The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)(cable.co.uk)
cable.co.uk
The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)
https://www.cable.co.uk/mobiles/worldwide-data-pricing/
408 comments
This isn't necessarily true in all cases - I can cite you an opposite example. Pre-covid, I was in Singapore. You pay $10 SGD for 1GB of data ONLY (no calls included). The top network operator in Singapore is state-backed Singtel.
Their network coverage is very poor in many areas within the city. Singapore is almost literally just one big city and yet, the 4G experience is extremely poor.
Also, customer support is very difficult to get hold of, if you're on the prepaid plan. I almost found it a rip off to pay so much for 1GB of 4G data for such a crappy experience.
Now, after my trip, I went to India. I paid $10 for 1.5GB of data DAILY from Airtel (India's top provider) which also includes free unlimited calls. The experience isn't uniform (India is quite huge in comparison to Singapore) but within any tier A city, Airtel is MUCH better than Singtel. Also, the customer support is top notch for the peanuts you pay them and you can find an operator to talk to in usually a minute or less. For comparison, in Singtel, you would have to navigate the crazyily designed IVR and wait for atleast 5+ minutes before you can talk to a real person.
I'm just citing this example to prove that the most expensive 1GB isn't necessarily the best.
Now, after my trip, I went to India. I paid $10 for 1.5GB of data DAILY from Airtel (India's top provider) which also includes free unlimited calls. The experience isn't uniform (India is quite huge in comparison to Singapore) but within any tier A city, Airtel is MUCH better than Singtel. Also, the customer support is top notch for the peanuts you pay them and you can find an operator to talk to in usually a minute or less. For comparison, in Singtel, you would have to navigate the crazyily designed IVR and wait for atleast 5+ minutes before you can talk to a real person.
I'm just citing this example to prove that the most expensive 1GB isn't necessarily the best.
>$10 for 1.5GB of data DAILY.
to be clear you paid $10 and you got 1.5GB daily for a Month, correct? If not you are taken for a ride by Airtel. Jio charges ~$5 for a month and you get 1.5GB daily with unlimited calls.. bandwidth ~40mbps in tier 1 cities and 10mbs tier2 and tier3..
I should have been clear, yes you're correct - I paid $10 for an entire month for 1.5GB of data daily. I'll try out Jio next time, thank you for the recommendation.
I wouldn't recommend it. Jio has too much of a load issue, especially at nights. Airtel isn't the top provider in India, and thankfully so. Airtel is much much faster than Jio, even if it's slightly more expensive.
Misleading. You didn't do five minutes of research.
Singtel (the most expensive telco) has multiple plans for visitors (100GB for $12 + 500mins talk + 1GB roaming + $3 to spend on public transport). If you want prepaid month to month, it's still nowhere in the stratosphere of $10/GB.
Also 4G coverage is virtually 100%, buildings and Faraday cages aside. (source: living in Singapore for 10 years, through 3G to 4G migration)
Singtel (the most expensive telco) has multiple plans for visitors (100GB for $12 + 500mins talk + 1GB roaming + $3 to spend on public transport). If you want prepaid month to month, it's still nowhere in the stratosphere of $10/GB.
Also 4G coverage is virtually 100%, buildings and Faraday cages aside. (source: living in Singapore for 10 years, through 3G to 4G migration)
Nope, those are for tourists. I am not a tourist. I've lived there long enough to know what the rates are.
This is from Singtel Hi menu:
https://i.imgur.com/z6WmqYx.png
Notice it says "Data plans" - They give you only data and claim to give you free incoming only for 20 days as a bonus. That's not even a bonus, in India, you pay nothing for incoming, at least on the Airtel plan I mentioned.
Also, about your point on being expensive - Singtel is the only Telco that doesn't suck in terms of network coverage in the country. Starhub is a close second, with slightly cheaper plans depending on what you're after and M1 is garbage and everyone knows that.
I suggest you try 4G somewhere near Toa Payoh, Bishan, Bedok or even some places within Paya Lebar.
Not sure why you had to be so rude (5 minutes of research?) and created a new account just to contest this..oh well.
This is from Singtel Hi menu:
https://i.imgur.com/z6WmqYx.png
Notice it says "Data plans" - They give you only data and claim to give you free incoming only for 20 days as a bonus. That's not even a bonus, in India, you pay nothing for incoming, at least on the Airtel plan I mentioned.
Also, about your point on being expensive - Singtel is the only Telco that doesn't suck in terms of network coverage in the country. Starhub is a close second, with slightly cheaper plans depending on what you're after and M1 is garbage and everyone knows that.
I suggest you try 4G somewhere near Toa Payoh, Bishan, Bedok or even some places within Paya Lebar.
Not sure why you had to be so rude (5 minutes of research?) and created a new account just to contest this..oh well.
New account because first time I've been compelled to correct something so blatantly wrong.
As other posts have pointed out, $10/GB is not right (tourist plan or not). If you lived here long enough to know what the rates are, why misrepresent it?
As other posts have pointed out, $10/GB is not right (tourist plan or not). If you lived here long enough to know what the rates are, why misrepresent it?
I lived in Singapore and while I was there, I used MyRepublic's mobile plans. The plan I was using was $24(SGD) a month for 17G. Rarely had connectivity issues though for the most part, I stayed in the more populated areas so I may not have had the same connectivity issues as you.
One of the nice things was that each telco would keep changing their plans to be better and better so it paid to pay attention and change plans whenever a better one came along.
One of the nice things was that each telco would keep changing their plans to be better and better so it paid to pay attention and change plans whenever a better one came along.
Thanks Gary, haven't used My Republic personally, but I've tried the rest, and wasn't impressed. Will consider My Republic next time. I travel a lot around Singapore, hence my experience.
> I suggest you try 4G somewhere near Toa Payoh, Bishan, Bedok or even some places within Paya Lebar.
I’m with Singtel and don’t have any problems in those places. I even had 4G on Pulau Ubin today. Singtel has a $25/20GB plan for locals, $10/1GB isn’t really representative of typical plans.
I’m with Singtel and don’t have any problems in those places. I even had 4G on Pulau Ubin today. Singtel has a $25/20GB plan for locals, $10/1GB isn’t really representative of typical plans.
I agree, Pulau Ubin coverage is pretty good, but that isn't indicative of the rest of the places. I'm a consultant and I travel quite a lot around the city.
My criteria isn't just having 4G, but able to actually use it in decent speeds. This is where Singtel sucks for me - the 4G logo will show on your phone, but pages will never load due to poor connectivity, even with 5 bars. I had this issue across three phones - iPhone, Sony and Samsung.
Singtel ALSO seems to do lot of throttling on videos depending on where in the city you're as well.
My criteria isn't just having 4G, but able to actually use it in decent speeds. This is where Singtel sucks for me - the 4G logo will show on your phone, but pages will never load due to poor connectivity, even with 5 bars. I had this issue across three phones - iPhone, Sony and Samsung.
Singtel ALSO seems to do lot of throttling on videos depending on where in the city you're as well.
I'm a Singapore citizen and I've used my Singapore passport to get the tourist SIM cards from M1 before, did some store refuse to sell it to you?
And let's not forget being assumed to be a spammer by almost all sites, getting rate limited or shadowbanned, not to mention being buried with captchas and having to do unpaid labor to train Google's AI just to access some sites! If you're not outright blocked, that is.
All for having an IP address originating from such regions with cheap internet that you can't do much with anyway.
All for having an IP address originating from such regions with cheap internet that you can't do much with anyway.
Oh yeah, I have experienced that for a lot of my life. I didn't realize that that wasn't normal, though. I haven't experienced Canadian internet for long enough.
However, I can definitely say that I have had to solve a lot of captchas and can recall at least one incident where I could only have been banned because I was from Pakistan.
However, I can definitely say that I have had to solve a lot of captchas and can recall at least one incident where I could only have been banned because I was from Pakistan.
It happens often on Reddit, which is really bad with their shadowbanning and associating you with other accounts that you have nothing to do with, probably because crappy ISPs reuse IP addresses for multiple users.
Some ISPs also use a carrier-grade NAT so multiple users share an IP address.
Isn't this almost universally the case for mobile data?
Possibly IPv6 support on both ISP and web service solves this issue.
I suppose so, but I know of multiple Pakistani ISPs that do this with their fiber offerings as well. I don't know if it's standard practice, though.
That really has nothing to do with the quality of the connection (what kind of bandwidth/ping and availability).
It's people misbehaving that causes these types of ban and who are voting for pro-censorship government. They could remove these restrictions overnight if they wanted to.
It's people misbehaving that causes these types of ban and who are voting for pro-censorship government. They could remove these restrictions overnight if they wanted to.
"Unpaid labor to work for Google" a trite, popular meme, but your compensation is access to the site you want access to.
You can thank bad actors for that arrangement.
You can thank bad actors for that arrangement.
Yes, but you are clearly cherrypicking data.
1Gb of internet in Australia ($0.68) is fantastic value compared to 1Gb of internet in Canada ($12.55). Australia's mobile data network is competitive on quality, and is amongst the fastest in the world.
1Gb of internet in Australia ($0.68) is fantastic value compared to 1Gb of internet in Canada ($12.55). Australia's mobile data network is competitive on quality, and is amongst the fastest in the world.
In Canada, we're mostly limited to Bell, Rogers, Telus and Shaw, along with some other provincial crown corporations. Our geography might cause a slight increase in costs, but other than that, limited choice in the market and high barrier to entry keeps our fees high I think.
In Australia we have three physical mobile network operators on a national basis: Telstra, Optus and Vodafone.
All the other brands you see are MVNOs running on mostly Optus and Vodafone, with the occasional one here or there on Telstra.
All the other brands you see are MVNOs running on mostly Optus and Vodafone, with the occasional one here or there on Telstra.
MVNOs are unable to operate in Canada because the carriers mentioned above won’t let new entrants use their networks. It’s how they protect their oligopoly.
There are significantly more MVNOs on Telstra than there are on Vodafone -- I think you'd be surprised how many more. I would hazard this is because there's a giant legislated fence down the middle of Telstra (referred to as "structural separation") that literally demands that Telstra's retail and wholesale divisions not talk to one another.
On a tangent related to that, though, I am very confused about exactly how Australia ended up with such a robust, competitive market when it comes to Internet services.
Importantly, Net Neutrality has never ever ever been a thing in Australia: Zero-rating content has been a thing since the 90s: when my friends had a blisteringly-fast-for-the-times 10mbps cable internet package (with, from memory, a 50GB shaped cap), you wouldn't bother downloading something until it hit the BigPond Games site, where the downloads didn't count towards your cap.
Even now net neutrality is not a thing: All of the physical network operators bundle in unrated Netflix or Spotify or, y'know, whatever. They compete on offering the best value-adds, as opposed to competing on crippling the service the least.
I'm thankful for it, but also it strikes me as particularly odd, in the current times where I expect literally every company to be essentially defrauding little old ladies to turn a buck.
Do any fellow Australians have any idea what the real reason for this is? Is it to do with the early legislation demanding Telstra's wholesale & retail structural separation? The mandatory (again, legislated) wholesale of ADSL by Telstra?
Why does Optus (read: Singtel) play ball? Is it because of the aforementioned issues?
I have so many questions.
On a tangent related to that, though, I am very confused about exactly how Australia ended up with such a robust, competitive market when it comes to Internet services.
Importantly, Net Neutrality has never ever ever been a thing in Australia: Zero-rating content has been a thing since the 90s: when my friends had a blisteringly-fast-for-the-times 10mbps cable internet package (with, from memory, a 50GB shaped cap), you wouldn't bother downloading something until it hit the BigPond Games site, where the downloads didn't count towards your cap.
Even now net neutrality is not a thing: All of the physical network operators bundle in unrated Netflix or Spotify or, y'know, whatever. They compete on offering the best value-adds, as opposed to competing on crippling the service the least.
I'm thankful for it, but also it strikes me as particularly odd, in the current times where I expect literally every company to be essentially defrauding little old ladies to turn a buck.
Do any fellow Australians have any idea what the real reason for this is? Is it to do with the early legislation demanding Telstra's wholesale & retail structural separation? The mandatory (again, legislated) wholesale of ADSL by Telstra?
Why does Optus (read: Singtel) play ball? Is it because of the aforementioned issues?
I have so many questions.
I think one of the main reasons it strong oversight of the sector by both the ACCC and Telecommunications watchdog.
It took a long time to force this, but aggressive competition by regional ISPs (especially Internode and iiNet) forced Telstra to allow access to their ADSL network, and once that was in these and other companies used similar tactics to force open other markets.
Optus aggressively used MVNOs to build market share in mobile markets, and while Telstra still charges a premium the generally decent quality Optus network has kept a cap on how much additional they can charge.
It took a long time to force this, but aggressive competition by regional ISPs (especially Internode and iiNet) forced Telstra to allow access to their ADSL network, and once that was in these and other companies used similar tactics to force open other markets.
Optus aggressively used MVNOs to build market share in mobile markets, and while Telstra still charges a premium the generally decent quality Optus network has kept a cap on how much additional they can charge.
I would suspect genuine regulated competition is the correct answer here (as you spell out). This is in contrast to the monopolies and corruption seen elsewhere. The customer service is still horrible, and NBN remains a disaster.
Customer service is an interesting one.
The independent ISPs (especially Internode and iiNet) had excellent reputations for customer service until they were all taken over by TPG.
Nowadays Aussie Broadband has a pretty good reputation and interestingly has basically followed the same model: not always the absolute cheapest, but competes on benchmarks like speed, and with an engineering-heavy management team.
The independent ISPs (especially Internode and iiNet) had excellent reputations for customer service until they were all taken over by TPG.
Nowadays Aussie Broadband has a pretty good reputation and interestingly has basically followed the same model: not always the absolute cheapest, but competes on benchmarks like speed, and with an engineering-heavy management team.
I cant answer your questions on net neutrality, but I do have fond memories as a teenager of waiting 24 hours after a WoW patch came out to grab it from unmetered from GameArena to save my parent's 13gb download cap.
Optus has the most. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_mobile_vi...
Here's my understanding of it. (I'm sure someone else will correct me on the details)
The tl;dr summary of it is because it was a defence against Telstra's monopolistic practices.
Zero Rating developed because of a few factors:
Telecom Australia were the only providers of international internet connectivity because they owned all the landing points in the country.
Telecom Australia also owned the first comprehensive nation-wide data/internet transit fiber network around the country and to many cities.
Telecom Australia (which was originally entirely government owned) really didn't give a damn about competing - you either paid their price, or you didn't get connection.
I believe Optus may have had access on one or more submarine cables, but that was primarily for phone service.
Telecom Australia eventually became Telstra. They also built an ISP called Bigpond, which was their home-internet brand.
I believe it was Southern Cross Cables that was the first carrier-neutral submarine cable, and that wasn't online until mid/late 2000 in Sydney.
So, the zero-rating of data started as a way of letting Small ISP's customers download content from international sites, without it costing the ISP a fortune.
I remember pretty much every ISP had their own little quota-free services that they'd host themselves. Game servers were a big one, along with patches, mods, maps, movies, and even some would provide mirrors for the early music streaming services like DI.fm
At the same time as all this was happening, various ISPs were setting up and/or peering with the first IXs and allowing users to access services on the other ISPs for free. At first this was just within your state, but then some ISPs built up interstate capacity and allowed free access to content in other states.
This was coinciding with the rollout of ADSL, again which outside of the capital cities - was largely a Telstra undertaking at first. For Telstra, they already owned all the copper, fibre, and buildings to put it in - so it was a relatively cheap proposition. There was a lot of disputes between Telstra and ACCC over whether Telstra would be required to provide access to their copper network and also the ADSL Network, and under what terms. Eventually other ISPs won the right to install their own ADSL gear in Telstra exchanges (although Telstra screwed with that as much as possible) and so they built out/extended fibre networks to all the phone exchanges for this.
Telstra also made their own online services (Bigpond Movies/Music/Sports/Games/etc) quota free to their own customers. My understanding is that they still didn't do a settlement free peering for access to that data.
Optus effectively followed Telstra's lead in everything with few exceptions.
The tl;dr summary of it is because it was a defence against Telstra's monopolistic practices.
Zero Rating developed because of a few factors:
Telecom Australia were the only providers of international internet connectivity because they owned all the landing points in the country.
Telecom Australia also owned the first comprehensive nation-wide data/internet transit fiber network around the country and to many cities.
Telecom Australia (which was originally entirely government owned) really didn't give a damn about competing - you either paid their price, or you didn't get connection.
I believe Optus may have had access on one or more submarine cables, but that was primarily for phone service.
Telecom Australia eventually became Telstra. They also built an ISP called Bigpond, which was their home-internet brand.
I believe it was Southern Cross Cables that was the first carrier-neutral submarine cable, and that wasn't online until mid/late 2000 in Sydney.
So, the zero-rating of data started as a way of letting Small ISP's customers download content from international sites, without it costing the ISP a fortune.
I remember pretty much every ISP had their own little quota-free services that they'd host themselves. Game servers were a big one, along with patches, mods, maps, movies, and even some would provide mirrors for the early music streaming services like DI.fm
At the same time as all this was happening, various ISPs were setting up and/or peering with the first IXs and allowing users to access services on the other ISPs for free. At first this was just within your state, but then some ISPs built up interstate capacity and allowed free access to content in other states.
This was coinciding with the rollout of ADSL, again which outside of the capital cities - was largely a Telstra undertaking at first. For Telstra, they already owned all the copper, fibre, and buildings to put it in - so it was a relatively cheap proposition. There was a lot of disputes between Telstra and ACCC over whether Telstra would be required to provide access to their copper network and also the ADSL Network, and under what terms. Eventually other ISPs won the right to install their own ADSL gear in Telstra exchanges (although Telstra screwed with that as much as possible) and so they built out/extended fibre networks to all the phone exchanges for this.
Telstra also made their own online services (Bigpond Movies/Music/Sports/Games/etc) quota free to their own customers. My understanding is that they still didn't do a settlement free peering for access to that data.
Optus effectively followed Telstra's lead in everything with few exceptions.
When Shaw purchased Freedom, I was optimistic that they would put a serious amount of money into building a sufficient number of rooftop, monopole and tower LTE last mile access sites to be serious competition to Bell, Telus and Rogers. Sadly this has not been the case. The network coverage even in the major metro areas of Vancouver and Toronto is very poor compared to the others.
