off my adblocker, I get an autoplaying amazon ad (~5MB).
Additionally, it starts auto-playing a livestreams which is just below the fold.
~~It seems to not run any scripts when testing, so 1.5MB is the basic JS + CSS.~~
In reality, it's much, much worse. (On a desktop)
Even with an adblocker, reddit.com downloaded 18MB in the first 10 seconds. That would put that cost at over $1.
I stopped after that because it seemed to be just continuously downloading... something.
I know Reddit is quite media driven these days, but it seems to be unnecessary prefetching a lot
Edit: Looks like I was testing the desktop version, see jefftk's reply.
However, it doesn't help reddit's case that much. After looking into what it's actually downloading in my "desktop" test, there are lots of huge PNG images (1000x1000 +) that seem to be displayed as tiny thumbnails.
And for an infinitely scrolling page, it prefetches all the images in the feed at full resolution.
If I turn off my adblocker, I get an autoplaying amazon ad (~5MB).
Additionally, it starts auto-playing a livestreams which is just below the fold.
> I know Reddit is quite media driven
Yet they still have a worse video player than what was available in the early 2000s
Yet they still have a worse video player than what was available in the early 2000s
It depends a lot on which posts are on the frontpage and what rewards they've been given. Those tiny little icons next to each post can be upwards of 1 MB each as they are rendered with ridiculous resolutions sometimes (eg https://www.redditstatic.com/gold/awards/icon/Illuminati_512...)
I can't imagine the internet without adblockers... I can't watch mobile YouTube because of that... I know there are options but still. There is some bad stuff out there too I recently came across this reversecaptcha thing wow... that sucks. It prompts you like the location/cam permission allow/block stuff (top left of browser).
Not to mention the time one of their scripts got stuck in a loop and caused my 2 Gigabyte plan to explode in 20 minutes.
I don't think you're looking at the right thing. When I load reddit.com with no ad blockers I'm seeing 1.2MB transferred over the wire for a total of 18MB of uncompressed resources.
Edit - after waiting about a minute it crept up to 5.2MB transferred for somehow the same amount of uncompressed resources.
Edit - after waiting about a minute it crept up to 5.2MB transferred for somehow the same amount of uncompressed resources.
The reddit iphone app is a data/cpu pig.
Wow. That's a lot.
I'm not sure how to replicate this but I would be curious what old.reddit.com does via an equivalent methodology.
I'm not sure how to replicate this but I would be curious what old.reddit.com does via an equivalent methodology.
Firefox dev tools said ~1.3MB transferred. I think it's the increased number of thumbnails per "page", even though they're smaller. On the other hand it has no autoplaying videos and livestreams.
> It seems to not run any scripts when testing
They source their claim to a WebPageTest run [1], and WPT does run scripts. I can reproduce their results as:
1. Open an incognito window in Chrome
2. Open devtools, and configure it as mobile
3. Navigate to reddit.com
4. See ~1.5MB transferred
[1] https://www.webpagetest.org/result/210707_AiDc36_6f01cdff93b...
They source their claim to a WebPageTest run [1], and WPT does run scripts. I can reproduce their results as:
1. Open an incognito window in Chrome
2. Open devtools, and configure it as mobile
3. Navigate to reddit.com
4. See ~1.5MB transferred
[1] https://www.webpagetest.org/result/210707_AiDc36_6f01cdff93b...
You're right. Reddit seems to load a different homepage based on useragent.
I was using Firefox, but I could get the 1.55MB result by trying that.
I was using Firefox, but I could get the 1.55MB result by trying that.
I get 1.22MB in Firefox with a similar approach:
1. New private browsing window
2. Open devtools networking
3. Responsive design mode: Galaxy S9
4. Load reddit.com
1. New private browsing window
2. Open devtools networking
3. Responsive design mode: Galaxy S9
4. Load reddit.com
IT'S BETTER ON THE APP
>>>DOWNLOAD THE APP<<<
>>>DOWNLOAD THE APP<<<
[ Got it ][0]
[0] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.quantumbadger.redreader/
[0] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.quantumbadger.redreader/
I just did this in in private tabs and got:
firefox: 17.85 / 12.54 MB transferred, brave: 15 MB, vivaldi: 9.6 MB, chromium: 13.1 MB,
firefox: 17.85 / 12.54 MB transferred, brave: 15 MB, vivaldi: 9.6 MB, chromium: 13.1 MB,
Did you configure it as a mobile browser? Your numbers are about what I get if I configure it as desktop.
I did not I tested as a desktop, using a mobile does drop it down to ~2 MB.
I actually think that Reddit is just loading less of the posts due to the small screen.
I actually think that Reddit is just loading less of the posts due to the small screen.
firefox with ublock origin, privacy badger and overall stuff turned off: 16.17 / 11.44 MB. Haven't scrolled anywhere yet.
you need to tell it to scroll and things
https://blog.webpagetest.org/posts/understanding-the-new-cum...
https://blog.webpagetest.org/posts/understanding-the-new-cum...
Both WPT and browser devtools will, by default, tell you the data usage that happens just by visiting a page. As you interact with a page, for example by scrolling Reddit, you will cause more network traffic, yes. Since Reddit does infinite scroll, you can get Reddit to use arbitrary amounts of traffic this way.
I was attempting to explain the disagreement up-thread. Also that article is full of really good tips and I just felt like posting it.
What about old.reddit.com?
https://i.reddit.com is a shortcut for that. It's the most usable Reddit interface IMO.