I think Shaw sees much better ROI from their last-mile captive DOCSIS3/DOCSIS3.1 cable customers. Many of whom are on places where the local telco is years away from doing a real GPON FTTH overbuild. So it's 150Mbps+ DOCSIS3 service options vs 10-15Mbps ADSL2+ on long loop length copper.
I think Shaw sees much better ROI from their last-mile captive DOCSIS3/DOCSIS3.1 cable customers. Many of whom are on places where the local telco is years away from doing a real GPON FTTH overbuild. So it's 150Mbps+ DOCSIS3 service options vs 10-15Mbps ADSL2+ on long loop length copper.
I do not regard the parent as cherry picking data at all.
I travel a lot, internet experience varies wildly especially in locations where restrictions are in place. For example typing this on a phone in a coffee shop in China, VPNd as for some non-reason HackerNews is blocked.
MBps has with it a lot of nuance, and then infra.
I travel a lot, internet experience varies wildly especially in locations where restrictions are in place. For example typing this on a phone in a coffee shop in China, VPNd as for some non-reason HackerNews is blocked.
MBps has with it a lot of nuance, and then infra.
Maybe if you compared the EU to NA, and ME with other ME, and SEA with other SEA you would have less cherry picking going on. Apples to apples.
The internet in MY is pretty different from VN, or even a skip across the border to SG. Not easy to pick a spot on the globe and assume everything in the vicinity is the same. Even ISPs in the US.
1GB in India is pretty cheap+good. A small amount of stupid censorship but otherwise pretty solid.
I lived in Canada for about ten years. It's a ridiculously expensive place in terms of food and internet costs. At the time I was pleased because the best connections we had in India were 1Mbps. When I moved back I was happy to see we had way better internet, digital payments and banking services.
I lived in Canada for about ten years. It's a ridiculously expensive place in terms of food and internet costs. At the time I was pleased because the best connections we had in India were 1Mbps. When I moved back I was happy to see we had way better internet, digital payments and banking services.
Nitpick: 1Gb is only an eighth of 1GB and I think you meant the latter.
I knew the difference between a gigabit and a gigabyte but didn't know there were official symbol units for them. According to Wikipedia a gigabit is indeed Gb and a gigabyte is GB.
Having the only difference be case was always bound to cause confusion. :/
Having the only difference be case was always bound to cause confusion. :/
Yes, I hate that, not only since sometimes people accidentally get it wrong like just now, but what if it's in all lowercase? What is 32gb? Oh it's multiple of 8 so it might be bits.... Imagine how great this world would be if we just settled on gbit for bits and any variation of GB for bytes.
32 gb is a bit weird. But when people write mb, it should be read as "millibit", which is terribly small.
> Australia's mobile data network is competitive on quality, and is amongst the fastest in the world.
Really? That hasn’t been my experience — and granted I’ve never lived in Australia or spent much time out of Sydney but I was there for 10 days in February and even though I paid for 4G Plus or whatever Optus calls LTE, speeds weren’t even comparable to what I can get in the US and were truly behind what I got in Seoul (where I was right after I was in Sydney). The only research I’ve seen that indicates Australia is amongst the fastest comes from research that is based on maximum speeds, not average speeds.
I can appreciate that Australia has robust cellular networks (assuming the user doesn’t live somewhere where they are forced to use satellite), in part because home internet speeds are so poor, but I wouldn’t put it in even the top 10 of parts of the world I’ve visited for internet speeds.
Really? That hasn’t been my experience — and granted I’ve never lived in Australia or spent much time out of Sydney but I was there for 10 days in February and even though I paid for 4G Plus or whatever Optus calls LTE, speeds weren’t even comparable to what I can get in the US and were truly behind what I got in Seoul (where I was right after I was in Sydney). The only research I’ve seen that indicates Australia is amongst the fastest comes from research that is based on maximum speeds, not average speeds.
I can appreciate that Australia has robust cellular networks (assuming the user doesn’t live somewhere where they are forced to use satellite), in part because home internet speeds are so poor, but I wouldn’t put it in even the top 10 of parts of the world I’ve visited for internet speeds.
YMMV depending on where you are and what network, but Australia was the first place I managed to do 100 Mbps speediest on LTE (this was a few years ago, now I can get 200 Mbps where I live). I spent my time in the more rural parts of the country and was on Telstra though.
Not sure where the data comes from but in my experience mobile data is very expensive in Australia
> whatever Optus calls LTE
Optus is terrible. It's worth paying a slight premium for Telstra 4G. I'm on a 45gb cell phone plan for AUD$60 and it works everywhere, even in tunnels or remote areas, with speeds that shame my Fibre To The Building connection (though not in latency). My work laptop uses Optus and regularly loses connection despite being in an inner city suburb and close to a cell tower.
Optus is terrible. It's worth paying a slight premium for Telstra 4G. I'm on a 45gb cell phone plan for AUD$60 and it works everywhere, even in tunnels or remote areas, with speeds that shame my Fibre To The Building connection (though not in latency). My work laptop uses Optus and regularly loses connection despite being in an inner city suburb and close to a cell tower.
They are clearly limiting their commentary to personal experience, something I can't believe you're trying to spin into being controversial.
I would say in England £20 gets you roughly 20gb of good quality internet, but there are lots of plans that will sell you way more for way less with poor coverage and throttling.
The post implies that they found a rate which was $2 for 20gb in the U.K. in their cheapest tarrif - which I assume was some sort of ‘unlimited capped at 200gb for £15’ style deal which would be heavily throtttled.
The post implies that they found a rate which was $2 for 20gb in the U.K. in their cheapest tarrif - which I assume was some sort of ‘unlimited capped at 200gb for £15’ style deal which would be heavily throtttled.
Important point. I was talking to my brother in India. Last month internet service was down in their building for 4 days. Unlike folks who go apoplectic over this, he understands that 3rd world prices do not come with first world service quality in practice.
Most people do not have an option to move across continents just because somethings are cheaper there. And internet service is one small part of overall things one has do deal with in their daily lives.
Another way to cheaper price is that most jobs done in first world is to be outsourced to much cheaper places, which is happening. Or push lot of middle class jobs to subsistence level jobs, which is also happening.
Most people do not have an option to move across continents just because somethings are cheaper there. And internet service is one small part of overall things one has do deal with in their daily lives.
Another way to cheaper price is that most jobs done in first world is to be outsourced to much cheaper places, which is happening. Or push lot of middle class jobs to subsistence level jobs, which is also happening.
Although, the benefit of having cheap mobile internet / Fiber broadband plans is - you can have multiple redundant backup services!
I spend a few months a year in Mumbai, India.
I have a truly unlimited 300Mbps fiber connection as the primary source ($25/Mo), a second 100 Mbps connection from a different company as backup ($10/Mo) and my mobile LTE as the third backup ($10/Mo). AND my international roaming US Google Fi network as the 4th backup for $10/GB :)
This setup does work pretty well for me.The backups have come in handy at times.
I spend a few months a year in Mumbai, India.
I have a truly unlimited 300Mbps fiber connection as the primary source ($25/Mo), a second 100 Mbps connection from a different company as backup ($10/Mo) and my mobile LTE as the third backup ($10/Mo). AND my international roaming US Google Fi network as the 4th backup for $10/GB :)
This setup does work pretty well for me.The backups have come in handy at times.
you can have multiple redundant backup services!
My mom had slow DSL for years 6Mbps/1Mbps through the local phone company. They had stopped offering DSL to new customers for years.
I had to stay with her one summer while we were literally between places to stay. Our lease was up and our house was being built.
She got cable internet so I could work. She now has Had both DSL and cable for four years just so she will have backup internet and if she cancels the DSL she won’t be able to get it back.
My mom had slow DSL for years 6Mbps/1Mbps through the local phone company. They had stopped offering DSL to new customers for years.
I had to stay with her one summer while we were literally between places to stay. Our lease was up and our house was being built.
She got cable internet so I could work. She now has Had both DSL and cable for four years just so she will have backup internet and if she cancels the DSL she won’t be able to get it back.
>Important point. I was talking to my brother in India. Last month internet service was down in their building for 4 days. Unlike folks who go apoplectic over this, he understands that 3rd world prices do not come with first world service quality in practice.
4 days is pretty good turn around time for most US cities that aren't NY or SF.
4 days is pretty good turn around time for most US cities that aren't NY or SF.
It was just his building or may be apartment complex. I imagine city wide outages are more severe and likely due to some event like storm etc.
At least in India, the situation is far better now in terms of reliability. My internet goes down maybe once in 5-6 months, and when it does, it's back within 24 hours. Mobile internet is cheap and fast enough (I pay around $7 for 84 GB) that I can use it as backup.
My work is entirely online. I haven't worried about not having internet for a while.
My work is entirely online. I haven't worried about not having internet for a while.
fwiw many of my coworkers in the Northeast US suffered multiday internet and power outages due to the storm that forced them to either take days off or travel >30m to find places with internet.
This sounds like an uncommon occurrence sure to an act of nature unlike what op was suggesting
miles? minutes? metres? My high school maths teacher would like a word
Haha, completely fair. Though outside of cities, 30 miles == 30 minutes.
I meant minutes.
I meant minutes.
Oh, I though 30 miles outside of cities meant 15-18 minutes.
Driving 100 to 120 miles per hour?
Metres, obviously. Miles and minutes have different acronyms.
> "due to the storm that forced them to either take days off or travel >30m [metres] to find places with internet."
Is it "travel" if you walk 30 metres? :)
Is it "travel" if you walk 30 metres? :)
I was wondering that too, but it says metres, and I'm not one to claim that another is lying. :)
> Last month internet service was down in their building for 4 days
I don't live in India, but if it happened in an individual building that sounds like perhaps this was due to management of that building and was just an isolated incident.
I don't live in India, but if it happened in an individual building that sounds like perhaps this was due to management of that building and was just an isolated incident.
For buildings and apartment complexes, they usually have a dedicated switch/line (I don't know the technical term).
So, it's most likely that the cable got damaged due to bad weather (rainy season, laying out cable open to the sky), or the closest switch suffered a damage due to electricity fluctuations. These are the 2 main reasons for internet going down for that long. With me, it usually happens during a power cut. While I have UPS power backup and my router keeps running, it seems the local (geographical) area hub doesn't and internet goes down for 5 minutes.
So, it's most likely that the cable got damaged due to bad weather (rainy season, laying out cable open to the sky), or the closest switch suffered a damage due to electricity fluctuations. These are the 2 main reasons for internet going down for that long. With me, it usually happens during a power cut. While I have UPS power backup and my router keeps running, it seems the local (geographical) area hub doesn't and internet goes down for 5 minutes.
Your comment makes a strong implication that prices are correlated with quality (and thus attempts to provide justification for price gouging by Canadian telcos) but the rest of the data makes it clear that’s not the case.
The comment really doesn't and I don't think you can conclude that generalization in another way either because there are too many counterexamples in the map. There's no way the expensive Internet in Uganda is superior to Sweden's. Furthermore, qualitiy varies much more in the US than it does in Sweden where its universally high quality and slightly cheaper. French and German internet are both pretty good but seem to differ greatly in price. Portuguese internet isn't that much worse than Spanish (unless you count the annoying setup for Portugal.) Check the map for even more counter examples.
If I had to guess the prices probably have more to do with subsidies, general infrastructure quality and competition than resultant quality.
If I had to guess the prices probably have more to do with subsidies, general infrastructure quality and competition than resultant quality.
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I didn't mean to, nor did I imply that price and quality are correlated. I gave the prices as a quick reference to the link, and the commentary is my own personal experience. You're welcome to interpret it however you like, but please don't credit me for how you interpret it.
Maybe, but those numbers are basically bullshit in terms of the real cost to get a phone plan with 1GB of data. I WISH 1GB of data was $12 in Canada.
Unless you’re willing to make some huge concessions you won’t find a phone plan with unlimited calling, unlimited texting, and 1GB of data for less than $40 CAD / month. I currently do BYOD + 3Mb/s throttle + no support + low priority on saturated towers (IMO but not provable) for $23 per month.
I wish the government would set reasonable pay per use data rates and make all the carriers abide by them. $12 / GB would be a godsend for low end, price sensitive users.
Unless you’re willing to make some huge concessions you won’t find a phone plan with unlimited calling, unlimited texting, and 1GB of data for less than $40 CAD / month. I currently do BYOD + 3Mb/s throttle + no support + low priority on saturated towers (IMO but not provable) for $23 per month.
I wish the government would set reasonable pay per use data rates and make all the carriers abide by them. $12 / GB would be a godsend for low end, price sensitive users.
Last month my Fido bill was $21.11 CAD for both my girlfriend's (4Gb) and my (3Gb) plan. Due to a variety of factors, including (read: entirely due to) generous CS reps, both are heavily discounted.
Note these are data-only plans, without SMS or calling. We use the Acrobits softphone (iPhone) or the built-in voip client (de-Googled Android) with voip.ms for
- Voice calls
- SMS/MMS (in-app, forwarded to any cell number, or via any email client)
- Transcribed voicemail
- Automatic call recording, and
- Spam-call blocking by configuring an IVR (spam callers can't press "1" to continue).
I've no relation to Acrobits, Fido, or voip.ms aside from being a customer, though I happily recommend all three.
Note these are data-only plans, without SMS or calling. We use the Acrobits softphone (iPhone) or the built-in voip client (de-Googled Android) with voip.ms for
- Voice calls
- SMS/MMS (in-app, forwarded to any cell number, or via any email client)
- Transcribed voicemail
- Automatic call recording, and
- Spam-call blocking by configuring an IVR (spam callers can't press "1" to continue).
I've no relation to Acrobits, Fido, or voip.ms aside from being a customer, though I happily recommend all three.
You got some pretty great discounts according to https://www.fido.ca/nac/choose-plan?type=byod
Isn't Fido Toronto only or have they changed that? (it's been a while since I checked)
Also worth mentioning is this marketing thing where each of the major carriers own several cheap carriers. E.g. Roger's has: Fido, Chatr, Cityfone, Primus, Zoomer, and SimplyConnect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_mobile_phone_...
Isn't Fido Toronto only or have they changed that? (it's been a while since I checked)
Also worth mentioning is this marketing thing where each of the major carriers own several cheap carriers. E.g. Roger's has: Fido, Chatr, Cityfone, Primus, Zoomer, and SimplyConnect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_mobile_phone_...
I think you're over-estimating the discounts - the plans you linked were for talk, text, and data. The plans I'm talking about are here[1] at nearly the very bottom of the page.
Current plans listed are 4Gb for $10/month, though they would require being paired with a voip provider, as I mentioned above.
Fido is available nation-wide, AFAIK. You're likely thinking of Wind. Originally available in select cities (such as Toronto or Vancouver), they were bought out by Shaw in... 2015 (?) I believe, and renamed to Freedom Mobile. They are currently available in most major cities, and rely on roaming in less densely populated areas.
[1] https://www.fido.ca/consumer/tablets
Current plans listed are 4Gb for $10/month, though they would require being paired with a voip provider, as I mentioned above.
Fido is available nation-wide, AFAIK. You're likely thinking of Wind. Originally available in select cities (such as Toronto or Vancouver), they were bought out by Shaw in... 2015 (?) I believe, and renamed to Freedom Mobile. They are currently available in most major cities, and rely on roaming in less densely populated areas.
[1] https://www.fido.ca/consumer/tablets
Fido has Data-only 4GB "tablet" plans for $10. You do need another existing Fido plan though.
I'm with Public Mobile (they're owned by Telus now) and I'm paying $8/month right now. I don't use much data so I just recharge that when I need to. If you want to use my discount code I'll be paying even less ;) though tbh I think their cheapest plan is now $15 before any discounts. You can buy 1GB of data for $15 (which if you don't use carries forward) i.e. the official undiscounted price would be $30/month.
You’re throttled to 3Mb/s, right? I’m already using PM. 1GB @ 3Mb/s is good enough for about 10 hours of RDP, so I’m satisfied with it. I was mainly pointing out that to get to $12 / GB you have to be jumping through some serious hoops or adding it to a high tier plan, so the number in the OP is almost fictitious IMO.
The real metric to be concerned with should be the cost of the first GB.
The real metric to be concerned with should be the cost of the first GB.
>for my Canadian internet plan.
What is a "Canadian internet plan"? Service is far different in rural Northern Ontario than it is in Toronto.
What is a "Canadian internet plan"? Service is far different in rural Northern Ontario than it is in Toronto.
I was barely an hour outside of Ottawa in the Gatineau Hills last week and didn't have usable coverage.
My bad, Toronto for me. Still a bit new to Canada to it's all Canadian to me.
I doubt any Canadian plan has any kind of censoring the previous poster mentioned.
Does it call out IRC servers specifically? Or any type of server?
It probably does, and you'll find lots of ISPs, VPS and hosting providers also forbid IRC servers. The main reason for the blanket ban is that once upon a time (and perhaps still) IRC servers were widely used for malicious bot command and control systems and it's easier to just forbid them at all than pay people to spend their time sorting the good guys from the bad guys.
Even legitimate IRC servers are DoS attack magnets.
You know, I just checked, and they seem to have been removed those references. But from what I recall the reference was explicitly IRC. I remember thinking, "Why IRC?"
The levels of salt and free time available to the most dedicated of IRC users when slighted is a sight to behold.
Pakistan and PayPal is really a special case. It has nothing to with the telecoms infrastructure and everything do with a legal dispute between the government of Pakistan and PayPal. PayPal is not available in Turkey, either, for similar reasons.
Doesn't all of that censorship make .pk internet access more expensive than it would be?
Firewalls and maintaining them aren't free. Cheaper to let it all pass through, especially when it isn't harmful to the network itself.
Firewalls and maintaining them aren't free. Cheaper to let it all pass through, especially when it isn't harmful to the network itself.
Amortized over 100m customers, in a country where network engineers can be found for $250/month, they're pretty close to free.
It's easy to underestimate how profitable it is to run a telco
It's easy to underestimate how profitable it is to run a telco
Running a telco is not that expensive. The problem is that building out the infrastructure in the first place is hugely expensive.
This is why most countries have only a few "real" operators that own and operate infra, and tons of virtual operators (MVNO) that run on top of others' gear.
This is why most countries have only a few "real" operators that own and operate infra, and tons of virtual operators (MVNO) that run on top of others' gear.
Sure, but that just means it's an irrelevant factor when comparing low vs. high telecom costs.
Though my thinking is when selling censorship equipment to a country, you probably charge a country like .pk more because you know they'll find a way to pay for best-in-class.
Though my thinking is when selling censorship equipment to a country, you probably charge a country like .pk more because you know they'll find a way to pay for best-in-class.
They were doing the bare minimum at first. PTA would order the ISPs to censor resources which would implement the block alone and that's it. Easy to bypass with HTTPS, a 3rd party DNS server, or a VPN. They've since bought an $18.5m web monitoring system from Sandvine and centralized the censorship under PTA. The companies don't deal with it anymore: https://www.codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/surveillance/pa...
I’m currently travelling through Italy and I can have full strength 4G but almost no data connectivity. I don’t know how anyone manages to use their data allowance here.
They're probably not using a UK plan.
Have you got a new SIM from a local operator (which one?) or are you using your old one ? In the last case perhaps there is a problem in the roaming config.
In Italy the connection is pretty good (50 down /10 up Mbps), at least in the urban areas.
Basic contracts give you unlimited voice, unlimited texts, 50-70GB/month for about €8.
Depends on where you are of course - a friend of mine sent me a speedtest screenshot amused at how his download speed on a mobile connection in northern Italy was ten times faster (literally) than his ADSL connection in south London!
Surely, they can't be MITMing HTTPS traffic without Cloudflare's blessing?
Services not being available by region, that can be a bummer but that's not really a problem on internet service provider as such.
Also, I am surprised that one more country is building a GFW.
Services not being available by region, that can be a bummer but that's not really a problem on internet service provider as such.
Also, I am surprised that one more country is building a GFW.
They can still do it, you'll just get a cert error. Also, if you're using a phone provided by them they could preload a CA they control.
That's interesting, I wonder if iOS/Android phones in China do something similar. I would be really surprised if Apple allows this.
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There are a lot of reports of certificate issues (on Cloudflare) in Pakistan as well as Iran, with most of them likely because of censorship.
https://community.cloudflare.com/search?q=Pakistan
https://community.cloudflare.com/search?q=Iran
https://community.cloudflare.com/search?q=Pakistan
https://community.cloudflare.com/search?q=Iran
It would be possible for an ISP to MITM the traffic between Cloudflare and the origin server since it can be configured to be done via unencrypted HTTP or non-trusted certs on HTTPS (flexible SSL). See https://medium.com/@karthikb351/airtel-is-sniffing-and-censo... for an example of Cloudflare serving a MITM notice page for pirate bay.
Yes, that or they just cut the connection to the origin entirely.
To be fair, China Mobile 200GB package worked for me flawlessly in Islamabad, and Lahore.
https://www.zong.com.pk/internet/mbb-plans
https://www.zong.com.pk/internet/mbb-plans
1 GB of internet in France ($0.81) == 1 GB of internet in Canada ($12.55). Canadian prices are exorbitant. The key is true concurrency.
I suspect most people are comparing the access they have to not having had access before though, not to canadian access
I just don't see how access is even really relevant to the cost. Content restriction seems like a governmental thing, unrelated to service providers. IT's not like the Pakistani internet is cheap because of the resitrictions.
If I understand the methodology correctly this study seems to penalize unlimited plans quite a lot. In the linked methodology pdf they specify that the price for 1 GB of data for unlimited plans is calculated by dividing by the average data usage per user but limited plans are divided by the limit.
For example in Finland almost all plans are unlimited and users regularly use a lot of mobile data. Average monthly use is 34 GB and median 6 GB [0]. The cheapest mobile plan I can find is 9.90€/month for unlimited data at 1 Mbit/s [1]. Dividing it by 6 GB median data use gives $1.95 for 1 GB which is close to the their reported minimum price of $1.75. However if this plan was instead marketed with 100 GB monthly cap they would have divided it by 100 GB instead giving a much cheaper price.
[0] https://blog.telegeography.com/finns-lead-the-way-in-mobile-... [1] https://elisa.fi/kauppa/puhelinliittymat
For example in Finland almost all plans are unlimited and users regularly use a lot of mobile data. Average monthly use is 34 GB and median 6 GB [0]. The cheapest mobile plan I can find is 9.90€/month for unlimited data at 1 Mbit/s [1]. Dividing it by 6 GB median data use gives $1.95 for 1 GB which is close to the their reported minimum price of $1.75. However if this plan was instead marketed with 100 GB monthly cap they would have divided it by 100 GB instead giving a much cheaper price.
[0] https://blog.telegeography.com/finns-lead-the-way-in-mobile-... [1] https://elisa.fi/kauppa/puhelinliittymat
I live in Lithuania and that also appears to be the case here. The cheapest mobile plans from the main operators start at around 8€/mo for 1GB data with unlimited calls and texts. To be fair I would say these type of plans are actually quite expensive compared to the rest of Europe. But there are plenty of data-only plans which work out a lot cheaper.
The cheapest provider sells unlimited data for 2.90€/mo, but the speed is limited and they are a smaller player so their coverage is too. From the big players, truly unlimited data with no speed caps is 20€/mo (the largest capped plan is 120GB for 11€/mo, 0.09c/GB). And of course they have discounts if you have other services from the same provider.
The cheapest provider sells unlimited data for 2.90€/mo, but the speed is limited and they are a smaller player so their coverage is too. From the big players, truly unlimited data with no speed caps is 20€/mo (the largest capped plan is 120GB for 11€/mo, 0.09c/GB). And of course they have discounts if you have other services from the same provider.
[deleted]
We also have "unlimited" plans in Spain, however at +40€ typically, and under "fair use" use clauses.
The question is always what fair use is. Phone contracts with unlimited data set the fair use clause in Austria to 1.5TB a month and have no such limitation for data only sim cards (home use).
On the other hand unlimited in Germany often means ISDN speeds after 50GB.
On the other hand unlimited in Germany often means ISDN speeds after 50GB.
I live in Switzerland and we have quite a lot of unlimited plans without speed limit after a certain amount of data. Also the price in relation to income is not that high. If I compare it to Germany, where you can get no real unlimited plan and very often have a bad signal even in cities, and also in relationship to the income there, Germany seems to earn a place much lower on the list.
So this comparison seems a bit odd, and should be divided into prepaid plans with limited data packages and unlimited plans.
Fair use is loosely defined in most of Spanish ISP, and sometimes not enforced.
In reality it means "as long as you don't overload your nearest BTS very often and we get complains from other customers, you're good to go".
In reality it means "as long as you don't overload your nearest BTS very often and we get complains from other customers, you're good to go".
Not true. I have unlimited data in Germany for 40€/month and my fair use is 999GB.
Israeli here, pay 7$ for 200GB of data (well I pay 14$ for 400GB and use one as home internet backup because it is cheap).
It used to be quite expensive here at around $100/mo for 10GB but the government broke up the monopoly and forced competition into the market by making existing players share infrastructure. We went up from main 3 providers to around 10 and prices dropped sharply.
My government screws up quite a lot in my opinion but credit is due and that reform was quite successful.
It used to be quite expensive here at around $100/mo for 10GB but the government broke up the monopoly and forced competition into the market by making existing players share infrastructure. We went up from main 3 providers to around 10 and prices dropped sharply.
My government screws up quite a lot in my opinion but credit is due and that reform was quite successful.
> by making existing players share infrastructure.
This is exactly what US needs to do to bring back competition. Sadly even Wheeler who reclassified Internet to Title II, excluded that part of it.
Back in late 90s and early 2000, we had huge competition, exactly because of Title II (DSL, which ruled the net back then, because was under telecos automatically was under Title II, so your phone lines could be leased to other companies). In 2003 Internet was officially classified under Title I which ended this (including net neutrality) and here we are now.
This is exactly what US needs to do to bring back competition. Sadly even Wheeler who reclassified Internet to Title II, excluded that part of it.
Back in late 90s and early 2000, we had huge competition, exactly because of Title II (DSL, which ruled the net back then, because was under telecos automatically was under Title II, so your phone lines could be leased to other companies). In 2003 Internet was officially classified under Title I which ended this (including net neutrality) and here we are now.
There are a lot of mobile players who lease towers though, and prices are still high.
I wasn't talking about mobile, although given that article is about mobile, my bad I didn't clarify.
I meant about wired Internet access. Running 10 wires to your house to have access to 10 ISPs is expensive and it's also a nightmare for the city. It is extremely wasteful because most people will only use one of them at the time.
That's why requirement to lease is essential (ideally it should be a different entity that does this, like it's typically done in data centers). Currently the incumbents won't lease, because that will open door to competition, so this needs to be mandated.
Going back to mobile providers, actually I believe they are under Title II and this is mandated. Though, because wireless bandwidth is limited, they are in their right to prioritize their own consumers. So if you use providers that lease other towers usually your coverage is worse than if you were direct consumer, but at least it is possible, unlike wired ISPs.
I meant about wired Internet access. Running 10 wires to your house to have access to 10 ISPs is expensive and it's also a nightmare for the city. It is extremely wasteful because most people will only use one of them at the time.
That's why requirement to lease is essential (ideally it should be a different entity that does this, like it's typically done in data centers). Currently the incumbents won't lease, because that will open door to competition, so this needs to be mandated.
Going back to mobile providers, actually I believe they are under Title II and this is mandated. Though, because wireless bandwidth is limited, they are in their right to prioritize their own consumers. So if you use providers that lease other towers usually your coverage is worse than if you were direct consumer, but at least it is possible, unlike wired ISPs.
> I meant about wired Internet access. Running 10 wires to your house to have access to 10 ISPs is expensive and it's also a nightmare for the city. It is extremely wasteful because most people will only use one of them at the time.
In Paris, you don't need to run separate cables into a building for each ISP. Orange Telecom owns the infrastructure and leases it out to the different ISPs. They then share the cables but have different end point hardware where the main trunk lines hook into the apartment buildings. Perhaps this is different in other residential communities, but from what I gather, once the infrastructure and wiring is in place, consumers can switch between ISPs and need only switch modems. Switching from Orange to another ISP would not need rewiring.
My only problem with this "natural monopoly" method is it ensures a minimum price, which is not really decided by competition, but more likely on the return on cost to wire the country for fiber as agreed on with the government who owns 23% of the company. Then there's a lot of skullduggery with contracts (e.g. first 3 months for $19.99 then it shoots up to $50, some ISPs have 6-month contracts, others are month to month with no penalty if you disconnect).
France does a lot of things like this, which makes sense when dealing with national infrastructure, but it doesn't quite do the consumer justice when the ISPs are rentiers selling bandwidth. I can only imagine how quickly it will take them to recoup their costs of wiring fiber.
I bet the US could benefit a lot by sharing infrastructure, but it doesn't necessarily mean all will be perfect.
In Paris, you don't need to run separate cables into a building for each ISP. Orange Telecom owns the infrastructure and leases it out to the different ISPs. They then share the cables but have different end point hardware where the main trunk lines hook into the apartment buildings. Perhaps this is different in other residential communities, but from what I gather, once the infrastructure and wiring is in place, consumers can switch between ISPs and need only switch modems. Switching from Orange to another ISP would not need rewiring.
My only problem with this "natural monopoly" method is it ensures a minimum price, which is not really decided by competition, but more likely on the return on cost to wire the country for fiber as agreed on with the government who owns 23% of the company. Then there's a lot of skullduggery with contracts (e.g. first 3 months for $19.99 then it shoots up to $50, some ISPs have 6-month contracts, others are month to month with no penalty if you disconnect).
France does a lot of things like this, which makes sense when dealing with national infrastructure, but it doesn't quite do the consumer justice when the ISPs are rentiers selling bandwidth. I can only imagine how quickly it will take them to recoup their costs of wiring fiber.
I bet the US could benefit a lot by sharing infrastructure, but it doesn't necessarily mean all will be perfect.
Similar in Switzerland. There are multiple providers building FTTH infrastructure and wiring houses. But each house is only wired once and the government mandates that if you build FTTH infrastructure, you have to rent out the (dark) fiber to anyone else under fair conditions (not quite sure if the gov sets the exact price or not).
This did quite a lot for competition here. Speeds went up and prices went down significantly. Small independent ISPs started renting the last mile and offering symmetric gbit at affordable prices which forced the old established ISPs to also drop prices and offer symmetric instead of artificially restricting upload speeds on fiber.
This did quite a lot for competition here. Speeds went up and prices went down significantly. Small independent ISPs started renting the last mile and offering symmetric gbit at affordable prices which forced the old established ISPs to also drop prices and offer symmetric instead of artificially restricting upload speeds on fiber.
> It used to be quite expensive here at around $100/mo for 10GB but the government broke up the monopoly and forced competition into the market by making existing players share infrastructure. We went up from main 3 providers to around 10 and prices dropped sharply.
Exact same thing happened in France when the opened up phone operators for regular lines (not mobile). They made competitors rent the existing infrastructure and then compete on pricing/services. We went from paying for every call minute to unlimited phone plans very quickly.
Exact same thing happened in France when the opened up phone operators for regular lines (not mobile). They made competitors rent the existing infrastructure and then compete on pricing/services. We went from paying for every call minute to unlimited phone plans very quickly.
Also in Poland in 00s. Huge improvement.
ex-Israeli here (currently living in Portugal).
This was perhaps the biggest step that was take to reduce the prices in Israel, but not the only one. Other notable ones:
1. Ban plan cancellation fees - You can cancel your plan anytime you want without any fees, always. There isn't even an option to choose between plans with cancellation fees and without, it's just not allowed. 2. Reducing the complexity to move to a different carrier - All you have to do is tell the new carrier and they will do the rest, and you get to keep the number if you choose to
Unfortunately in Portugal cancellation fees are still a thing, I think this is a big factor for competition
1. Ban plan cancellation fees - You can cancel your plan anytime you want without any fees, always. There isn't even an option to choose between plans with cancellation fees and without, it's just not allowed. 2. Reducing the complexity to move to a different carrier - All you have to do is tell the new carrier and they will do the rest, and you get to keep the number if you choose to
Unfortunately in Portugal cancellation fees are still a thing, I think this is a big factor for competition
That’s awesome! I wonder how people could achieve similar success in canada or the usa. In canada we have Bell, Videotron, Rogers.. there are some small companies that “sub-lease” the service. Also, there were mergers so I don’t remember if Rogers is still around.
In any case, I believe politicians have ties with these companies (and probably own shares) and will not encourage movements trying to split the manypoly apart.
In any case, I believe politicians have ties with these companies (and probably own shares) and will not encourage movements trying to split the manypoly apart.
And then there’s Saskatchewan, where SaskTel is a gov’t owned telco. Their prices are not great, but they provide service through the vast majority of the inhabited portions of the province. Out here, Bell and Telus both peer from SaskTel’s towers. Back in the CDMA days, Rogers ran their own 3G network, but recently they have started partnering with SaskTel as well to provide LTE coverage to their customers outside of the two main cities.
Edit: I missed the point! SaskTel exists as a government-owned pseudo-monopoly because it wouldn’t be profitable to provide the service level they provide to rural communities. There’s small WISPs that cover little parts of the province, but they all get backhaul from SaskTel.
Edit: I missed the point! SaskTel exists as a government-owned pseudo-monopoly because it wouldn’t be profitable to provide the service level they provide to rural communities. There’s small WISPs that cover little parts of the province, but they all get backhaul from SaskTel.
ex-Israeli here (currently living in Berlin). It's truly amazing how cheap mobile internet access became in Israel. I'm guessing home broadband as well.
Here in Germany it feels like a cartel. Prices are pretty homogeneous and quite expensive (I pay 10EUR/4weeks for 2.5Gb + 200 call min or SMS, pay-as-you-go). The home broadband is worse in terms of competition. Contracts are typically 24 months or more with draconian cancellation options.
At least pretty much everything else here (apart from Internet) is cheaper in Berlin than it is in Israel ;-)
Here in Germany it feels like a cartel. Prices are pretty homogeneous and quite expensive (I pay 10EUR/4weeks for 2.5Gb + 200 call min or SMS, pay-as-you-go). The home broadband is worse in terms of competition. Contracts are typically 24 months or more with draconian cancellation options.
At least pretty much everything else here (apart from Internet) is cheaper in Berlin than it is in Israel ;-)
Just as a tip, you can get cheaper in Germany. I have 7GB with unlimited calls+sms for ~8€ per month, and no tie-in so I can terminate monthly. This was a Black Friday offer from PremiumSIM, but you can find other discounts providers too.
Yeah, there are some cheaper options, but switching is a hassle, especially if you want to keep your number. $14 for 400Gb is an order of magnitude cheaper.
A small hassle, but the new provider will take care of the paperwork. You'll just have to sign. Depends of course on how frustrated you're with the current contract.
Amazing what competition does
Competition didn't do it. For years. Regulation did, and in something like 2 months.
The coolest part? All those threats about "companies will leave a highly regulated market" never materialized.
The coolest part? All those threats about "companies will leave a highly regulated market" never materialized.
The market was not really competitive because of a very high barrier for entrance (building the communication infrastructure). The regulation forced competition, then the prices fell of their own, when new players joined.
It didn't happen with competition alone though. There was competition before in Israel on the telecom market, but prices were very high. Then one of the ministers stepped-in and regulated to make it more consumer-friendly.
disclaimer: I'm an ex-Israeli, so my knowledge about it is very limited, and I don't follow Israeli news. But that's broadly my understanding of what happened to drive prices down and improve consumer value.
EDIT: found an article from 2014[0] that mentions it
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/israel-telecommunications-re...
disclaimer: I'm an ex-Israeli, so my knowledge about it is very limited, and I don't follow Israeli news. But that's broadly my understanding of what happened to drive prices down and improve consumer value.
EDIT: found an article from 2014[0] that mentions it
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/israel-telecommunications-re...
"It used to be quite expensive here at around $100/mo for 10GB but the government broke up the monopoly and forced competition into the market by making existing players share infrastructure. We went up from main 3 providers to around 10 and prices dropped sharply.
"
That's what the US should do too, especially for home internet. For mobile there are a few pretty OK MVNO like Mint but for home internet there is 0 competition in a lot of areas.