I also recommend libreddit - https://github.com/spikecodes/libreddit
Recently on teddit.net, I've been getting an "Unable to connect" via some Tor Exit Nodes. So I'm having to create new circuits until teddit loads.
Recently on teddit.net, I've been getting an "Unable to connect" via some Tor Exit Nodes. So I'm having to create new circuits until teddit loads.
I didn't know about this, thanks!
The point may be that, by default, Reddit's website is now incredibly heavy for something that was once a lean and nimble site when it comes to media.
[deleted]
It's the only way I will read reddit. It does seem smaller (on Safari Big Sur I get 5.5MB).
Still horrendous. Where's that data going?
I thought an interesting comparison would be Mobile Web Reddit and Reddit App on Data usage.
i mean a lot of that is adjustable in settings if you create an account.
> Even with an adblocker, reddit.com downloaded 18MB in the first 10 seconds.
I loaded https://www.reddit.com/ in Firefox with an adblocker; the network inspector showed 4.8 MB transferred.
I loaded https://www.reddit.com/ in Firefox with an adblocker; the network inspector showed 4.8 MB transferred.
> it doesn't help reddit's case that much. After looking into what it's actually downloading in my "desktop" test, there are lots of huge PNG images (1000x1000 +) that seem to be displayed as tiny thumbnails.
I'm not able to reproduce this either. Here's a desktop WPT run: https://www.webpagetest.org/result/210707_BiDcXB_65148b09266...
Could you share a screenshot, or a link to one of these oversized PNGs?
I'm not able to reproduce this either. Here's a desktop WPT run: https://www.webpagetest.org/result/210707_BiDcXB_65148b09266...
Could you share a screenshot, or a link to one of these oversized PNGs?
You probably already noticed, but you can also access site cost data from the WebPageTest itself. (Note the cost column in the metric summary for your linked test, for example: https://www.webpagetest.org/result/210707_BiDcXB_65148b09266...)
Highest roaming fee on a network I've connected to with Vodafone UK (On Air Aerospace) was £7.20 per MB (about $10)
That would make it $200+ to load the page including the advert.
Highest I've actually paid was in China at £3 per megabyte, and not only did I use normal phone stuff like data and email, because the UK network I was on allowed connections to my company, but the local wifi didn't, when I accidentally connected plugged in my phone without disabling tethering, the laptop started downloading stuff - ran up a $400 bill in about a minute before the flood of text messages I get every 5MB started to arrive (out of order) and I realised what was going on.
That would make it $200+ to load the page including the advert.
Highest I've actually paid was in China at £3 per megabyte, and not only did I use normal phone stuff like data and email, because the UK network I was on allowed connections to my company, but the local wifi didn't, when I accidentally connected plugged in my phone without disabling tethering, the laptop started downloading stuff - ran up a $400 bill in about a minute before the flood of text messages I get every 5MB started to arrive (out of order) and I realised what was going on.
"On Air Aerospace" being an inflight roaming [1] provider like AeroMobile, right?
I recall getting a text about that £7.20 fee during a flight a couple years ago.
[1]: https://www.aeromobile.net/inflight-roaming/
I recall getting a text about that £7.20 fee during a flight a couple years ago.
[1]: https://www.aeromobile.net/inflight-roaming/
Better to get a Ubigi or Truphone eSim, much cheaper data roaming if you're not willing to get a local SIM.
I've found GigSky cheaper than Truphone, but ill check out Ubigi
Those are horrible fees. You can buy local sims for cheap when travelling to avoid those roaming fees.
Local sims in Beijing which will bust through the great firewall back to base for my 16 hour stay that I can just pick up for cash?
You can pick them up for cash but often times they will ask to see your passport. They don't bust through the great firewall but in my experience foreign sims don't seem to either.
google fi busted through GFW when I last went there in 2017
I've been traveling a lot and what I've done is setup an AT&T based MVNO on my iPhone's eSIM, freeing up the physical slot for local SIMs. With WiFi calling enabled on my AT&T line, I can go around the world spending peanuts compared even to Google Fi, while keeping my US number working.
Or even just get t-mobile if you're based in the US, which has free roaming in many international locations
T-Mobile US' international roaming was almost useless when I was in Japan before the pandemic. Coverage was good on SoftBank, but even with five bars, my latest-and-greatest T-Mobile 4GLTE hotspot would only connect as 3G, and the speed was closer to dialup.
It seemed more of a marketing gimmick than a useful tool.
It seemed more of a marketing gimmick than a useful tool.
I think the basic problem here is that there's essentially no overlap between the LTE bands used by T-Mobile in the US and Softbank in Japan.
Unless you have a device with radios that happen to support extra bands that are not used in the US, then it's essentially incompatible with the Japanese network despite both being "LTE".
Unless you have a device with radios that happen to support extra bands that are not used in the US, then it's essentially incompatible with the Japanese network despite both being "LTE".
I disagree, it's a great tool - T-Mobile has roaming agreements with Softbank, NTT and DoCoMo, not KDDI.
The biggest issue is the phone bands, if your phone does not support the local bands, it will not connect.
I had no issue having a secondary phone in Japan w/ my T-mobile sim and having a local NTT sim. With dual sim/esim even easier nowadays to run both networks.
The biggest issue is the phone bands, if your phone does not support the local bands, it will not connect.
I had no issue having a secondary phone in Japan w/ my T-mobile sim and having a local NTT sim. With dual sim/esim even easier nowadays to run both networks.