That's what the US should do too, especially for home internet. For mobile there are a few pretty OK MVNO like Mint but for home internet there is 0 competition in a lot of areas.
> the government broke up the monopoly and forced competition into the market by making existing players share infrastructure.
Yeah, this was excellent for 4G prices (I'm paying $8/mo for 40 GB), but now telecom companies are wary of installing 5G infrastructure, because they are forced to share it with other service providers who did not have to invest millions in new 5G infrastructure.
Yeah, this was excellent for 4G prices (I'm paying $8/mo for 40 GB), but now telecom companies are wary of installing 5G infrastructure, because they are forced to share it with other service providers who did not have to invest millions in new 5G infrastructure.
The same exact claims were made about 4G. Even if it delayed 4G by a year or two, it was well worth it.
In Israel the caller pays for a mobile call, while in other countries the owner of the mobile pays.
This one change alone is enough to explain quite a bit of the disparity in prices.
I'm actually surprised the source article makes no mention of this.
This one change alone is enough to explain quite a bit of the disparity in prices.
I'm actually surprised the source article makes no mention of this.
I always feel as though having the calling party cover the costs of the call is one of the most effective ways to get rid of phone spam. When the receiving party has to pay it seems to create all the wrong sorts of financial incentives for the carriers to deal with phone spam calls.
> while in other countries the owner of the mobile pays.
Which other countries? The US did this, and I guess it's possible Canada was obliged to do the same but it's certainly not widespread.
The article is about Internet access not how much you're ripped off for calls.
Which other countries? The US did this, and I guess it's possible Canada was obliged to do the same but it's certainly not widespread.
The article is about Internet access not how much you're ripped off for calls.
I do not understand this. Does that mean in israel the callee pays (as well, or completely) and in other countries (only) the caller?
Or does it mean you share mobile phones and in other countries the owner of the mobile phone pays while in Israel the callers somehow identify on the phone?
Or does it mean you share mobile phones and in other countries the owner of the mobile phone pays while in Israel the callers somehow identify on the phone?
I'm not sure I understand what the GP is trying to say (especially since the article focuses on mobile Internet, rather than calls).
Just to clarify: only the caller pays for outbound calls in Israel. The receiver never pays for receiving a call. This is also true to all EU countries as far as I'm aware.
Just to clarify: only the caller pays for outbound calls in Israel. The receiver never pays for receiving a call. This is also true to all EU countries as far as I'm aware.
I think this is the case in most countries besides the US.
And (at least in Israel and the UK, and probably others, but not the US), you can identify a mobile number by the prefix, so you know what you're getting yourself into by placing the call.
And (at least in Israel and the UK, and probably others, but not the US), you can identify a mobile number by the prefix, so you know what you're getting yourself into by placing the call.
At least an example of one "other country" would be nice. Never heard of such practice, even though I was working in different countries of Europe and Asia
One of the things that frustrates me about apps/web is that most people have no idea what individual apps/sites are “costing” them. Without additional tools and watching Cellular Data settings like a hawk, stupid things can slurp up your data plan.
Entire books could be sent to people in a sane format but a 3-line web page wrapped in garbage takes dozens of megabytes? An app that does “very little” is consuming 100 MB in no time?
Worse, no one seems to want to “pay” for apps anymore (demanding everything be free) but then they blow $10 on data because their “free” app is routinely shoving unnecessary amounts of data to their device.
We need some hard limits on data; if I give your app 100 K, you shouldn’t be able to use any more. Furthermore, the default data limits should be very low (with big scary dialogs appearing when apps request more) to discourage lazy designs that offload their true costs onto unsuspecting consumers.
Entire books could be sent to people in a sane format but a 3-line web page wrapped in garbage takes dozens of megabytes? An app that does “very little” is consuming 100 MB in no time?
Worse, no one seems to want to “pay” for apps anymore (demanding everything be free) but then they blow $10 on data because their “free” app is routinely shoving unnecessary amounts of data to their device.
We need some hard limits on data; if I give your app 100 K, you shouldn’t be able to use any more. Furthermore, the default data limits should be very low (with big scary dialogs appearing when apps request more) to discourage lazy designs that offload their true costs onto unsuspecting consumers.
This is why I disable background data for individual apps and keep data saver on whenever possible.
Also, browsing can be something like: - Ad blocking - Javascript disabled by default - remote fonts disabled - media eg images disabled if possible - cookies disabled by default
The first 2 are possible using UBlock Origin + Firefox on Android devices. Ad blocking is a must.
Also, you can use some local VPN app like netguard to restrict app's data usage. I don't remember whether you can specify data usage limits though. But it can prevent entire apps from accessing internet.
Then about web pages. On desktop I routinely use text browsers or simple GUI browsers because they are so fast. Even your regular browser can go a long way with JS disabled by default and ad blocking.
Also, browsing can be something like: - Ad blocking - Javascript disabled by default - remote fonts disabled - media eg images disabled if possible - cookies disabled by default
The first 2 are possible using UBlock Origin + Firefox on Android devices. Ad blocking is a must.
Also, you can use some local VPN app like netguard to restrict app's data usage. I don't remember whether you can specify data usage limits though. But it can prevent entire apps from accessing internet.
Then about web pages. On desktop I routinely use text browsers or simple GUI browsers because they are so fast. Even your regular browser can go a long way with JS disabled by default and ad blocking.
uBO also lets you set the maximum size of media elements so that you can restrict them to say 50KB max. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site-switches#no-...
Out of the box Android will alert you if an application seems to be using a lot of bandwidth on either the cellular connection or a WiFi link marked as costing money.
[Of course an Android modified by your phone company or product manufacturer may not do this]
There's also an overall summary month-by-month for apps.
Long press the mobile connection, pick App data usage and you get a chart and a list, ordered by amount used and with a warning that your operator might count things differently†
Mine says Pokemon Go uses a lot of bandwidth, which makes sense, also one of the free games I play made some requests while I was away from home and I unblocked it, after that comes Chrome looking at web sites.
†e.g. New Zealand zero rated all their COVID-19 related government services, and as a free bonus they get to find out how much the providers think that's worth and decide if in fact they'd prefer all government services were zero rated forever)
[Of course an Android modified by your phone company or product manufacturer may not do this]
There's also an overall summary month-by-month for apps.
Long press the mobile connection, pick App data usage and you get a chart and a list, ordered by amount used and with a warning that your operator might count things differently†
Mine says Pokemon Go uses a lot of bandwidth, which makes sense, also one of the free games I play made some requests while I was away from home and I unblocked it, after that comes Chrome looking at web sites.
†e.g. New Zealand zero rated all their COVID-19 related government services, and as a free bonus they get to find out how much the providers think that's worth and decide if in fact they'd prefer all government services were zero rated forever)
At $35 per gigabyte, visiting a badly written website could cost $0.5 just for opening a home page.
And it's not like people don't have FOSS tools to optimize images, or read for free on how to make browser load smaller or different format (like webp) of images on smaller screen devices.
Often times developers just don't care because it doesn't cost them anything.
So disabling all images in the browser is a must if one doesn't want to pay for grabage stock photos, and experience suffers on all websites as a result. I don't really consider sending all browsing data to Google by using their image optimization proxy as an alternative.
And it's not like people don't have FOSS tools to optimize images, or read for free on how to make browser load smaller or different format (like webp) of images on smaller screen devices.
Often times developers just don't care because it doesn't cost them anything.
So disabling all images in the browser is a must if one doesn't want to pay for grabage stock photos, and experience suffers on all websites as a result. I don't really consider sending all browsing data to Google by using their image optimization proxy as an alternative.
Or you could limit the size of media elements https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site-switches#no-...
That probably only works if the remote sends the content-length header, right? Or will it also terminate requests that simply keep loading past the 50kiB or whatever mark?
Anyway, looks like a reason to use Firefox on mobile. :)
Anyway, looks like a reason to use Firefox on mobile. :)
> That probably only works if the remote sends the content-length header, right?
Correct: "If the media elements do not have Content-Length header present, then this switch will fail to block the said media elements by size."
Source: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site-switches#no-...
Correct: "If the media elements do not have Content-Length header present, then this switch will fail to block the said media elements by size."
Source: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site-switches#no-...
Caring, however, does have a cost. Not every website owner knows how to create lean, efficient websites.
> One of the things that frustrates me about apps/web is that most people have no idea what individual apps/sites are “costing” them
It's not an issue with web apps but issue with outdated bandwith limiting.
It's not an issue with web apps but issue with outdated bandwith limiting.
I've seen Olympics levels of trying to bend the truth, but pretending that reality is outdated so webdevs can continue pushing dozens of megabytes of JavaScript is a new one.
Wireless frequencies are a limited resources and bandwidth will always be metered, more so if lazy devs ignore efficiency.
That's not true at all, as many people pointed out in this thread there's a lot of bandwidth even with 3g connections however it is being artificially limited as a revenue stream.
The Great Reversal -How America Gave Up on Free Markets by
Thomas Philippon https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674237544
The Economist: https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2019/12/12/a...
Article by Philippon: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/europe-not...
"Chapter 8 How European Markets Became Free" Is funny story how EU accidentally tricked itself into creating competitive markets for products and services.
EU governments have tradition of protecting their own economies and shaping their industrial policy as they have done in the past. Distrust between countries led to the only working solution: independent regulators and fair markets. Ruhr Authority in 1949 was already independent from from the control of any European country but it took several decades for Europe to create broad, independent, and powerful regulators.
And the results are clear: EU has state aid rules for example, the US does not. In the US corporations have incentive to shop around for subsidies, pitting one state against another and leading to inefficient outcomes.
The Economist: https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2019/12/12/a...
Article by Philippon: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/europe-not...
"Chapter 8 How European Markets Became Free" Is funny story how EU accidentally tricked itself into creating competitive markets for products and services.
EU governments have tradition of protecting their own economies and shaping their industrial policy as they have done in the past. Distrust between countries led to the only working solution: independent regulators and fair markets. Ruhr Authority in 1949 was already independent from from the control of any European country but it took several decades for Europe to create broad, independent, and powerful regulators.
And the results are clear: EU has state aid rules for example, the US does not. In the US corporations have incentive to shop around for subsidies, pitting one state against another and leading to inefficient outcomes.
I've been amazed at the effects of this every time I've visited India. With data so cheap, social media use is prolific - people share videos and stream all day long - and public WiFi is far less commonplace since essentially /everybody/ owns phones with almost unlimited data plans.
India still has a long way to go in terms of social equality, poverty and breaking up the caste system, but providing fast, cheap Internet for all is undoubtedly a great first step.
India still has a long way to go in terms of social equality, poverty and breaking up the caste system, but providing fast, cheap Internet for all is undoubtedly a great first step.
India is a remarkable success story in mobile data. A great deal of that success is due to Reliance Jio, who launched an LTE-only network in 2016 and totally disrupted the Indian market.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jio
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jio
... to the point of killing off nearly all other competitors. They are neatly poised if they now want to do monopoly-based price gouging, or create a walled dystopia.
Sounds a bit like Free in late-90s french internet which just set the entire market on fire (to the significant benefit of consumers).
Hopefully unlike free they don't become entrenched players resting on their laurels.
Hopefully unlike free they don't become entrenched players resting on their laurels.
I used to have unlimited 512kbps "broadband" via public tel (BSNL, Phone line), up until 2013. I moved to delhi and as a broke university student, I'd gone through incremental upgrades with cable, fiber, wi-max connections, and have seen it stablise.
I moved out in 2017, but I'm glad for the LTE access that my parents can use from the same tiny city (with DSL Line, now at 1mbps as an alternative). It's great! Indeed, lots left to do about other issues, but I think we get to be happy about this particular development.
I moved out in 2017, but I'm glad for the LTE access that my parents can use from the same tiny city (with DSL Line, now at 1mbps as an alternative). It's great! Indeed, lots left to do about other issues, but I think we get to be happy about this particular development.
Sorry, But I have seen the opposite effect of cheap internet there. People spend lot of time in spread hatred, fake news and animosity using internet service.
I have seen this first hand with so many of my educated friends and relatives who were reasonable folks before internet boom and now they come across caricature of dimwit person. With so much information available on internet they still chose to pick lowest quality sources.
I have seen this first hand with so many of my educated friends and relatives who were reasonable folks before internet boom and now they come across caricature of dimwit person. With so much information available on internet they still chose to pick lowest quality sources.
This might be true (it appears we have similar people in the western world). However, I think you're being downvoted because it seems you're advocating less internet access in the hopes of more equality.
It brings up an interesting question, though: Assuming for the moment that internet access actually increases hatred - is more hate towards a group a good tradeoff for empowering them by giving them internet access as well?
It brings up an interesting question, though: Assuming for the moment that internet access actually increases hatred - is more hate towards a group a good tradeoff for empowering them by giving them internet access as well?
You are right. I could have worded differently to not imply that less internet is better. Point is that better internet connectivity lead to better social outcomes at large is wishful thinking.
That's not really an Internet issue, and more the idea that moderation of hateful content is "censorship". It would be the same in public if people couldn't be kicked off premises going on disruptive hateful rants.
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Not sure why you were downvoted because this is exactly what is going on. One might say that the problems were societal and already there - technology has just provided the bandwidth for explosive spread of these things. To be fair, it has also provided an amazing increase in outreach. A person in a village with barely any infrastructure can have a video call with their friends/family - that is empowering.
This is actually true. The fake news is over the limits.
The elder generation believes some WhatsApp forwarded message so easily that WhatsApp and Facebook are political propaganda machines. Google about "Whatsapp University" meme. I honestly wish anything should not be allowed to be forwarded more than N times where N < 4. And I wouldn't care end to end encryption breaked on forwarded messages in order to fact check them.
The elder generation believes some WhatsApp forwarded message so easily that WhatsApp and Facebook are political propaganda machines. Google about "Whatsapp University" meme. I honestly wish anything should not be allowed to be forwarded more than N times where N < 4. And I wouldn't care end to end encryption breaked on forwarded messages in order to fact check them.
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I don’t know why this is being downvoted. It’s the truth, except that it doesn’t happen just in India. Every country has their own version of this.
I'm Italian and I pay ~9 euros per month for 130 GB of uncapped 4G mobile Internet, so I can't really complain about it. Some new offers I've seen are as low as 6.99 for 100 GB + infinite calls. A few days ago I told this to a friend of mine who lives in the UK and he was shocked because he pays a lot more for like 2GB a month.
I guess healthy competition can really be good for consumers when it works as it is supposed to.
I guess healthy competition can really be good for consumers when it works as it is supposed to.
Meanwhile, Greece with its telecom cartel is a few spots from last, with such good company as Turkmenistan, the Virgin Islands and, for some reason, Canada.
I might as well get a SIM shipped to me from Italy every three months or so, it'll be lots cheaper.
I might as well get a SIM shipped to me from Italy every three months or so, it'll be lots cheaper.
What's more funny to the Greek mobile internet comedy (or maybe drama for us greeks) is that before 1 year, after the elections, the new prime minister asked nicely the telecom operators to offer cheaper mobile internet. The operators agreed of course.
The result? There were some mocking offers in the form of double GB for the same price right after the meeting (ie instead of 10 euros/1 gb you'd get 10 euros/2 gb). After 1 year nothing more. The telecom operators think that we are in the 2000 where mobile internet is something that only company executives need...
I think the time has come for the government to stop asking nicely for cheap mobile internet and force the operators to align with the rest of Europe.
The result? There were some mocking offers in the form of double GB for the same price right after the meeting (ie instead of 10 euros/1 gb you'd get 10 euros/2 gb). After 1 year nothing more. The telecom operators think that we are in the 2000 where mobile internet is something that only company executives need...
I think the time has come for the government to stop asking nicely for cheap mobile internet and force the operators to align with the rest of Europe.
They should just break up the cartel and let them compete normally, that would take care of everything else. How to break up a cartel of the richest people in a corrupt society is a different issue...
What's the possibility of buying a cheap data SIM-card in Bulgaria (or somewhere else) and using the EU-roaming laws to get cheap data in Greece?
Canada also has a telecom cartel. The CRTC, which is the gov't regulatory body (and which is controlled by the telecoms), limits access to the market.
> The CRTC, which is the gov't regulatory body (and which is controlled by the telecoms), limits access to the market.
The CRTC does not limit access to the market, the elected government does. For national security purposes foreign ownership is restricted:
> As it stands now [in 2018], foreign ownership of a telecommunications company is limited to no more than 20 per cent of a company’s voting shares and no more than 33.3 per cent of the voting shares of a carrier’s holding company, and an effective total limit of 46.7 per cent (as long as the foreign entity doesn’t have control). On top of that, at least 80 per cent of the board members must be Canadian citizens.
* https://financialpost.com/telecom/tight-reins-leaves-our-tel...
See Telecommunications Act, Section 16. That dictates only domestic companies can really do much, which is the incumbents of Bell, Telus, Rogers, etc.
Reduce foreign operator restrictions and foreign operators may come into the market and provide more competition.
The CRTC does not limit access to the market, the elected government does. For national security purposes foreign ownership is restricted:
> As it stands now [in 2018], foreign ownership of a telecommunications company is limited to no more than 20 per cent of a company’s voting shares and no more than 33.3 per cent of the voting shares of a carrier’s holding company, and an effective total limit of 46.7 per cent (as long as the foreign entity doesn’t have control). On top of that, at least 80 per cent of the board members must be Canadian citizens.
* https://financialpost.com/telecom/tight-reins-leaves-our-tel...
See Telecommunications Act, Section 16. That dictates only domestic companies can really do much, which is the incumbents of Bell, Telus, Rogers, etc.
Reduce foreign operator restrictions and foreign operators may come into the market and provide more competition.
Yes, “national security” is used to justify all manner of protectionism in this country. We sure love our oligopolies.
You know, with the amount of data some companies and governments are slurping up it might almost be justified... of course as a 5 eyes nation it's also pretty damn hypocritical.
> You know, with the amount of data some companies and governments are slurping up it might almost be justified
Which is why Bell Canada not peering at TorIX (and other Canadian IXPs) really annoys me. (Rogers, Telus, Cogeco, TekSavvy, etc, do.)
* https://www.cira.ca/improving-canadas-internet/initiatives/c...