It actually gives you 5G in Canada and Mexico for free, which is particularly useful to me.
In international locations to your point it gets you enough for Maps and Mail, and some basic web browsing. You won't be streaming, that's for sure. However, if I need more than that, I use it to bootstrap an e-sim like GigSky which you can then route all data traffic to (at least on iOS) via Cellular settings.
This way you keep your phone number, iMessage, texting, and get 5G data too.
In international locations to your point it gets you enough for Maps and Mail, and some basic web browsing. You won't be streaming, that's for sure. However, if I need more than that, I use it to bootstrap an e-sim like GigSky which you can then route all data traffic to (at least on iOS) via Cellular settings.
This way you keep your phone number, iMessage, texting, and get 5G data too.
I couldn't disagree more. Of course T-mobile's free roaming isn't going to be super fast. You can pay extra 4G/5G. But if you're hopping across countries, it's great. It's obviously not made for instagram/youtube.
T-Mobile's free 128kbs is enough for whatapp, navigation and a few emails (Their MAX plan gives free 256kbs).
T-Mobile's free 128kbs is enough for whatapp, navigation and a few emails (Their MAX plan gives free 256kbs).
I had terrible problems with T-Mobile US international roaming in Japan also. I was able to make calls and recieve calls, however I was not able to use internet.
After basic troubleshooting T-Mobile requested that I call their international support on a 2nd phone and they would happily help me fix the problem with the original mobile phone.
Of course I didn't have access to a 2nd phone, I was livid. Cancelled the contract with T-Mobile and got local service. Even in cancelling T-Mobile couldn't get it right, they sent me two additional bills for trivial amounts in the months that followed. Each bill under a dollar.
After basic troubleshooting T-Mobile requested that I call their international support on a 2nd phone and they would happily help me fix the problem with the original mobile phone.
Of course I didn't have access to a 2nd phone, I was livid. Cancelled the contract with T-Mobile and got local service. Even in cancelling T-Mobile couldn't get it right, they sent me two additional bills for trivial amounts in the months that followed. Each bill under a dollar.
I'm no longer with T-Mobile US but I used it in Peru, Iceland, Mexico, Morocco, Brazil, Bolivia, and Italy without issue. Maybe Japan is a fluke but working service in North Africa and South America speaks volumes for me.
I don't rely on their international roaming to do hotspot work, but it suffices to check HN, use google maps to get around, and order uber if I am in a place w/o amazing mass transit.
Your device is not compatible on Japanese LTE.
For Germany it says 0.07 USD prepaid for 1.39 MB which is 50 USD for 1 GB. Telekom offers 2 GB for 9.95 EUR prepaid which yields 0.0082 USD and is an order of magnitude lower than the quoted number. And this is literally the first offering I looked at, the second provider I looked at offers 12 GB for 15.99 EUR which brings the number down to 0.0022 EUR.
I would take those numbers with a large grain of salt at the very least.
I would take those numbers with a large grain of salt at the very least.
I'm on Vodafone CallYa and I pay 10€ a month for 2-4GB (I forgot). As a Canadian, these prices are crazy low, but to EU citizens, they're allegedly pretty high.
Agreed, I'm trying to figure out where this site is getting their pricing data.
I assume its something like numbeo. Thing is with this kind of data there is always a local and a tourist price. In many countries (especially Europe) you can not always buy a prepaid SIM card with a foreign passport (without extra hoops at least) or you need a real residence address.
So these prices often reflect the few options that are (visibly) available for tourists.
So these prices often reflect the few options that are (visibly) available for tourists.
I've never had an issue with a foreign passport buying a SIM. You usually need a local address but you can just use your hotels.
I usually did not either. However Netherlands and Germany have been an exception. In the Netherlands every mobile provider shoo me out of their shop refering to yallo or libera. I had an apartment and was staying 2 months, so this wasn't the issue. And Germany was essentially the same except I only tried with 3 or so providers.
Most tourists still pick one of the shitty providers available at the airport or train station and go with that. Some of them provide a faster verification do you can walk out having internet, in Austria if you buy internet at a supermarket (it's uncomplicated there) it can take a few hours to verify.
Or Italy, if you arrive in Venedig you find ads for internet packages everywhere. I actually needed to go to the mainland to buy a a normal SIM. As no one on the island acknowledged the cheaper packages available.
My point is, it's complicated
Source: I've spent months (if not years) with my laptop In Europe and Asia and internet always was the #1 priority. I also do not know if things are better today
Most tourists still pick one of the shitty providers available at the airport or train station and go with that. Some of them provide a faster verification do you can walk out having internet, in Austria if you buy internet at a supermarket (it's uncomplicated there) it can take a few hours to verify.
Or Italy, if you arrive in Venedig you find ads for internet packages everywhere. I actually needed to go to the mainland to buy a a normal SIM. As no one on the island acknowledged the cheaper packages available.
My point is, it's complicated
Source: I've spent months (if not years) with my laptop In Europe and Asia and internet always was the #1 priority. I also do not know if things are better today
As another data point. A few years a go I bought a sim card in Germany (mediamarkt I think). They asked for the Anmeldung document (proof of residence, needed also to open a bank account) and photocopied it.
For a short-term stay, why not just use Lebera, or a similar operator?
They have short-term or no-contract options at low prices, and often have a website in English.
They have short-term or no-contract options at low prices, and often have a website in English.