Even major cloud hosting companies (AWS, Digital Ocean, OVH) have Canadian build-outs for folks that are sensitive to domestic/international issues, and yet if connect with Bell your traffic tends to go to Chicago and then back.
Which is why Bell Canada not peering at TorIX (and other Canadian IXPs) really annoys me. (Rogers, Telus, Cogeco, TekSavvy, etc, do.)
* https://www.cira.ca/improving-canadas-internet/initiatives/c...
Even major cloud hosting companies (AWS, Digital Ocean, OVH) have Canadian build-outs for folks that are sensitive to domestic/international issues, and yet if connect with Bell your traffic tends to go to Chicago and then back.
>Yes, “national security” is used to justify all manner of protectionism in this country. We sure love our oligopolies.
That and outright monopolies created by the government itself.
That and outright monopolies created by the government itself.
Canada also has a government monopoly on milk, and wheat out of all things.
UK isn’t that bad. I pay £20 for unlimited data with tethering, and it’s faster than my home broadband. I used more than 1TB one month.
O2 in the UK offers 2GB for £12 a month as its lowest plan, but it's a really dumb plan to be on since you can get 100GB for only £20 a month.
Not really dumb if you only use a GB or so a month anyway.
I have a 7GB plan despite using less than 1GB a month, because that's the next plan up after 1GB (and I like to have some wiggle room above 1GB)
I have a 7GB plan despite using less than 1GB a month, because that's the next plan up after 1GB (and I like to have some wiggle room above 1GB)
Italian here too, I pay 5.99 €/month for 30gb (never really experienced caps). Iliad is the provider. SMS texts and calls are also free and unlimited.
Iliad is pretty great. Given that by law there are both a minimum number of players and incentives for the entry of a new players, Iliad managed to get pretty awesome pretty fast.
Iliad is pretty great. Given that by law there are both a minimum number of players and incentives for the entry of a new players, Iliad managed to get pretty awesome pretty fast.
I think I have the same plan. I have to say the only thing I'm missing (and I would gladly pay 2 euros more for) is global (or at least EU) free SMS while not roaming.
Free global messaging isn’t gonna happen. It’s not like internal messaging which is essentially free, but if you send a message to Congo, they want real money to deliver the message.
Meh, as long as I have internet connectivity I don't need texts. Iliad includes 2gb free in roaming mode, as gp correctly pointed out (I forgot about that, but it was very handy when I was in Leipzig during last CCC).
European roaming is very different from “global messaging”. I assume you were trying to reply to the same person, not me. I don’t need global messaging either.
Also FYI it’s 4gb. I know because I just ran out of it.
Also FYI it’s 4gb. I know because I just ran out of it.
It depends entirely on the plan you get.
I'm from the UK and pay £5 for unlimited data, which admittedly is better than most plans here.
I'm from the UK and pay £5 for unlimited data, which admittedly is better than most plans here.
Which operator ? I'm interested.
If you get the right winback or operator attack promotions you can get amazing deals with the major MNOs.
I think you should specify that when making wild claims as if they’re the norms. Even that “6.99 for 100 GB” is unfounded currently.
For instance, https://verymobile.it/ (new MVNO from WindTre) has a 6.99 / 100GB promotion (if you switch from certain operators)
Same. As far as I know, HO mobile is the cheapest one at 6€ for 70GB
This data is worthless and likely very skewed by the use of mean prices instead of the median, while not displaying the standard deviation.
Take France, for instance. 42 plans. 0.11 for the cheapest. 108 for the most expensive. How the hell are they finding 0.81 average, BTW? Same with South Korea.
Also, in my experience, the bigger the plan, the less expensive it is, so they should have sorted "per 1 GB/month plan" or controlled for that issue somehow.
Take France, for instance. 42 plans. 0.11 for the cheapest. 108 for the most expensive. How the hell are they finding 0.81 average, BTW? Same with South Korea.
Also, in my experience, the bigger the plan, the less expensive it is, so they should have sorted "per 1 GB/month plan" or controlled for that issue somehow.
> How the hell are they finding 0.81 average
Probably by using median as you suggested? Because it's impossible for mean to be less than 2.68.
Probably by using median as you suggested? Because it's impossible for mean to be less than 2.68.
Which is not reality, if there were 1$, 100$ and 200$ you wouldn't say the avg person would pay 100.
This is very obvious to me too. Australia is placing better than the UK, despite mobile contracts being almost universally more expensive and less good in Australia. It seems to be because there's an expensive UK plan skewing the data, despite not being what most people have.
This study is great, as it points out huge disparities that are more than often not justified.
People have mentioned it and sometimes opening to competition have made huge changes on the market. Take France for example, people used to pay around $10/GB not so long ago. A new player came on the market and yes, didn't have the same quality of service at first, but clearly cut the price and now a GB is 10x cheaper. Better, they now provide unlimited data for ~20$/month (!!). As some have also mentioned, unlimited is something clearly missing as it can make the price/GB completely meaningless in some cases. I currently live in Georgia and at the moment there are plans for ~1.5$/week for truly unlimited data - speed is also great with ~50-100mbps and I live in a metropolitan, dense area.
A last point is roaming. This is where I believe most unfairness lies with big profits and ridiculous disparities. Some carries will charge $100+/GB for roaming. Sometimes could even be $1000+(!!!) if you didn't think of buying a plan. But in the other hand, using my French simcard (the one with unlimited data for $20) I can get 25GB in most countries in the world (that include all Europe, USA, Canada, China, Australia, etc.) And that's sometimes cheaper than local plans. Sometimes even better as it gives me the ability to switch between networks when coverage is low.
I know from friends who have been working in the industry that, prior the shake in France, carriers used to sit back and relax while making tremendous profits. There has been cases of illegal agreements between the 3 "competitors"/actors. Having a new actor and real competitor breaking the prices didn't slow down network quality and growth, btw.
Why not letting carriers from other countries propose roaming plans to people worldwide, regardless of your country of residence? That would become interesting...
People have mentioned it and sometimes opening to competition have made huge changes on the market. Take France for example, people used to pay around $10/GB not so long ago. A new player came on the market and yes, didn't have the same quality of service at first, but clearly cut the price and now a GB is 10x cheaper. Better, they now provide unlimited data for ~20$/month (!!). As some have also mentioned, unlimited is something clearly missing as it can make the price/GB completely meaningless in some cases. I currently live in Georgia and at the moment there are plans for ~1.5$/week for truly unlimited data - speed is also great with ~50-100mbps and I live in a metropolitan, dense area.
A last point is roaming. This is where I believe most unfairness lies with big profits and ridiculous disparities. Some carries will charge $100+/GB for roaming. Sometimes could even be $1000+(!!!) if you didn't think of buying a plan. But in the other hand, using my French simcard (the one with unlimited data for $20) I can get 25GB in most countries in the world (that include all Europe, USA, Canada, China, Australia, etc.) And that's sometimes cheaper than local plans. Sometimes even better as it gives me the ability to switch between networks when coverage is low.
I know from friends who have been working in the industry that, prior the shake in France, carriers used to sit back and relax while making tremendous profits. There has been cases of illegal agreements between the 3 "competitors"/actors. Having a new actor and real competitor breaking the prices didn't slow down network quality and growth, btw.
Why not letting carriers from other countries propose roaming plans to people worldwide, regardless of your country of residence? That would become interesting...
When that new operator started (Free Mobile), it had had already revolutionized fixed internet.
Then the operators went to the state to cry there and say thousands of people will lose their work. They cried, cried, saw that they would not get anything so they came back home and lowered their prices to align with Free Mobile.
There were no massive layoffs.
This is one of there rare cases where the French slowness to change was different.
Then the operators went to the state to cry there and say thousands of people will lose their work. They cried, cried, saw that they would not get anything so they came back home and lowered their prices to align with Free Mobile.
There were no massive layoffs.
This is one of there rare cases where the French slowness to change was different.
How do they measure unlimited plans? I've never had to pay attention to traffic metering since in Finland virtually all operators offer unlimited data.
I seem to use about 100GB a month at worst which would put the price at around 30 cents per GB on my rather overspecced 150Mb/s 4g plan.
I seem to use about 100GB a month at worst which would put the price at around 30 cents per GB on my rather overspecced 150Mb/s 4g plan.
I don't know, it seems stuff like this are outliers. My country has the same - 1GBps/5G plan and when in middle of nowhere (like in vacation with kids at their grandparents in the country side), missing a broadband connection we all use hotspot from mobile, with easily using 50GB/day at least. And for 5 euro/month subscription that gives like 5 / (30 x 50) => 0.(3) cents per GB.
I’m in Denmark. I have “3” as a phone provider and have essentially an unlimited plan for 30usd, with free roaming in most of the world. My home internet is served as an IOT plan with a “300MB” plan that in practice the network owned by the old national provider don’t cap, so I hit 1TB on 4G with a monthly fee of ~4.7USD.
I know many people who does the same.
The US really seem like in need of some good old competition.
Same in the UK: 3's inclusive free global roaming (works in 71 countries! almost anywhere I'd ever go) is absolutely brilliant.
Unfortunately their UK network is awful, slow and broken, so I had to leave them. But I really miss the roaming.
Unfortunately their UK network is awful, slow and broken, so I had to leave them. But I really miss the roaming.
Could a random person show up in Denmark and buy this plan? That sounds amazing
I don't know about Denmark in particular, but in other EU countries they stipulate you have to spend the majority of time/data in the "home" country or the expensive roaming fees apply.
Not idea whether they actually check/apply this though.
Not idea whether they actually check/apply this though.
There is a limitation for that.
"A surcharge may be applied if: * you use roaming services more than domestic services and spend more time travelling than in Finland"
https://www.traficom.fi/en/communications/broadband-and-tele...
"A surcharge may be applied if: * you use roaming services more than domestic services and spend more time travelling than in Finland"
https://www.traficom.fi/en/communications/broadband-and-tele...
Not sure. Some limitations were removed when EU rules for roaming charges were put in place. To be fair, my “IOT” plan is Denmark-only.
Ironically, for “competition” you might well have said “free market capitalism”.
Except that provision of basic mono-utilities such as drinking water, roads, and The Internet is probably best provided by the state. At least the cell phone tower part, leaving the internet exchange part upwards to private companies.
(This pre supposes a level of benevolence / lack of malevolence from the state, or a faith in protocols further up the stack to have end to end security. At least one of these exists.)
Except that provision of basic mono-utilities such as drinking water, roads, and The Internet is probably best provided by the state. At least the cell phone tower part, leaving the internet exchange part upwards to private companies.
(This pre supposes a level of benevolence / lack of malevolence from the state, or a faith in protocols further up the stack to have end to end security. At least one of these exists.)
Both the 4G infrastructure, and internet lines dug in the ground has beenopened up by law, so new providers can rent their way into existence for a reasonable price. Before then, the national monopoly that was TDC was horrible to deal with, and still is. I signed up for a fiber line for our office with them, and they’ve so far provided as bad a service as possible without breach of contract.
Competition is good, sometimes lawmakers are needed to make that happen.
I am wondering how did they get their data especially for Switzerland. Here most of the plans have unlimited GB, so getting the price of a single one is quite tricky.
Also, looking at the price for the most expensive one (~50USD) makes me think: did they maybe just took the price of an unlimited plan and used that as price for a GB?
Lastly, average in this analysis does not really make sense to me. Especially as some very expensive plans can skew it to very large values.
Also, looking at the price for the most expensive one (~50USD) makes me think: did they maybe just took the price of an unlimited plan and used that as price for a GB?
Lastly, average in this analysis does not really make sense to me. Especially as some very expensive plans can skew it to very large values.
Exactly, what a weird american way to measure network. I've traveled to many places around the world and bandwidth is rarely directly capped. It's usually unlimited* with a speed cap.
Right now for example I'm paying 50$ for 30mbps unlimited* yearly plan here in Thailand. The map in the article puts Thailand at avg 1.2$/GB which would net 42GB a year for 50$ which is a much worse deal.
Finally I feel it's very hard to measure this. If you look at the article's map the avg/cheapest/most expensive vary by an absurd margin. Again Thailand is 0.2$ cheapest and 7.2$ most expensive — that 32x difference. This data seems to be absolutely useless for drawing any sort of conclusions.
\* unlimited up to some point.
Right now for example I'm paying 50$ for 30mbps unlimited* yearly plan here in Thailand. The map in the article puts Thailand at avg 1.2$/GB which would net 42GB a year for 50$ which is a much worse deal.
Finally I feel it's very hard to measure this. If you look at the article's map the avg/cheapest/most expensive vary by an absurd margin. Again Thailand is 0.2$ cheapest and 7.2$ most expensive — that 32x difference. This data seems to be absolutely useless for drawing any sort of conclusions.
\* unlimited up to some point.
> what a weird american way to measure network
I believe the report is written in the UK.
I believe the report is written in the UK.
> I am wondering how did they get their data especially for Switzerland. Here most of the plans have unlimited GB, so getting the price of a single one is quite tricky.
Not sure where you get that impression, but I don't think it is true at all. The following are the standard CH mobile plans by the largest providers in Switzerland.
Swisscom: 3×unlimited, 3×limited
Salt: 3×unlimited, 2×limited
Sunrise: 1×unlimited, 2×limited
In total they have 7 unlimited and 7 limited plans. The unlimited are mostly very expensive. Also note that the article mentioned they measured 14 plans in total which exactly matches the total number of plans above. But that of course might be a coincidence. Most plans of smaller providers are also limited in my experience.
Not sure where you get that impression, but I don't think it is true at all. The following are the standard CH mobile plans by the largest providers in Switzerland.
Swisscom: 3×unlimited, 3×limited
Salt: 3×unlimited, 2×limited
Sunrise: 1×unlimited, 2×limited
In total they have 7 unlimited and 7 limited plans. The unlimited are mostly very expensive. Also note that the article mentioned they measured 14 plans in total which exactly matches the total number of plans above. But that of course might be a coincidence. Most plans of smaller providers are also limited in my experience.
Thanks for the observation.
Still I do not understand how would they have extrapolated price per GB when considering an unlimited plan. Can that be that they just took the price of the unlimited plan and assumed that's the price of 1GB? That would not be wrong, but a bit deceiving to say the least. Otherwise I would not know how the max price is ~50USD. Swisscom gives me ~15CHF per 1GB, and that is usually seen as the most expensive company.
Still I do not understand how would they have extrapolated price per GB when considering an unlimited plan. Can that be that they just took the price of the unlimited plan and assumed that's the price of 1GB? That would not be wrong, but a bit deceiving to say the least. Otherwise I would not know how the max price is ~50USD. Swisscom gives me ~15CHF per 1GB, and that is usually seen as the most expensive company.
They attached a description of their methodology in the "Resources" section.
I believe the data should add the comparison using purchase power parity. The price in USD being higher in the US than in Brazil doesn’t mean that the internet is more expensive in the US
Thank you. It is silly to convert everything to USD, unless the list is built to know how much who earns their salary in USD would pay in those countries.
PPP converts everything into USD, just using a different method. PPP has nothing to do with a person's salary. If they used PPP, every GB would be the same price for every single country. That's where the "parity" part comes in.
That doesn't make any sense, PPP is used to come up with "real" exchange rates based on price differentials. If you used PPP as the exchange, all countries would have the exact same price per GB.
For example, if a GB is $1 in America and 2 euros in Germany, then we would use a 1:2 ratio for converting the price. So Germany's PPP price would now be $1 in dollars as well. As you can see, this isn't very helpful.
PPP's fundamental assumption is the law of one price, so it's no surprise that all the prices would be the same using it.
For example, if a GB is $1 in America and 2 euros in Germany, then we would use a 1:2 ratio for converting the price. So Germany's PPP price would now be $1 in dollars as well. As you can see, this isn't very helpful.
PPP's fundamental assumption is the law of one price, so it's no surprise that all the prices would be the same using it.
It would compare the price relative to other goods in the same country. It makes sense to me, what am I missing?
PPP's fundamental assumption is that a product in one place and the same product in another place have the same price. It's used to determine a relative exchange rate, by setting the price of the goods to be equal.
Using PPP methodology for GBs of data, we would first assume that all GBs in every country are the same price. We would then use that fact to come up with a conversion rate between currencies. This isn't very helpful for price comparison, since it's very literally assuming that the prices are equal. Working back from the exchange rate makes much more sense, because we are interesting in the cost difference between a GB here and one there. We can't compare the cost difference if we assume a priori that they must equal each other.
Using PPP methodology for GBs of data, we would first assume that all GBs in every country are the same price. We would then use that fact to come up with a conversion rate between currencies. This isn't very helpful for price comparison, since it's very literally assuming that the prices are equal. Working back from the exchange rate makes much more sense, because we are interesting in the cost difference between a GB here and one there. We can't compare the cost difference if we assume a priori that they must equal each other.
But if you calculate PPP for a basket of goods instead of exclusively for internet GB, it shows the comparison that I would like to see, doesn’t it?
I had the impression that using PPP for a basket of goods is how it is usually used.
I had the impression that using PPP for a basket of goods is how it is usually used.
PPP is used to talk about money. For example, I could compare salaries in different countries to each other and using PPP might give me a better representation than the exchange. If we try and use it to compare goods not in a basket, it's problematic. Everything in the basket is the same price, but stuff out of the basket is now a different price. It doesn't make logical sense with assumptions PPP has. If you used PPP in that way, you're basically saying that the law of one price holds for only the things in the basket, and not for stuff out of the basket. This fundamental distinction between the things in the basket and out of the basket is artificial and doesn't make sense. After all, we could then drastically change the price of something by just adding or removing it from the basket.
What you're after is relative cost of a good, normalized by the wealth of an average buyer. This is a fair point, but PPP doesn't do that for your. PPP gives you relative value of money, using the market price and the law of one price.
What you're after is relative cost of a good, normalized by the wealth of an average buyer. This is a fair point, but PPP doesn't do that for your. PPP gives you relative value of money, using the market price and the law of one price.
Got it, makes sense, thanks
This is incorrect.
PPP is absolutely useful (and often used) to compare prices of goods outside the PPP basket.
For example [1] uses PPP to compare things like rent and grocery costs so they can say things like "Rent prices in London are 19% higher than Sydney".
[1] https://www.budgetdirect.com.au/interactives/costofliving/co...
PPP is absolutely useful (and often used) to compare prices of goods outside the PPP basket.
For example [1] uses PPP to compare things like rent and grocery costs so they can say things like "Rent prices in London are 19% higher than Sydney".
[1] https://www.budgetdirect.com.au/interactives/costofliving/co...
Something is cheap or expensive in each country based on what % of the salary of a person living in those countries a good or service costs. Converting to USD and assuming that it looks cheap to an american is silly.
Sure, that's a fair point, but that has nothing to do with PPP. PPP is about exchange rates, not about goods.
No, there is a PPP index, eg: https://data.oecd.org/conversion/purchasing-power-parities-p...
You would be correct if you created a new PPP index based on GB of data (which is an interesting idea actually), but the proposal is to use an existing one and compare using that.
You would be correct if you created a new PPP index based on GB of data (which is an interesting idea actually), but the proposal is to use an existing one and compare using that.
This is a little off-tangent but as a newly repatriated Dane, can another Dane explain to me how we manage to both have a mega-monopoly telco in TDC and yet have such good prices on internet and phone plans?
The only ISPs available to me at my home here are all wholly owned subsidiaries of TDC: none of the others want to touch my address. That sounds like exactly the "any color you want so long as its black" choice I so enjoyed in the US.
How does Denmark do this? What is the special sauce?
The only ISPs available to me at my home here are all wholly owned subsidiaries of TDC: none of the others want to touch my address. That sounds like exactly the "any color you want so long as its black" choice I so enjoyed in the US.
How does Denmark do this? What is the special sauce?
Fierce competition, really. Many mobile companies competing - some even loss leaders, who are then bought up by one of the giants for their customers. And switching providers is pretty easy, so people shop around. This has driven down prices.
For internet, the widespread introduction of fiber has really made a huge impact. My father, who lives in a rural area, has 1000GB internet at 40 EUR per month.
For internet, the widespread introduction of fiber has really made a huge impact. My father, who lives in a rural area, has 1000GB internet at 40 EUR per month.
Most locations have multiple service providers plus mobile data so they have to proceed for that. TDC is also required to resell service to fixed line mvno's.
Kyrgyzstan is in top 3 cheapest. I've been there hiking last year and was mind blown. We've bought a local SIM card + several GB of data for ~1USD. Then we went hiking and in a village which is hiking base, in the "middle of nowhere", at 3000m altitude, we had 20 Mbps LTE connection.
I worked on a project for a major telco who regularly struggled with customer bill shock. Business travellers would go abroad, run up bills without knowing it (literally tens of thousands of pounds) and then complain that the provider never warned them or set a cap. Often the provider would have to eat the cost (it wasn’t massive markup, these were just the underlying trunk costs). We spent a long time building alerting and monitoring tools, which would even lock out your 3G dongle if you’d spent too much.
Unfortunately for us (but fortunately for customers) the EU introduced legislation to cap this spend and things have been pretty good since then in those parts of the world. I’m hoping UK customers don’t go back to the old days post Brexit. I do some business in Egypt and it was my first experience in a decade of actually having to worry about it and wasn’t prepared at all.
Unfortunately for us (but fortunately for customers) the EU introduced legislation to cap this spend and things have been pretty good since then in those parts of the world. I’m hoping UK customers don’t go back to the old days post Brexit. I do some business in Egypt and it was my first experience in a decade of actually having to worry about it and wasn’t prepared at all.
For this reason I'm with a telco that just locks me out when I reach my cap. The only thing I can do at that point is purchase an add-on package (which is good for the rest of the month) and then the internet is turned back on. When outside the EU, it locks me out by default unless I purchase an international data package.
I don't understand, why is it that it costs less than $1 in countries in Asia for a GB of mobile data but costs ~$15 for the same in the United States?
Can someone with knowledge of the industry please explain the reasons for this discrepancy to me?
Can someone with knowledge of the industry please explain the reasons for this discrepancy to me?
Beyond the usual arguments about "the US is big", poor competition is probably a big part of it. US telcos have a lot of lockin, with very long contract lengths, poor acceptance of prepaid plans, and "family plans" being common. All of this makes it less likely that people will move network, so there's less incentive for telcos to actually compete on price.
EDIT: On the "US is big" point, it's notable that pricing doesn't really follow population density in Europe. The UK has four times the population density of Ireland, but only fractionally cheaper data. Germany has similar population density to the UK, but far more expensive data (though I wonder are they looking at all extant contracts or something; data recently got a lot cheaper in Germany).
All three countries have comparable household earnings. Sweden has a third the population density of Ireland (less than a tenth that of the UK!), slightly higher average data cost, _cheaper_ minimum data cost, and comparable household earnings.
In general, any attempt to explain this via recourse to population density, income or GDP fails in the developed world.
EDIT: On the "US is big" point, it's notable that pricing doesn't really follow population density in Europe. The UK has four times the population density of Ireland, but only fractionally cheaper data. Germany has similar population density to the UK, but far more expensive data (though I wonder are they looking at all extant contracts or something; data recently got a lot cheaper in Germany).
All three countries have comparable household earnings. Sweden has a third the population density of Ireland (less than a tenth that of the UK!), slightly higher average data cost, _cheaper_ minimum data cost, and comparable household earnings.
In general, any attempt to explain this via recourse to population density, income or GDP fails in the developed world.
The lack of competition is the actual reason. When Google was entering markets with their Internet service suddenly incumbents got capacity to provide competitive speed at slightly lower price. Essentially causing Google to give up with that initiative. If a company with "unlimited" amount of money like Google can't enter to compete, no one can.
And if there is no competition, you no longer charge competitive prices, you charge what people are willing to pay. The whole promotional plans they offer are used to figure out how much you are likely to pay. Once the promotion expires and you don't call to get it extended, you are basically saying that you're ok with increase. Once enough people don't do that, the price will go up.
And if there is no competition, you no longer charge competitive prices, you charge what people are willing to pay. The whole promotional plans they offer are used to figure out how much you are likely to pay. Once the promotion expires and you don't call to get it extended, you are basically saying that you're ok with increase. Once enough people don't do that, the price will go up.
Similarly, here in Canada, after Bell's UBB plan (forcing TPIAs to the same restrictive 25GB cap as the telcos) fell through, they wasted no time coming up with unlimited plans.
Having lived in a couple of developing Asian countries, there’s a few obvious reasons that the services would be cheaper. For starters, everything about doing business is cheaper, especially salaries. Unreliable service is completely normal. There’s also additional income streams for service providers. Getting spam SMS tailored to your nearest cell tower (like special offers for nearby restaurants) is completely normal. HTTP content is much more common place, and it all has ISP injected advertisements. Service coverage is also much worse, tourist areas have the best coverage, followed by business districts.
That may be the case for some countries but it doesn't really explain the difference between the US/Canada and Europe or Australia.
If you looked into comparing the services from any two different countries, you’ll find completely different sets of market and geographical circumstances. The costs of providing the service will be different, the actual service provided will be different, and the demand from consumers will be different.
If you compare Australia and New Zealand for instance, there’s some very obvious factors that could explain that difference. Australia has a lot more outbound submarine bandwidth than New Zealand has, with New Zealand also being much further away from the rest of the world. Most of Australia has either no service or terrible service. New Zealand has approx the population of Sydney, while having more than 20x the land area. Australia has about 5x the population of New Zealand, so all of your fixed prices per customer are going to be less in Australia.
For any two countries you’re going to get an incredibly long list of factors that influence price. Population density seems like it should have a significant impact on the cost of building and maintaining mobile infrastructure for example. The US has close to 10x the population density of Canada, and Europe has over 3x the population density of the US, which I would expect is a non-trivial contributor to the reason that Canada is more expensive than the US, which is more expensive than Europe.
If you compare Australia and New Zealand for instance, there’s some very obvious factors that could explain that difference. Australia has a lot more outbound submarine bandwidth than New Zealand has, with New Zealand also being much further away from the rest of the world. Most of Australia has either no service or terrible service. New Zealand has approx the population of Sydney, while having more than 20x the land area. Australia has about 5x the population of New Zealand, so all of your fixed prices per customer are going to be less in Australia.
For any two countries you’re going to get an incredibly long list of factors that influence price. Population density seems like it should have a significant impact on the cost of building and maintaining mobile infrastructure for example. The US has close to 10x the population density of Canada, and Europe has over 3x the population density of the US, which I would expect is a non-trivial contributor to the reason that Canada is more expensive than the US, which is more expensive than Europe.
I think the price of mobile data in Australia well and truly puts to rest the "US is big" argument.
Also I'd say puts to rest arguments about wages/regulation being the issue.
Also I'd say puts to rest arguments about wages/regulation being the issue.
Israel managed to significantly lower the rates with the introduction of the following changes:
- Ban on SIM-locking of phones to one provider
- Allowing users to change providers without losing their phone number
- Ban on "exit penalties" for customers leaving a contract
- Forcing existing infrastructure providers to share their infrastructure with virtual or not-yet-fully-deployed new providers
- Ban on SIM-locking of phones to one provider
- Allowing users to change providers without losing their phone number
- Ban on "exit penalties" for customers leaving a contract
- Forcing existing infrastructure providers to share their infrastructure with virtual or not-yet-fully-deployed new providers
The same points hold for India as well. We’ve never had SIM locking and exit penalties and have had number portability for quite a long time. Cellular infrastructure though was handled by “non public facing” companies, owned by consortiums of telecom companies. With the entry of Reliance Jio, these companies joined hands to lock Jio out of their networks. For quite some time, cross network calls would be of very poor quality or almost impossible. Things have improved a lot since then.
However, it’s great the Israel has made it possible for infrastructure to be shared as a utility, allowing new players an easier entry. That will keep things competitive for a long time.
However, it’s great the Israel has made it possible for infrastructure to be shared as a utility, allowing new players an easier entry. That will keep things competitive for a long time.
Cellular service clearly can be delivered more cheaply in poor countries. Telenor for example is Noweigian (very wealthy country) but offers service at lower prices in Myanmar.
One reason is labor costs. Imagine how much it costs to build and maintain one tower in Norway with its high standard of living for everyone vs in Myanmar where people will work for much less, and with lower safety standards.
And obviously providers will charge more if they can, less if they have to.
One reason is labor costs. Imagine how much it costs to build and maintain one tower in Norway with its high standard of living for everyone vs in Myanmar where people will work for much less, and with lower safety standards.
And obviously providers will charge more if they can, less if they have to.
As an extension to this comment, other costs that could impact the delivery price of 1GB of total usage:
- speed
- overall saturation of tower (# users per tower)
- population density (full coverage of an area may be difficult)
- technology; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_mobile_phone_sta... which could affect federal regulatory licensing costs, technology licensing and acquisition costs and competitiveness of market to provide technology, tower density, total user capacity
This is my laymen's interpretation. For instance, to blanket the US (9.834 million km² and 36 people per Km2) in LTE would be a significantly harder challenge then blanketing Myanmar (676,575 km² and 83 people per Km2) or even Norway (385,203 km² and 15 people per Km2).
Just look at the stats for Myanmar, 86 people per Km2, and I might be able to get most of them within 300-500k km2. My subscriber base is excellent!
- speed
- overall saturation of tower (# users per tower)
- population density (full coverage of an area may be difficult)
- technology; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_mobile_phone_sta... which could affect federal regulatory licensing costs, technology licensing and acquisition costs and competitiveness of market to provide technology, tower density, total user capacity
This is my laymen's interpretation. For instance, to blanket the US (9.834 million km² and 36 people per Km2) in LTE would be a significantly harder challenge then blanketing Myanmar (676,575 km² and 83 people per Km2) or even Norway (385,203 km² and 15 people per Km2).
Just look at the stats for Myanmar, 86 people per Km2, and I might be able to get most of them within 300-500k km2. My subscriber base is excellent!
Can you point to a source that says labour costs are the reason for high Telco prices? The ongoing maintainence of a tower seems like it would be fractional to operational cost.
Of course towers are a fraction of operating expenses. It was just an example of one piece of the puzzle. All labor costs in Myanmar are far lower, from marketing to lawyers to retail store staff.
And as I said, there are other reasons such as consumer surplus (rich people can pay more, so they do).
And as I said, there are other reasons such as consumer surplus (rich people can pay more, so they do).
> And obviously providers will charge more if they can, less if they have to.
When prices are based on ability-to-pay rather than cost of provision, then that means there's a competition problem.
While Norway may have more expensive labour, I'm sure they farm out as much as they can offshore.
I wonder if Ericsson or Nokia charge lower prices for the same equipment in poorer countries.
When prices are based on ability-to-pay rather than cost of provision, then that means there's a competition problem.
While Norway may have more expensive labour, I'm sure they farm out as much as they can offshore.
I wonder if Ericsson or Nokia charge lower prices for the same equipment in poorer countries.
[deleted]
Maybe the word 'cost' is not the right term, better would be to talk about 'price'. The price is as high as the market will bear, clearly people are used to paying more for data in the USA and as such there is less incentive to bring down prices. The actual cost - as in what it costs to send data from A to B inside a carrier network - does not vary much between countries and can even be higher in some of those countries where retail prices are lower than in the USA.
Purchasing power parity. Median incomes in the US are far more than 15x what they are in countries like India, Pakistan, or Indonesia.
Median income India - $2k
Median income USA - $60k
Median income India - $2k
Median income USA - $60k
While I agree with your logic, a small correction: for India the data you found would probably be per capita and for USA its per household (which I think constitutes 3 or 4 members).
So something like 10x difference
So something like 10x difference
You need to build coverage for a huge portion of the population to get a license in many western countries. So all customers in the less densely populated countries have share that cost.
There is also strict requirements on uptime and huge fines for telcos in western countries if the service goes down, even for just a moment. Needless to say that creating a resilient network costs a lot more.
There is also strict requirements on uptime and huge fines for telcos in western countries if the service goes down, even for just a moment. Needless to say that creating a resilient network costs a lot more.
> costs ~$15 for the same in the United States
I'm not sure where you get $15. The linked site says $8:
"with 1GB costing an average $12.55 in Canada and $8.00 in the US."
Nor do I get why you think all of Asia is inexpensive. South Korea is far worse than the US, despite a far lower median income, at $10.94 average. If you adjust that to the US, it's more like $24 (200% higher than the US). And Japan is fairly bad vs global prices as well when adjusted for income levels (around $6 to $6.50 equivalent in US terms).
Why are US prices higher than they should be? Two primary reasons. First, the two big telcos initiated (and held) the market at a very high price point from inception. The US was the first large cellular and smartphone market. It has taken limited competition, primarily in the form of T-Mobile, more than a decade to drag those high prices downward.
Second, wealth / income adjustments. Consider the Ukraine example. The US has ~20 times the GDP per capita of Ukraine in a typical year. Their $0.46 cost is comparable to more like $9.20 with a US adjustment, which is higher than the US cost. US median disposable incomes are among the highest, only comparable to smaller affluent countries like Australia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Switzerland.
You also can't sell 1gb for $10 in Ukraine, it's not a very good business model. The people can't afford those prices. The telecom operators in countries like Ukraine do not make very much money selling mobile plans.
Most telecom operators around the world operate at very thin margins with low profits. Verizon by itself generated $30.4 billion in operating income in 2019. AT&T generated $29.4 billion in operating income. T-Mobile generated $5.7 billion in operating income.
So between the three US telecom operators, that's $65.6 billion in operating income every year (best compared to Apple or Microsoft in size). The entire rest of the world has nothing remotely like that profit bonanza, outside of a select few large operators.
I'm not sure where you get $15. The linked site says $8:
"with 1GB costing an average $12.55 in Canada and $8.00 in the US."
Nor do I get why you think all of Asia is inexpensive. South Korea is far worse than the US, despite a far lower median income, at $10.94 average. If you adjust that to the US, it's more like $24 (200% higher than the US). And Japan is fairly bad vs global prices as well when adjusted for income levels (around $6 to $6.50 equivalent in US terms).
Why are US prices higher than they should be? Two primary reasons. First, the two big telcos initiated (and held) the market at a very high price point from inception. The US was the first large cellular and smartphone market. It has taken limited competition, primarily in the form of T-Mobile, more than a decade to drag those high prices downward.
Second, wealth / income adjustments. Consider the Ukraine example. The US has ~20 times the GDP per capita of Ukraine in a typical year. Their $0.46 cost is comparable to more like $9.20 with a US adjustment, which is higher than the US cost. US median disposable incomes are among the highest, only comparable to smaller affluent countries like Australia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Switzerland.
You also can't sell 1gb for $10 in Ukraine, it's not a very good business model. The people can't afford those prices. The telecom operators in countries like Ukraine do not make very much money selling mobile plans.
Most telecom operators around the world operate at very thin margins with low profits. Verizon by itself generated $30.4 billion in operating income in 2019. AT&T generated $29.4 billion in operating income. T-Mobile generated $5.7 billion in operating income.
So between the three US telecom operators, that's $65.6 billion in operating income every year (best compared to Apple or Microsoft in size). The entire rest of the world has nothing remotely like that profit bonanza, outside of a select few large operators.
Rent. American businesses love extracting rent.
Salaries are much higher in the US. Don’t reduce complex economics to simplistic sound bites.
Look up PPP.
Look up PPP.
Downvoted without any argument for a valid counterpoint. This site is going downhill with low information posts.
ALL businesses do
In the US Jevons paradox is in play with debt and rents. Baumol's cost disease also means debt and rents are slowly snuffing out other types of economic activity.
You've got a bunch of buzzwords to describe why telcos in America fleece customers. Make it simpler for the rest of us, would you? Rent isn't a good thing here.
It's exceeding obvious, capital is cheap. The means the finance industry uses more of it. They use it for rent seeking shenanigans that wouldn't make a return if it were higher priced. The problem is increased rent extraction reduces the return on economic activities that require real investment. Because the cost of labor and rents are too high to compete with aforementioned shenanigans.
Simple simple simple.
Simple simple simple.
The chart is potentially misleading because it only focuses upon the dimension of transfer when markets can be based upon speed. South Korea oftentimes has tiers of data based around speed rather than a cap or aportionment, which is part of why its cheapest 1 GB is less than 1/4 of what it is in the US but seems comparable. My point is mostly that level of service is another dimension that is hidden from the chart that should be quantified to better understand the underlying trends.