It's not low price compared to local alternatives. I was work travelling so internet was a must, I always tried getting the best rate as part of my welcome to a new country ritual :)
Also what is short? In Austria I get a new prepaid for every few days I stay (because uncomplicated and cheap). In the Netherlands libera was the only real option even thought I was there for 2 months.
Also what is short? In Austria I get a new prepaid for every few days I stay (because uncomplicated and cheap). In the Netherlands libera was the only real option even thought I was there for 2 months.
I just remembered the actual issue in Netherland, Germany as well as Switzerland. Normal Prepaid is generally expensive, what you want is a always cancelable contract to get the fairest (most local) price for a short time. And here is where it gets more complicated based on residence and stuff
Edit:// I spent over 200€ on prepaid internet that 2 months I was in the Netherlands. A always cancel contract would have costed I think about 20$ a month for unlimited (and way faster) internet
Edit:// I spent over 200€ on prepaid internet that 2 months I was in the Netherlands. A always cancel contract would have costed I think about 20$ a month for unlimited (and way faster) internet
> I assume its something like numbeo. Thing is with this kind of data there is always a local and a tourist price. In many countries (especially Europe) you can not always buy a prepaid SIM card with a foreign passport (without extra hoops at least) or you need a real residence address.
In the EU there are still some countries where you can buy SIM cards without ID so you can just order one of those online and then use roaming, which does not have additional charges within the EU.
In the EU there are still some countries where you can buy SIM cards without ID so you can just order one of those online and then use roaming, which does not have additional charges within the EU.
Which ones? AFAIK that ID thing was an EU law?
Also roaming is a good point. 5 years ago when I was active travelling this was no option yet as only contracts had proper roaming. Cheap roaming in the EU is basically new, and some ex. Switzerland is mostly still excluded
Also roaming is a good point. 5 years ago when I was active travelling this was no option yet as only contracts had proper roaming. Cheap roaming in the EU is basically new, and some ex. Switzerland is mostly still excluded
Yeah the UK price is quite wrong too. I pay £20 per month for 160GB which is £0.125 per gigabyte or $0.17. Other networks offer unlimited data for the same cost.
At my rate, reddit.com should cost $0.0002363
At my rate, reddit.com should cost $0.0002363
The site says they're using the least expensive plan with >500MB data for each country, presumably as a benchmark for what someone on a very limited budget would pay. Maybe that's a methodological problem though.
Unrelated, wow, thank you for reminding me how badly we're getting screwed in Canada :). Approximately $90 CDN here for a 15GB soft-cap with "unlimited" slow usage beyond that.
Unrelated, wow, thank you for reminding me how badly we're getting screwed in Canada :). Approximately $90 CDN here for a 15GB soft-cap with "unlimited" slow usage beyond that.
It says "Prices were collected from the operator with the largest marketshare in the country" so I guess it depends who that is.
From reading the comments, it appears that most of the prices on this website are wrong for most people. They might be taking either the worst-case price or the least value data plan (500MB starter plans) instead of the average data plan.
These cost analyses are always popular for people to brag about how much cheaper their country's data plans or broadband speeds are, but I seriously doubt that many Canadian Redditors are paying $0.17 for every page load. Simply browsing the front page and clicking on a few comment sections could cost $10 or more. Doesn't pass the sniff test.
These cost analyses are always popular for people to brag about how much cheaper their country's data plans or broadband speeds are, but I seriously doubt that many Canadian Redditors are paying $0.17 for every page load. Simply browsing the front page and clicking on a few comment sections could cost $10 or more. Doesn't pass the sniff test.
I'm in Canada, it's true that telcos are expensive here but $0.17 for 1.39MB is like $120 per GB which is absurd. I pay $40 for 8GB/month (USD).
Even additional data (if you go over plan limits), which is by far the most expensive way to get data, is less than that, it's $104 per GB with my provider.
Even additional data (if you go over plan limits), which is by far the most expensive way to get data, is less than that, it's $104 per GB with my provider.
But they claim:
> Because these numbers are based on the least expensive plan, they are best case scenarios.
Which is... a weird statement. Best case scenario for what? The cheapest plan is the best case if you wanted to access the site once per billing period. But then price per visit is the cost of plan? I don't know what they're trying to say here.
> Because these numbers are based on the least expensive plan, they are best case scenarios.
Which is... a weird statement. Best case scenario for what? The cheapest plan is the best case if you wanted to access the site once per billing period. But then price per visit is the cost of plan? I don't know what they're trying to say here.
Good catch. The cheapest plan is almost always the worst cost per GB. It seems they’ve crossed terms and chosen the opposite of what they wanted to represent.
Also in Italy the price is wrong, Iliad offers 120GB for 9.99€ + SIM ( 9.99€ ), considering the worst case scenario ( using the offer for 1 month only ). It become 19.98€ for 120GB:
19.98 / (120 * 1024) * 1.39 = 0,00022€, almost 2 orders of magnitude less than 0.01$ ( 0.008€ ) ( pre-paid price shown in the website ). Price can go further down if you keep the SIM for 1 year or more:
( 9.99 * 13 ) / ( 120 * 12 * 1024 ) * 1.39 = 0,00012€
The only thing required to buy a SIM is a passport so every foreigner can buy one.
The only thing required to buy a SIM is a passport so every foreigner can buy one.
Lycamobile is about 15 for unlimited data eh, give it a spin
Unfortunately, if I'm not wrong, they don't have that plan anymore. Best they can do now is 100GB/€11.99 for new sims or 100GB/€7.99 with number portability, 4G LTE connectivity.
Not a great deal if you ask me. For example Iliad is offering 120GB/€9.99.
Not a great deal if you ask me. For example Iliad is offering 120GB/€9.99.
The site does explain its methodology.
By default, it shows the costs when using the cheapest post-paid plan with at least 500MB allowance for at least 30 days – cheapest in absolute terms, not per GB.
You can toggle the option to show prepaid plans with the same parameters (at least 500 MB for at least 30 days).
But since it takes data from the ITU and not from the real market, the numbers do indeed seem inflated. One of the cheapest (in absolute terms) prepaid plans for mobile internet in Germany is AldiTalk at 4€/1GB/4 weeks, so that the pageload should cost even less than 1ct (0.0056 EUR). Similarly, your Telekom plans are for 4 weeks. Maybe they've excluded these plan because it's not for at least 30 days.
By default, it shows the costs when using the cheapest post-paid plan with at least 500MB allowance for at least 30 days – cheapest in absolute terms, not per GB.
You can toggle the option to show prepaid plans with the same parameters (at least 500 MB for at least 30 days).
But since it takes data from the ITU and not from the real market, the numbers do indeed seem inflated. One of the cheapest (in absolute terms) prepaid plans for mobile internet in Germany is AldiTalk at 4€/1GB/4 weeks, so that the pageload should cost even less than 1ct (0.0056 EUR). Similarly, your Telekom plans are for 4 weeks. Maybe they've excluded these plan because it's not for at least 30 days.
The problem with that methodology is that the cheapest plans in terms of cost/month are actually likely to be the most expensive in terms of cost/GB.
If a service provider offers a $20/month plan with 500 MB of data, their $40/month plan will almost certainly offer a lot more than 1000 MB. The cheapest plans are usually designed specifically for people who don't plan to use a significant amount of data.
If a service provider offers a $20/month plan with 500 MB of data, their $40/month plan will almost certainly offer a lot more than 1000 MB. The cheapest plans are usually designed specifically for people who don't plan to use a significant amount of data.
Alternatively you could argue that the cheapest plans are targeted at people who have the least money to spend on wireless data. It seems reasonable that these are the people who would be most sensitive to the unit cost of accessing a single website.
[deleted]
One possible reason is that 4 weeks are 28 days, which is less than 30 days, their minimum.
I built the site and I agree. :)
Two things:
1. The data is in the process of being updated. Prices change quickly and from the trend of past changes I fully expect these prices to drop as soon as I make the change.
2. While the ITU (and other data sources) try their best to look at all sources, I have to take them at their word. I've heard several times that they seem to have overlooked plan A or plan B, so it doesn't surprise me if there are other plans lurking out there.
Long-story short, it's absolutely best to consider this as a gauge/appromixation, rather than a scientific exact number.
Two things:
1. The data is in the process of being updated. Prices change quickly and from the trend of past changes I fully expect these prices to drop as soon as I make the change.
2. While the ITU (and other data sources) try their best to look at all sources, I have to take them at their word. I've heard several times that they seem to have overlooked plan A or plan B, so it doesn't surprise me if there are other plans lurking out there.
Long-story short, it's absolutely best to consider this as a gauge/appromixation, rather than a scientific exact number.
The site has a pre-paid US plan at $103 / GiB. ($0.14 / (1.39 MiB / 1024 MiB/GiB)) This doesn't seem like "plans change" levels of error, this is more than twice what I pay for all service (SMS, voice, data) since I first got a plan that included (allegedly unlimited, but actually not) data a decade ago…
The site also says "Prices were collected from the operator with the largest marketshare in the country" but follows it with "Because these numbers are based on the least expensive plan, they are best case scenarios." which doesn't logically follow. But going with that, the largest carrier in the US is apparently AT&T, and just the first plan on their site offers a 4GB plan at $50, or ≈$12.50 / GiB, which is an order of magnitude lower than the figure on the site?
The site also says "Prices were collected from the operator with the largest marketshare in the country" but follows it with "Because these numbers are based on the least expensive plan, they are best case scenarios." which doesn't logically follow. But going with that, the largest carrier in the US is apparently AT&T, and just the first plan on their site offers a 4GB plan at $50, or ≈$12.50 / GiB, which is an order of magnitude lower than the figure on the site?
Carriers probably display different prices for different people.
But the conclusions are wrong by orders and orders of magnitude.
For example your calculation is that 1.39 MB costs Canadians 0.17, that would mean 1 GB costs Canadians 125 US dollars. There isn't a single plan in Canada that charges 125 dollars for 1 GB of data.
This isn't just a minor inaccuracy of +/-10%, this is off by literally a factor that's closer to 15-20x.
For example your calculation is that 1.39 MB costs Canadians 0.17, that would mean 1 GB costs Canadians 125 US dollars. There isn't a single plan in Canada that charges 125 dollars for 1 GB of data.
This isn't just a minor inaccuracy of +/-10%, this is off by literally a factor that's closer to 15-20x.
More disturbing than mobile prices in Canada is electricity prices in Africa IMO. I heard a while ago that people are actually trading sex for access to generator power.
This means on that continent at least unneeded JS in web pages is literally AIDS.
This means on that continent at least unneeded JS in web pages is literally AIDS.