I’m not sure about the other two, but T-Mobile has an unlimited data plan that is $40 a month for unlimited everything for a phone and $20 month unlimited for tablets if you have at least one phone on the plan. They don’t throttle you but they do prioritize your data over 50GB. I’ve never seen it happen.
But because you can’t just add more wires to the airwaves, there is a limited amount of bandwidth no matter what you do. So that’s fair.
They offer unlimited tethering still 512Kbps.
But because you can’t just add more wires to the airwaves, there is a limited amount of bandwidth no matter what you do. So that’s fair.
They offer unlimited tethering still 512Kbps.
As someone work in that industry, I see that one huge cost is people (including me) working there. So first step will be eliminate or convert these millions or so jobs in telecom industry which currently offer middle class living to about or below subsistence level.
Another will be to bring down quality of service level. A couple of years back I was india and area where my mother lived had service down for like a week. That area must have a population of at least few 100Ks.
Third to have very little customer service staff. People here have legitimately said why the hell do I care about 1000s of customer service/call center staff. I want my service cheap. In countries like India they have done that. Social media call these companies evil but I think they are just trying to run cheap service.
Fourth is to spend much less on network equipments and field testing. Service is announced at much cheaper price point but backend systems are severely overloaded so one gets much more network/call drops.
Another will be to bring down quality of service level. A couple of years back I was india and area where my mother lived had service down for like a week. That area must have a population of at least few 100Ks.
Third to have very little customer service staff. People here have legitimately said why the hell do I care about 1000s of customer service/call center staff. I want my service cheap. In countries like India they have done that. Social media call these companies evil but I think they are just trying to run cheap service.
Fourth is to spend much less on network equipments and field testing. Service is announced at much cheaper price point but backend systems are severely overloaded so one gets much more network/call drops.
> Third to have very little customer service staff. People here have legitimately said why the hell do I care about 1000s of customer service/call center staff. I want my service cheap. In countries like India they have done that. Social media call these companies evil but I think they are just trying to run cheap service.
In Canada they do that and keep the extra profits. Koodo is one of Telus’ flanker brands (for the illusion of competition) and even though they’ve increased phone and plan pricing a fair bit over the last couple of years they’ve gotten rid of the ability to directly call customer support.
The Canadian government has been promising us action in the mobile industry for ages, but year after year after year our prices go up and up and up.
In Canada they do that and keep the extra profits. Koodo is one of Telus’ flanker brands (for the illusion of competition) and even though they’ve increased phone and plan pricing a fair bit over the last couple of years they’ve gotten rid of the ability to directly call customer support.
The Canadian government has been promising us action in the mobile industry for ages, but year after year after year our prices go up and up and up.
I'm sure you've read some of the other comments, but none of this explains the massive price difference to Western European market. It's all about lack of competition due to lack of consumer friendly regulation.
A good starting point would be legislation that Israel enacted to get competitive markets as described by rvp-x:
> - Ban on SIM-locking of phones to one provider
> - Allowing users to change providers without losing their phone number
> - Ban on "exit penalties" for customers leaving a contract
> - Forcing existing infrastructure providers to share their infrastructure with virtual or not-yet-fully-deployed new providers
A good starting point would be legislation that Israel enacted to get competitive markets as described by rvp-x:
> - Ban on SIM-locking of phones to one provider
> - Allowing users to change providers without losing their phone number
> - Ban on "exit penalties" for customers leaving a contract
> - Forcing existing infrastructure providers to share their infrastructure with virtual or not-yet-fully-deployed new providers
A lot of it is that people pay $15 for the 1 GB in the US.
(and $80-100 for the big bucket)
(and $80-100 for the big bucket)
They make you pay what they can.
Demand and supply. Clearing prices are higher in the US for a variety of reasons.
When leaving Australia in 2005, it had one of the worst value mobile/internet plans, was pleasantly surprised returning after 15 years to find it now offers some of the best value.
Currently on a Woolworths no-contract pre-paid mobile, A$150 for 12 months for 84GB Data / unlimited mobile/SMS [1].
Works out as USD $8.95 /mo for 7GB / unlimited calls/SMS
[1] https://mobile.woolworths.com.au/Shop/Plans/Woolworths-Phone...
Currently on a Woolworths no-contract pre-paid mobile, A$150 for 12 months for 84GB Data / unlimited mobile/SMS [1].
Works out as USD $8.95 /mo for 7GB / unlimited calls/SMS
[1] https://mobile.woolworths.com.au/Shop/Plans/Woolworths-Phone...
We've come a long way from $20,000 per GB (the rate on Telstra prepaid circa 2011, as I discovered when I put my SIM into my first smartphone).
This is an amazing visualization and clearly shows what I found while traveling through Asia. Would love to see this mixed with average salary per country, which I expect will show an inverse correlation.
Even European countries are generally cheaper then US when it comes to mobile internet. E.g. France is 10 times cheaper on average. While France minimum hourly wage is $11.83 and US minimum hourly wage is between $7.25 to $14.00 (depending on state). It seems that US is a bit expensive regardless of the salary. Mobile companies are very competitive in Europe, and European regulations put fuel on the fire by making the number portability mandatory very early. Reducing the friction to change mobile operator while keeping the same number and with minimum to no downtime.
I would have settled for a simple bar chart... these ring plots are useless.
It’s a very bad visualisation of interesting data.
I'd wonder how they're accounting for 'unlimited' plans. In Ireland, for instance, about a third of people would be using Three, and most of their plans are 'unlimited' (in practice, there are limits after which they'll throttle you, I believe, but they're high).
I'm in the U.S., and I pay for an unlimited 4G plan and download a lot. My price per GB is cheaper than 9 cents/GB which is what the article reports as India's average price.
Not only that, but at peak times in rural areas where people use mobile broadband as their main connection, Three internet slows to a crawl. I suspect it's the backhaul from the mobile mast but I'm not sure.
That's what's always missing from these tests, reliability. It's more important than data cap and speeds.
That's what's always missing from these tests, reliability. It's more important than data cap and speeds.
> I suspect it's the backhaul from the mobile mast but I'm not sure.
It might be in some cases, but in most cases that backhaul will be a very scalable fibre line. It's probably more down to limited spectrum. Three attracts heavy users, because their pricing is designed around them, so they have the most loaded network, and they can't just manufacture new spectrum (they can add new towers up to a point, but there's a lot of cost to that). 5G should help, somewhat.
It might be in some cases, but in most cases that backhaul will be a very scalable fibre line. It's probably more down to limited spectrum. Three attracts heavy users, because their pricing is designed around them, so they have the most loaded network, and they can't just manufacture new spectrum (they can add new towers up to a point, but there's a lot of cost to that). 5G should help, somewhat.
They're not. They're deluded if they think anybody in Western Europe is paying $3.13 per GB in 2020. ;-)
Someone having a 1GB plan might, because of the base costs. But of course someone with a larger plan wouldn't, which makes it impossible to get a meaningful "average" here (+ the question if you value phone minutes/SMS or not). Comparing pricepoints of similarly sized plans would be a lot more meaningful.
I drove around Africa from mid 2016 to mid 2019[1]. I bought a SIM in most of the 35 countries I went to, uploaded YT vids, hi-res photos and just video chatted family. Overall the 3G connectivity was impressively fast, and almost always a fraction of the price of Canada or the US.
Overall, I was extremely impressed.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waQGUz0Z97Y&list=PLNiCe5roBX...
Overall, I was extremely impressed.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waQGUz0Z97Y&list=PLNiCe5roBX...
Woah that's quite an adventure!
How come you stopped in Egypt and didn't go back to Morocco?
Tunisia is a great country to visit.
How come you stopped in Egypt and didn't go back to Morocco?
Tunisia is a great country to visit.
It was always my dream to complete the loop, but the situation just didn't allow it.
It is impossible to get a visa for Libya, and with the ongoing civil war the safety situation is B.A.D. Even if I got a visa, the Egyptian military wouldn't let me get anywhere NEAR the border. They're extremely protective of tourists and won't let them go anywhere "dangerous". They also wouldn't let me drive the Sinai over to Isreal.
Also, the border from Algeria into Morocco has been closed for years, and nobody could tell me what would happen if I showed up and tried to cross.
So, unfortunately Egypt was the end of the line on that one!
It is impossible to get a visa for Libya, and with the ongoing civil war the safety situation is B.A.D. Even if I got a visa, the Egyptian military wouldn't let me get anywhere NEAR the border. They're extremely protective of tourists and won't let them go anywhere "dangerous". They also wouldn't let me drive the Sinai over to Isreal.
Also, the border from Algeria into Morocco has been closed for years, and nobody could tell me what would happen if I showed up and tried to cross.
So, unfortunately Egypt was the end of the line on that one!
Have you watched Motonomad? I guess Adam Riemann was lucky with the timing being allowed into Sinai.
A motorbike is usually OK on the Sinai.
Funny enough, for the Sinai they don't care about me being kidnapped, they care about my Jeep being kidnapped and used by ISIS against them. So a good vehicle like my Jeep is not allowed across the Sinai, but they don't care too much (or at least you can talk your way through) on a motorbike.
Funny enough, for the Sinai they don't care about me being kidnapped, they care about my Jeep being kidnapped and used by ISIS against them. So a good vehicle like my Jeep is not allowed across the Sinai, but they don't care too much (or at least you can talk your way through) on a motorbike.
Interesting!
Canada #209 out of 228 I'm not surprised, CRTC is useless, mobile / internet is still crazy expensive in 2020.
Weird how Harper and Trudeau both promised to address it and we got nothing.
American living in Indonesia here.
I never bother to purchase actual "minutes" on my local SIM. Instead I just buy pure data plans and run everything through there. I usually just load up ~14GB for $7 which lasts 30 days - it could be even cheaper if I bought more in bulk, but I never need it. Almost all of my communication is done over WhatsApp, and when I need to call an actual number I use Google Voice / Hangouts which which is over data and has very cheap minutes.
In comparison, whenever I visit the US I pop in my T-Mobile SIM and buy a prepaid plan from them for a month. I think it's usually ~$50-70/mo.
A lot of my family is on Google Fi and said I should switch over since it's "So easy for my international travels" but it just makes zero sense. If I pop over to another country it's very simple to just buy a local SIM at the airport and I'm good to go.
I never bother to purchase actual "minutes" on my local SIM. Instead I just buy pure data plans and run everything through there. I usually just load up ~14GB for $7 which lasts 30 days - it could be even cheaper if I bought more in bulk, but I never need it. Almost all of my communication is done over WhatsApp, and when I need to call an actual number I use Google Voice / Hangouts which which is over data and has very cheap minutes.
In comparison, whenever I visit the US I pop in my T-Mobile SIM and buy a prepaid plan from them for a month. I think it's usually ~$50-70/mo.
A lot of my family is on Google Fi and said I should switch over since it's "So easy for my international travels" but it just makes zero sense. If I pop over to another country it's very simple to just buy a local SIM at the airport and I'm good to go.
I'm in India and I pay $8 for 84 days and get 2.5GB/day for those 84 days.
Just to add, while technically it's 4G, it's hard to rely on that and most of the time the speed I get is less than 2-3mbps and the connection is really unstable(lived in multiple places all across India). It was much better when jio was just launched due to less users. But now it has become race to the bottom and there is no way to get a good 4G connection in India.
At least where I live (or honestly wherever I've been in South India) Jio has been mostly reliable enough for me to even work remotely with zoom calls and ssh/slack. So YMMV is the real conclusion.
I second this. My Jio connection is fast enough for me to VPN in and work, combined with Zoom calls. It's always 20-30Mbps whenever I test it.
I have definitely worked on Jio's network without issues. But have also been to areas where it is patchy. But things have definitely improved in terms of both data plans and their speeds ever since jio came into the market.
I think the population density of the area where one lives affects the quality of network they experience.
From what we can see in many of the comments, the research is deeply flawed. E.g. In Roumania with 6e you get over 50gb. Actually Digi(RDS), telco has 4$ subsription with 100gb lte plus additional 50gb 3G (total 150gb)/month. As for the speed, Bucharest was found the best internet connection in the world for games (a research released few days back). Thanks to the EU roaming law, some people realized that it's so good that you can use it anywhere in Europe long term (years, without going back to Romania). Subscribe in ro with the smallest plan 4$/month, and enjoy 1.7e/Gb anywhere in Europe, as long as you want!!! This is only for Digi (not organge/vodafone/tmobile). ONLY Digi allows you to stay long term in roaming (years). Here are full prices(use google translate): "Tarifele de roaming, cu TVA inclus, care se aplica de la primul min/MB/SMS utilizat sunt: apeluri locale si catre tari UE/SEE 0.0183 Euro/min; catre alte tari 1.4875 Euro/min si 0.0060 Euro/SMS trimis. Apeluri primite 0.0094 Euro/min si 0 Euro/SMS primit. Trafic date 0.0017 Euro/Mbyte. Apeluri gratuite in UE/SEE: 112 (Urgenta) si +40314007777 (info tarife). Multumim, echipa DIGI."
So, if you are anywhere in Europe with higher than 1.7e/gb, make a Digi subscription and you all set.
Yeah, this isn't right. I pay (New Zealand) a hundred and something a month for 100GB 4G or 5G if you can get it.
Agree - these numbers are way off and to be honest are pretty difficult to calculate. There are a number of 'unlimited' mobile data plans and at the same time you can still get charged 50c per MB ($500/GB) on some pay-as-you-go plans.
Sounds a bit high? Vodafone NZ offers 300 GB of 4G broadband for $73 at the moment.
That's just broadband though. My phone is my sole internet connection these days. We live in the future.
My phone has also been my sole internet connection for the last 12 years.
What I don't get is they are selling wireless broadband at the price I mention above, but if you buy what is essentially the same product as part of a phone plan instead (i.e. they've simply packaged it differently), you pay something along the lines of 10x or 20x the price per GB.
What I don't get is they are selling wireless broadband at the price I mention above, but if you buy what is essentially the same product as part of a phone plan instead (i.e. they've simply packaged it differently), you pay something along the lines of 10x or 20x the price per GB.
Yeah my plan is $40NZD and only has 4GB a month :( was on a 10GB plan for $60.
It's useless. Some countries has strict data cap. The first 1 GB may be cheap and bandwidth is good, but you can't keep using it with the advertised bandwidth even for 1 hour. The data cap can be reached less than 30 minutes and you are stuck with low bandwidth for a month.
I really don't like the business model of mobile network. They shall be banned to advertise a few hundred of Mbps. What's good at 100+ Mbps when transfer mere 9 GB within 3 days window results bandwidth restriction of 1 Mbps. It's a fraud.
I really don't like the business model of mobile network. They shall be banned to advertise a few hundred of Mbps. What's good at 100+ Mbps when transfer mere 9 GB within 3 days window results bandwidth restriction of 1 Mbps. It's a fraud.
Bulgaria here. I don't know if the comparison is even relevant as we don't have normal mobile data plans anymore. Most of the plans are providing 5-10 GB of data to all networks and websites and some GBs to specific websites like social media and popular ones. So for example I can have a data plan with 20 GB but after the first 10 GB I have fast internet just for facebook and whatsapp. The rest of the internet is almost not accessible as it takes ages to load.
From what we can see in many of the comments, the research is deeply flawed.
E.g. In Roumania with 6e you get over 50gb.
Actually Digi(RDS), telco has 4$ subsription with 100gb lte plus additional 50gb 3G (total 150gb)/month.
As for the speed, Bucharest was found the best internet connection in the world for games (a research released few days back).
Thanks to the EU roaming law, some people realized that it's so good that you can use it anywhere in Europe long term (years, without going back to Romania).
Subscribe in ro with the smallest plan 4$/month, and enjoy 1.7e/Gb anywhere in Europe, as long as you want!!!
This is only for Digi (not organge/vodafone/tmobile). ONLY Digi allows you to stay long term in roaming (years).
Here are full prices(use google translate):
"Tarifele de roaming, cu TVA inclus, care se aplica de la primul min/MB/SMS utilizat sunt: apeluri locale si catre tari UE/SEE 0.0183 Euro/min; catre alte tari 1.4875 Euro/min si 0.0060 Euro/SMS trimis. Apeluri primite 0.0094 Euro/min si 0 Euro/SMS primit. Trafic date 0.0017 Euro/Mbyte. Apeluri gratuite in UE/SEE: 112 (Urgenta) si +40314007777 (info tarife). Multumim, echipa DIGI."
So, if you are anywhere in Europe with higher than 1.7e/gb, make a Digi subscription and you all set.
So, if you are anywhere in Europe with higher than 1.7e/gb, make a Digi subscription and you all set.
[deleted]
>> In Mexico you’ll pay an average of $4.77 for 1GB of data, making the biggest country in Central America also the second-most expensive on average when it comes to buying mobile data
I am a reasonably educated person within the United States. I may be wrong, but I believe that I've always been taught that Mexico was within the North American Continent.
Honest question, Am I incorrect about Mexico being in North America? and If so, Am I also incorrect about what I believe i was taught (its happened before)?
I am a reasonably educated person within the United States. I may be wrong, but I believe that I've always been taught that Mexico was within the North American Continent.
Honest question, Am I incorrect about Mexico being in North America? and If so, Am I also incorrect about what I believe i was taught (its happened before)?
Continent models are very arbitrary and vary based on where you are, what language you’re speaking, etc.
Fun fact, in Mexico (and most of Latin America), North America is simply a subregion of the real continent “America” that includes North, Central, and South as one.
Prior to WWI or II, the US used that definition (The Americas) as well IIRC.
Fun fact, in Mexico (and most of Latin America), North America is simply a subregion of the real continent “America” that includes North, Central, and South as one.
Prior to WWI or II, the US used that definition (The Americas) as well IIRC.
I think most Americans do implicitly treat it as one continent because if you talk about Central America you kind of have to, otherwise Central America would be part of North America and that's just weird.
AFAIK South and North America belong to two independent tectonic plates that happened to merge a few millions of years ago; North America was part of Laurasia, while South America was part of Gondwana and it was originally attached with Africa.
So I guess you can indeed argue that North and South America are two different continents...
So I guess you can indeed argue that North and South America are two different continents...