I've gone the opposite direction (here in Canada). I'm on a plan that costs at most $13 (+HST) per month but can get cheaper. It gives me unlimited international text/multimedia messaging, 100 dialed minutes / unlimited incoming minutes per month and 250MB of data.
Pathetic? Sure. But just don't use mobile data unless you need it. 250MB is enough for data plan based messaging, Strava, Google Maps (with cached maps) and whatever information you need to look up. You don't really need to watch 1080p streaming video outside the house.
If anything this actually encourages healthy phone habits.
If you do need massive data, suck it up, pay the CAD $80/month for the big data package, then the incremental cost of visiting a given web site is zero.
Cheaper? Look it up. It's Public Mobile prepaid. $15/month minus $2 for autopay (which everyone uses), minus $1/month for every year you've been on to a maximum of 5, minus $1/month for every referred friend (or spouse!) that is currently using it. I think the wife and I together are running at $21 or $22 per month currently.
Yes, would be nice to have dirt cheap internet and mobile data, but we don't. So make the best of what we do have.
Pathetic? Sure. But just don't use mobile data unless you need it. 250MB is enough for data plan based messaging, Strava, Google Maps (with cached maps) and whatever information you need to look up. You don't really need to watch 1080p streaming video outside the house.
If anything this actually encourages healthy phone habits.
If you do need massive data, suck it up, pay the CAD $80/month for the big data package, then the incremental cost of visiting a given web site is zero.
Cheaper? Look it up. It's Public Mobile prepaid. $15/month minus $2 for autopay (which everyone uses), minus $1/month for every year you've been on to a maximum of 5, minus $1/month for every referred friend (or spouse!) that is currently using it. I think the wife and I together are running at $21 or $22 per month currently.
Yes, would be nice to have dirt cheap internet and mobile data, but we don't. So make the best of what we do have.
It's interesting to see the rationalization.
"Just don't use it, plus good phone habits"
What about value added uses for the phone? I looked up how to harvest basil today and watched a 60 second YouTube video. Or reading an encyclopedia. Or fixing a car.
None of those are bad phone habits. And those previously mentioned don't necessarily have the luxury of wifi.
"Just don't use it, plus good phone habits"
What about value added uses for the phone? I looked up how to harvest basil today and watched a 60 second YouTube video. Or reading an encyclopedia. Or fixing a car.
None of those are bad phone habits. And those previously mentioned don't necessarily have the luxury of wifi.
>It's interesting to see the rationalization.
>"Just don't use it, plus good phone habits"
Agreed. For a couple of years I had 1-5GB mobile plans, often free (thanks to the late great RingPlus). I never used more than 1-2GB a month so they were quite sufficient for my needs.
I then got unlimited service from Sprint (thanks to the late great free unlimited year offer). My usage patterns did not change. To my surprise, however, I found that no longer having to think about the usage limit—even if the limit was never a real problem before—perceptibly eased my daily life.
>"Just don't use it, plus good phone habits"
Agreed. For a couple of years I had 1-5GB mobile plans, often free (thanks to the late great RingPlus). I never used more than 1-2GB a month so they were quite sufficient for my needs.
I then got unlimited service from Sprint (thanks to the late great free unlimited year offer). My usage patterns did not change. To my surprise, however, I found that no longer having to think about the usage limit—even if the limit was never a real problem before—perceptibly eased my daily life.
I have a gigabyte of backup data for stuff like that; it costs $30 but you can use it up as slowly as you want (once you deplete your 250MB).
I find it super annoying that low bandwidth information (i.e. a paragraph or two of text) has been replaced by ad-riddled Youtube videos! I've been able to avoid this usage pattern while on mobile data, but I can see that not everyone feels they can.
Wikipedia is lightweight, no problem on frugal data.
I find it super annoying that low bandwidth information (i.e. a paragraph or two of text) has been replaced by ad-riddled Youtube videos! I've been able to avoid this usage pattern while on mobile data, but I can see that not everyone feels they can.
Wikipedia is lightweight, no problem on frugal data.
I pay $30/month for unlimited everything (including HotSpot) on Visible (Verizon MVNO) in NYC.
You can replace reddit.com with teddit.net and have a much lighter UI.
...and far less data collection, dark patterns, and helps to eliminate the temptation to soil ones' self by responding to the horrendous comments on that site. At this point, Reddit is just Facebook for people who think they're too good to use Facebook.
At this point in history, I thought certain webites would be paying consumers to visit their site. Yes--literally paying us to view in credits, paypal, or bitcoin.
It wold be nice to see Facebook offering a few pennies for the marketing data we pay to give them. It would be nice to be paid for high ranking comments too. Say for instance, a guy writes a researched answer to a question on Reddit, and it blew up. Reddit would pay pay that individual a few dimes. The quality of comments would probally increase? Maybe less bathroom humor, and real thoughtful answers?
Could anyone imagine if we got a bill at the end of the month detailing what we pay per website/download incident?
You went to facebook 40 times, at a bandwidth, or percentage you pay us, at a cost of $6.00
You went to Reddit 30 times, at a cost of $3.00
(It will never happen because the big players are becoming very good Lobbiest's. If it ever did happen, I can guarantee, there would be no bloat. If it ever did happpen, it might redispute some if the obsence profits these guys hide? I still think most people would cheerily contribute to sites they respect without any form of enticement.)
It wold be nice to see Facebook offering a few pennies for the marketing data we pay to give them. It would be nice to be paid for high ranking comments too. Say for instance, a guy writes a researched answer to a question on Reddit, and it blew up. Reddit would pay pay that individual a few dimes. The quality of comments would probally increase? Maybe less bathroom humor, and real thoughtful answers?
Could anyone imagine if we got a bill at the end of the month detailing what we pay per website/download incident?
You went to facebook 40 times, at a bandwidth, or percentage you pay us, at a cost of $6.00
You went to Reddit 30 times, at a cost of $3.00
(It will never happen because the big players are becoming very good Lobbiest's. If it ever did happen, I can guarantee, there would be no bloat. If it ever did happpen, it might redispute some if the obsence profits these guys hide? I still think most people would cheerily contribute to sites they respect without any form of enticement.)
I'm very surprised at how much data costs in Canada.
In India, it costs me 7.43 USD for 84 days of 1.5GiB high-speed 4g data per day (plus unlimited calling). After that it drops of to a lower speed, but you can top off cheaply.
That's $0.058 per GiB or $0.00005 per MiB
In India, it costs me 7.43 USD for 84 days of 1.5GiB high-speed 4g data per day (plus unlimited calling). After that it drops of to a lower speed, but you can top off cheaply.
That's $0.058 per GiB or $0.00005 per MiB
WTF. You buy a fixed amount of data in Canada?
Often in the US too and unlimited usually doesn't mean unlimited at full speed... For example, if you use your internet at full speed for a full day, you probably would get throttled for the rest of the month.
That's crazy. Unlimited here is uncapped speeds with a soft fair use download ceiling of 1TB a month (last I checked, which is quite a while ago). If you surpass that repeatedly you're asked to tone it down, and if you continue to download that much, you'll have to pay more for a higher cap.
Canadians are unhappy but maybe in ten years they will be happy with a population whose minds remained healthy because bandwidth costs luckily created a controlling feedback mechanism to otherwise addictive social media.
This always seemed like a back door way to finally have the web finally embrace a micropayments business model.
By this point ads, and the tracking scripts associated with ad networks, have grown so large that they may cost more in bandwidth than they generate in sales. People are famously hesitant to pay for content, but in this case it’s “free” if it means dumping the ads.
By this point ads, and the tracking scripts associated with ad networks, have grown so large that they may cost more in bandwidth than they generate in sales. People are famously hesitant to pay for content, but in this case it’s “free” if it means dumping the ads.
i.reddit.com for the win!
Really, though, I’m part of the problem. The product I’m working on is a heavy JavaScript-based content editor. It’s definitely a much better UX than the lighter weight previous version. But we made the user-facing content pages Preact-based simply to keep our stack consistent. We’re a small team, and that’s been a real time saver.
Hopefully, we’ll get around to optimizing things in the future, but it’s not something anyone other than the dev team cares about.
Really, though, I’m part of the problem. The product I’m working on is a heavy JavaScript-based content editor. It’s definitely a much better UX than the lighter weight previous version. But we made the user-facing content pages Preact-based simply to keep our stack consistent. We’re a small team, and that’s been a real time saver.
Hopefully, we’ll get around to optimizing things in the future, but it’s not something anyone other than the dev team cares about.
The article won't load for me, so I'm not sure if this is about reddit.com in a browser, or the Reddit mobile app. Sounds like the browser, based on other comments. They intentionally make the browser experience as terrible as possible to force people into the app (not that the app is much better). Reddit is hostile to their users and doesn't care about usability.
I realize this is more of an indictment on how crazy expensive data is in Canada but I would like to mention that the "redesigned" Reddit is so bloated, even my i5 Mac mini from last year struggles. And other than the bloat, they also added extra unnecessary white space to make you scroll more (and thus shove move ads in). Also the continuous popups in mobile browser to "Open in official app" is very use hostile. They basically ruined their site on purpose to make users go to their app instead as most apps can't have ad blockers unless you use PiHole or something. If I really need to, I use unofficial Apollo to view Reddit. But other than that, I have pretty much stopped visiting the site.
Every time I wind up on the site without going to old.reddit.com, I get frustrated first but then I become enthralled that the site has been completely broken for years now.
I know there are folks that defend it and possibly enjoy it, but I think they have somehow built the muscle memory to not fuck up and accidentally look the wrong way while browsing.
I know there are folks that defend it and possibly enjoy it, but I think they have somehow built the muscle memory to not fuck up and accidentally look the wrong way while browsing.
I don't know about other countries, but in the UK doing this:
> using the least expensive plan with a (minimum) data allowance of 500 MB over (a minimum of) 30 days
Is just rubbish.
It's just impossible to price things like this, take EE's pricing per GB for a 1 month sim:
* 1GB - £14 - £14 per GB
* 120GB - £20 - £0.16p per GB
* 10GB - £20 - £2 per GB
* 200GB - £23 - $0.115p per GB
* Unlimited - £35
The total price of the cheapest contract is £6 cheaper than the next step up, which is 100 times cheaper per GB.
> using the least expensive plan with a (minimum) data allowance of 500 MB over (a minimum of) 30 days
Is just rubbish.
It's just impossible to price things like this, take EE's pricing per GB for a 1 month sim:
* 1GB - £14 - £14 per GB
* 120GB - £20 - £0.16p per GB
* 10GB - £20 - £2 per GB
* 200GB - £23 - $0.115p per GB
* Unlimited - £35
The total price of the cheapest contract is £6 cheaper than the next step up, which is 100 times cheaper per GB.
Why is 120GB the same price as 10GB?
Because our phone companies are 99.97% marketing. They're constantly trying to market deals and segment their market. So today it just so happens to be 120GB cheap. Next week it might be extortionately expensive. When 5G first came out it was ridiculously expensive to get decent data caps, but I would assume that they now have excess capacity and so they're trying to compete with some other competitor at that price point.
They're also trying to break their old no-longer-economical contracts.
How is the least expensive plan the best case scenario. The prices go down significantly per MB on larger plans.
I wonder how much would it cost to visit CNN
There is lite.cnn.com for a text-only experience.
Use this to automatically redirect to the old.reddit version
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-re...
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirec...
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-re...
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirec...
They could easily reduce that... For example, they use 48x48 images for images that are displayed at 12x12 pixels...
https://i.imgur.com/nMXLd4H.png
https://i.imgur.com/nMXLd4H.png
Not being a web dev, i'm curious why PNGs are used at all? I assumed jpeg would be smaller almost always
Maybe it'd be good if more people had to pay for data? Website owners might actually try to optimize their sites rather than constantly making them worse.
This is BS, it states 3 cents for France, but most people have unlimited plans for 20 euros here.
old.reddit.com is the only way to browse that site. I really don't think I will be able to stay the day they pull the plug on the old version.
And you pay all that and then the page is covered with a giant modal dialog trying to force you to use the mobile app instead of your web browser.
because this is the least expensive plan it is the best case scenario
That is a wildly incorrect claim. The only people I know on limited data plans are elderly. Everyone else is either on a cheap, slow unlimited plan or an expensive, fast unlimited plan. Even if I count my deprioritization quota of 22GB as my "limit" visiting Reddit only costs me 0.16 cents.
That is a wildly incorrect claim. The only people I know on limited data plans are elderly. Everyone else is either on a cheap, slow unlimited plan or an expensive, fast unlimited plan. Even if I count my deprioritization quota of 22GB as my "limit" visiting Reddit only costs me 0.16 cents.
There is a small mistake in the results.
Its Hong Kong not Honk Kong
Its Hong Kong not Honk Kong
The cost numbers does not make any sense for me, you get 8gb for 10 usd in Brazil postpaid, around 3 times lower than the prices used.
Does anyone else just use old.reddit.com since the (now no longer new) site redesign is so awful?
Given all the other things Reddit does, it seems to me this could just be another part of the “ruin the web to push the app” strategy.
Even their mobile site and app has become more hostile and laden with dark patterns.
At this point, I can't even treat Reddit like a collection of community forums anymore... They make it impossible to read a thread when you come in from a Google result (unless you know the cheat code, change www in the url to old) and their content filtering is something out of a dystopian novel written by a schizophrenic bot. Trying to find any specific piece of info? Good luck.
At this point, I can't even treat Reddit like a collection of community forums anymore... They make it impossible to read a thread when you come in from a Google result (unless you know the cheat code, change www in the url to old) and their content filtering is something out of a dystopian novel written by a schizophrenic bot. Trying to find any specific piece of info? Good luck.
I always assumed the push to the app was to give them more control to push whatever content they want down your throat.
As soon as Reddit turns off old.reddit.com I will never return. Their now years old redesign is just horrible. It's bloated, information poor, and has totally ruined the site.
we're all working from home, no one's using mobile data /s
Their data is so wrong.
Fizz for example is for Quebec subscriber only (but offer coverage over the whole country). It's still quite expansive per GB if you get the smallest amount of data, but still you would get for 16$ CAD per month for a 1 GB mobile plan. That means 0.0178$, which is an order of magnitude cheaper than what they said.
I don't know how they got their price, that's really not clear from their page. Canada is a HUGE country, there's not a single provider that has an unique price for the whole country. Some province get far cheaper price for many different reasons (competitive market, population density, type of users, etc...). Even the big providers doesn't keep the same price in every province.
Fizz for example is for Quebec subscriber only (but offer coverage over the whole country). It's still quite expansive per GB if you get the smallest amount of data, but still you would get for 16$ CAD per month for a 1 GB mobile plan. That means 0.0178$, which is an order of magnitude cheaper than what they said.
I don't know how they got their price, that's really not clear from their page. Canada is a HUGE country, there's not a single provider that has an unique price for the whole country. Some province get far cheaper price for many different reasons (competitive market, population density, type of users, etc...). Even the big providers doesn't keep the same price in every province.
While it doesn't change the results by an order of magnitude, reddit.com is very different depending on who's loading it. Just playing with exit points of a VPN provider, I can get mobile website that's anywhere from 500kb to 3mb to load depending on which articles are at the top in a given region. Some regions seem to love articles with big graphics, and some seem to value text articles. Or, it could just be luck of the draw.
Poland is near the bottom of all these graphs (meaning cheapest) and that tracks with my anecdotal experience. When I visited Europe a few years ago, I bought a SIM card in Poland and for just a couple Euro I got 4GB of data. At the time that was significantly cheaper than my own mobile plan at home.
Google Fi (in the US, at least) is $10/GB. So 1000mb is $10, or $.01 per mb. It'd be only $.0139 on Fi.
That's quite a huge difference. The chart even says that US data would be $.09 which is still hugely different.
It claims to use the cheapest plan from the dominant carrier in the country. That doesn't mean that everyone is getting screwed like this, just most people.
They say they get the prices from ITU, but I don't know where on ITU they found that data, but I feel like maybe something is being used wrong.