Wikipedia seems to agree with you :-) TIL
The cost of 1GB doesn't seem to take into account the entrance to having a line in the first place. I might not pay more than 1€ a GB but I still have to pay 10€ to be on the network and I can't only buy 1GB, I have to buy 2, 10 or 50 or 100. The "base plan" is where the ISPs get you. That plus data is just the modern day rents for tech companies. It doesn't really make sense to compare data prices when the telecoms are charging varying entrance rates.
UK and $13 for 30gb 4g on a rolling monthly contract but there are a lot of more expensive plans out there and people don't switch as often as they could.
I don't think the stats are that relevant, at least for romania.
For example I pay 6 eur/month for a prepaid sim that has something like 2k minutes and sms, and 6 gb of traffic. The thing is that my carrier (Orange) always offers an extra 50gb of traffic for free. Afaik, most carriers have a deal like this.
The quality is decent, they have 4G coverage almost everywhere, maybe except in the mountain areas, but that's to be expected.
For example I pay 6 eur/month for a prepaid sim that has something like 2k minutes and sms, and 6 gb of traffic. The thing is that my carrier (Orange) always offers an extra 50gb of traffic for free. Afaik, most carriers have a deal like this.
The quality is decent, they have 4G coverage almost everywhere, maybe except in the mountain areas, but that's to be expected.
I live in Poland. I have, personally, no less than three plans.
1 for my mobile phone where I have something like 15GB of data for equivalent of 20USD (that including unlimited calls).
1 for my laptop, where there is a limit of 100GB for equivalent of 10USD
1 for my emergency mobile Internet which is unlimited monthly transfer but limited bandwidth to 20Mbit/s (I have tested, I have not yet reached a limit after uploading/downloading hundreds of GBs in one month I had to move to my parents in law), for equivalent of 10USD per month. This came with a LTE to WiFi router. I use it as emergency (I work from home, I need it in case my 1Gbit broadband fails) and I take it on trips with family so we have good quality unlimited Internet wherever we are.
It seems silly to me that you can have basically free broadband and so expensive mobile in a western country with technically advanced infrastructure. I could understand operators wanting to recoup their initial investments but in the long run mobile should be cheaper to transfer than broadband (there less physical infrastructure having to be laid and maintained).
1 for my mobile phone where I have something like 15GB of data for equivalent of 20USD (that including unlimited calls).
1 for my laptop, where there is a limit of 100GB for equivalent of 10USD
1 for my emergency mobile Internet which is unlimited monthly transfer but limited bandwidth to 20Mbit/s (I have tested, I have not yet reached a limit after uploading/downloading hundreds of GBs in one month I had to move to my parents in law), for equivalent of 10USD per month. This came with a LTE to WiFi router. I use it as emergency (I work from home, I need it in case my 1Gbit broadband fails) and I take it on trips with family so we have good quality unlimited Internet wherever we are.
It seems silly to me that you can have basically free broadband and so expensive mobile in a western country with technically advanced infrastructure. I could understand operators wanting to recoup their initial investments but in the long run mobile should be cheaper to transfer than broadband (there less physical infrastructure having to be laid and maintained).
One thing that is essay to miss if you glance at the map, is just how much cheaper mobile data plans are in Denmark than in Norway.
I recently learned about this when a friend of mine pointed it out to me while we were talking about the pricing of the mobile data plans here in Norway.
Here is a Danish website comparing providers in Denmark: https://telepristjek.dk/data-billige-priser/
Here is a Norwegian website comparing providers in Norway: https://www.tek.no/mobilt-bredbaand/
You’ll be able to read the tables even if you don’t speak Danish nor Norwegian, since the tables show contain the word “GB” for gigabytes of data, and the price which is in DKK and NOK respectively.
In addition to those tables mentioned, some currency exchange rates are useful to make sense of the data if you live in another country:
100 NOK 🇳🇴 ~= 70 DKK 🇩🇰
100 DKK 🇩🇰 ~= 143 NOK 🇳🇴
100 NOK 🇳🇴 ~= 9.42 EUR 🇪🇺
100 DKK 🇩🇰 ~= 13.43 EUR 🇪🇺
100 NOK 🇳🇴 ~= 11.10 USD 🇺🇸
100 DKK 🇩🇰 ~= 15.84 USD 🇺🇸
I recently learned about this when a friend of mine pointed it out to me while we were talking about the pricing of the mobile data plans here in Norway.
Here is a Danish website comparing providers in Denmark: https://telepristjek.dk/data-billige-priser/
Here is a Norwegian website comparing providers in Norway: https://www.tek.no/mobilt-bredbaand/
You’ll be able to read the tables even if you don’t speak Danish nor Norwegian, since the tables show contain the word “GB” for gigabytes of data, and the price which is in DKK and NOK respectively.
In addition to those tables mentioned, some currency exchange rates are useful to make sense of the data if you live in another country:
100 NOK 🇳🇴 ~= 70 DKK 🇩🇰
100 DKK 🇩🇰 ~= 143 NOK 🇳🇴
100 NOK 🇳🇴 ~= 9.42 EUR 🇪🇺
100 DKK 🇩🇰 ~= 13.43 EUR 🇪🇺
100 NOK 🇳🇴 ~= 11.10 USD 🇺🇸
100 DKK 🇩🇰 ~= 15.84 USD 🇺🇸
I can confirm, internet in Ukraine (top 5) is super cheap, most people don't even realize how inexpensive it is comparing to other countries. Mobile traffic is so cheap that it gets very inconvenient to keep your internet habits when you are in other countries.
Italy seems like a great country to spend more time in, thank you for report!
Italy seems like a great country to spend more time in, thank you for report!
It's an interesting statistic. But it can paint a warped picture. For example, it ranks Switzerland at #191 which probaby is correct. Othe other hand, since 7 years, I have a contract with 2 SIMs for 39CHF/m on which I'm well in the 3-digits GB/m. Hence, 1GB can also just cost cents.
How do they take in account unlimited plans in some countries for which 1GB costs becomes actually incalculable?
If you were looking for a mobile deal, then I think you would go for the cheapest one, so I have created the interactive map again using the data for the lowest price per US$
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQzJcAT0HcgB...
I've removed those countries that are over $5/GB/month such as Greenland because it caused the whole map to be green due to how the data is skewed and the limitations of the geo chart in Google maps.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQzJcAT0HcgB...
I've removed those countries that are over $5/GB/month such as Greenland because it caused the whole map to be green due to how the data is skewed and the limitations of the geo chart in Google maps.
I live on Finland and I've got unlimited everything for 16,9€/month. This includes calls, sms and 200mbps LTE data. There is no data caps (not even throttling, since that would be against the law) and I've had months with 400+gb data transferred, no issues.
Yep, the price published for Finland feels really weird. The operators are nowadays selling even even unlimited data prepaids for 20-30 euros or 1 eur per day. This of course makes gigabyte price comparison a bit hard as it depends how much you download.
Related discussion from 43 days ago on an article that used this as its source data: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23795147
In South Korea, where avg price is $10.94/GB and min price is $0.43/GB, mobile data plans are so much segregated that the goverment had to push cheaper MVNOs to the wider public. For technologically aware people it's more like $2--3/GB and telcos tend to exploit who are technologically less aware.
Given this and that telcos are universally known to be not super customer friendly, average price seems a pretty limited metric and distribution analysis should be required. Unfortunately their raw data has no actual data points for each plan...
Given this and that telcos are universally known to be not super customer friendly, average price seems a pretty limited metric and distribution analysis should be required. Unfortunately their raw data has no actual data points for each plan...
Why is the American market so expensive for data? Is there some kind of market manipulation going on? I’d naively expect free market ideals to put America near the bottom of the price range for a commodity.
What amazes me the most with my telco is that they charge $60 for a regular plan which includes 4GB of data, SMS and phone calls, but if I want to buy 1GB extra, it's $30-40 bucks. For a single 1GB of download.
Makes sense, because it's modeled on your willingness to pay rather than cost. They probably did the market research and figured that people who use more than 4GB of data per month probably depend on it to earn a living, and therefore can charge more. Yet another reason why everyone should get a dual sim phone, which breaks this sort of market segmentation.
> people who use more than 4GB of data per month probably depend on it to earn a living, and therefore can charge more
Just like a hospital who charges $500 for a band-aid.
Just like a hospital who charges $500 for a band-aid.
What horrible carrier is that? Even in the US which has high cellular data costs it's usually $10/GB
I have all sorts of international roaming perks, but if you actually want that high speed in any other country you still need to buy a sim card in that country.
Fix that, and then we can talk about comparative 1GB costs.
Fix that, and then we can talk about comparative 1GB costs.
The price should be calculated for ~10GB, or better yet 50 or even 100GB, as the prices tend to be lower the more GB you pay for, which becomes really noticeable with "unlimited" packages.
Some countries/networks have true unlimited 4G, some give you a set amount of GB at full speed, after which it drops to something barely usable (128-1024 Kbps).
I could use ~1TB/month on 4G on Three UK for ~40 Euros. That's unbeatable in Europe to my knowledge.
Never got higher than ~300 GB/month though - even at that price per GB only some Eastern European networks become competitive.
Some countries/networks have true unlimited 4G, some give you a set amount of GB at full speed, after which it drops to something barely usable (128-1024 Kbps).
I could use ~1TB/month on 4G on Three UK for ~40 Euros. That's unbeatable in Europe to my knowledge.
Never got higher than ~300 GB/month though - even at that price per GB only some Eastern European networks become competitive.
Funny story about my vodafone.es SIM card I bought last year. I used it for about 3 months while traveling in Europe and Turkey. I bought 8 GB for around 10 EUR, and didn't use nearly that much. I renewed that plan the following month, but due to some glitch in Vodafone's system, the same 10 EUR bought me 16 GB for the upcoming month. I renewed the following month, and my 10 EUR again bought me 32 GB! I hope I can reactivate that SIM when I go back to Europe, the monthly alotment should be up in the PBs by now.
I wonder how they factor unlimited plans into this?
In Chile, the mobile internet is quite cheap (and usually plenty fast, LTE is widespread and download speeds > 10 Mbps are common) per GB but unlimited plans are also common.
E.g., I pay something like $1.50 a week for unlimited internet and calls, and since I can use 60 GB a month easy, that works out to ~10 cents a GB, considerably cheaper than what the chart shows for Chile. It's also about 100x cheaper than the $10/GB ballpark I paid in Canada. Yeah, one hundred times cheaper.
In Chile, the mobile internet is quite cheap (and usually plenty fast, LTE is widespread and download speeds > 10 Mbps are common) per GB but unlimited plans are also common.
E.g., I pay something like $1.50 a week for unlimited internet and calls, and since I can use 60 GB a month easy, that works out to ~10 cents a GB, considerably cheaper than what the chart shows for Chile. It's also about 100x cheaper than the $10/GB ballpark I paid in Canada. Yeah, one hundred times cheaper.
I've met a few people in california that have a mexico cell phone plan and claim to pay less despite it being international than they would if they got an american plan. I haven't tried it myself though.
I'm on an expansive "family plan" with 6 people I know instead right now. These are the same companies that charged more for calling across town with a "local toll rate" than across the country merely 20 years ago, they'll invent whatever they can to justify a fee
I'm on an expansive "family plan" with 6 people I know instead right now. These are the same companies that charged more for calling across town with a "local toll rate" than across the country merely 20 years ago, they'll invent whatever they can to justify a fee
The things about the cheap mobile data plans in Israel is, that you sell you a 50 GB/month or 200 GB/month even if you absolutely don't need it. You can't (?) get a 2 GB/month plan.
So it's the price that stays fixed and the amount of data that goes up.
I'm usually quite critical of the state where I live (Israel) - oppression, social inequality, racism corruption in government... but at least we have decent mobile plans for 10 USD/month. That's something I guess.
So it's the price that stays fixed and the amount of data that goes up.
I'm usually quite critical of the state where I live (Israel) - oppression, social inequality, racism corruption in government... but at least we have decent mobile plans for 10 USD/month. That's something I guess.
I am in the US. I pay $80 a month for TWO phones. My plan provides unlimited calls, texts, and shared 2GB of 4G data. When my data runs out, my data speeds go to 100kb/s.
You need to look at prepaid options. All major carriers have those. They are not bad if you like in or around a metropolitan area.
TMobile -> Metro PCS
Verizon -> Visible
ATT -> Cricket
TMobile -> Metro PCS
Verizon -> Visible
ATT -> Cricket
I'm on a T-Mobile 4 line plan at $30/line. Unlimited everything except I think it deprioritizes data over 50GB/month/line. But I've never exceeded 10GB/month yet.
Does that include phone payments at all? Because it sounds like you’re getting a not so great deal. I’m also in the US and pay that much for unlimited everything on 2 phones
1 GB may show some statistics but it doesn't reflect the reality. Most of the time I find many other things matter like latancy, throughput,qos. I am currently on 45 mbps but still when i download it starts from 1 mbps and takes like 2 minute to reach 45 mbps meaning do matter especially browsing. However I must say during my intership at India the internet was very good. Its like 10$ and you are done for 1 month with free calls .
The data is not adjusted for purchasing power. $1 goes much longer in South East Asia (India, Pakistan, etc.) than it does in North American, for example.
Not sure about South Korea, for instance, being at 202nd place for affordability there when unlimited plans for even pre-paid tourist SIMs are a thing.
As I said in my post (which seems to be being downvoted despite telling the truth). The webpage is very naive and is not really telling the truth about mobile contracts.
The wallet cost of mobile data is lower than the inflated prices shown on the website.
The wallet cost of mobile data is lower than the inflated prices shown on the website.
They're only looking at total transfer costs and not level of service. You pay more for faster speed oftentimes in Korea and the baseline price may be a little higher than something like Cricket in the US but level of service even in the countryside is substantially better.
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I am curious how this study differentiates between different regions. I have been to many parts of the US, and my experiences have differed wildly enough that I'd say that the differences might be as much as the global highest/lowest quality in terms of bandwidth. Not in terms of censorship (I've experienced that first hand in completely unrelated circumstances).
Finland at 87, Australia at 16. Hilarious.
I came to Finland from Australia and asked what the limit was. 40Mb/s I was told (quite some years ago).
No, per month.
They didn't understand the question. There are no limits. 40Mb/s, times the number of seconds in a month.
Quick check: Optus is 10AUD per GB extra on all the plans. They don't mention the speed, of course.
This is a bad piece of research.
I came to Finland from Australia and asked what the limit was. 40Mb/s I was told (quite some years ago).
No, per month.
They didn't understand the question. There are no limits. 40Mb/s, times the number of seconds in a month.
Quick check: Optus is 10AUD per GB extra on all the plans. They don't mention the speed, of course.
This is a bad piece of research.
The numbers for Norway makes no sense at all. Cheapest is supposedly $0.62, but you can get 1GB for less than $0.0046, if you pay for unlimited usage and coverage is good so you can average 200 Mbps.
And the average is much too low for 1GB if this was supposed to not include transfer as part of a larger package.
Either way, the numbers makes absolutely no sense.
And the average is much too low for 1GB if this was supposed to not include transfer as part of a larger package.
Either way, the numbers makes absolutely no sense.
Russian Siberia here ;) Mobile LTE 50Gb data + 300 minutes coutrywide calls is just $3/month. Proxies and VPNs work ok.
Germany is usually notoriously expensive. I'm surprised to see it on-par with the US here.
Also what does cheapest mean? For germany I'd want to see 8eur for 3gb. That's the budget default here set by Aldi (including phone/text flat, I guess 7eur without that), Lidl allays following them after 1-2 weeks.
Also what does cheapest mean? For germany I'd want to see 8eur for 3gb. That's the budget default here set by Aldi (including phone/text flat, I guess 7eur without that), Lidl allays following them after 1-2 weeks.
The cost for a 1 gb plan is insane in india. I paid about $3.30 for a 2gb plan for a month.
By 2gb .. I mean it was 2gb of data per day. Granted the coverage wasn't great and the network was way overloaded.
https://www.jio.com/en-in/4g-plans
By 2gb .. I mean it was 2gb of data per day. Granted the coverage wasn't great and the network was way overloaded.
https://www.jio.com/en-in/4g-plans
Not sure if this will be a perfect comparison since some providers provide unlimited data for a fixed price with high caps (i.e. 1000gb of fair usage). I pay 32 British pounds a month for unlimited 4G with a fair usage cap of 1,000GB so that comes to $0.03 per GB....
I don't know if "cable.co.uk" reads HN, but there is a mistake in the article: "Estonia is the cheapest of the three with 1GB costing an average of $1.27 and sits in 53rd place in the world, while in Estonia 1GB costs $1.85 on average"
One of those Estonias should likely be Lithuania
One of those Estonias should likely be Lithuania
I think the comparisons could also use some normalization with respect to per capita income (mean, mode, median?). 1 USD in the US doesn't mean the same thing as 1 USD in China.
From the consumers' perspective, it's about affordability, not absolute cost.
From the consumers' perspective, it's about affordability, not absolute cost.
Should also take into account cost of living. I believe Internet cost much more in poor countries.
I'm surprised to have to come to the second page for this, was expecting this top or second comment to link to a table where these prices are compensated for purchasing power.
The cost of the labor to keep these networks running should obviously factor into the price as you can't take data from Indonesia and use it elsewhere (you can manufacture things in Indonesia and ship them here, so for goods it might make sense to compare global prices; not so for data plans). The best way to do that is probably purchasing power.
The cost of the labor to keep these networks running should obviously factor into the price as you can't take data from Indonesia and use it elsewhere (you can manufacture things in Indonesia and ship them here, so for goods it might make sense to compare global prices; not so for data plans). The best way to do that is probably purchasing power.
I bought a bag of chips in India (near Delhi) yesterday that had an Airtel coupon code for 2gb of free mobile data. The chips cost 20 rupees, or about $.25. Not bad at all! (the codes didn't work but I thought it was a great giveaway concept)
Is it a giveaway if the codes didn't work?
In South Africa data is really expensive, and we don’t have a lot of disposable income. There isn’t really an excuse for it since Kenya has way cheaper internet. We’ve just allowed our service providers to get away with extortionate pricing.
I'm paying £9 for 30GB but that also includes unlimited minutes and texts. So I'm pretty near the lowest in my country, UK. My only question is, who in their right mind is paying the highest?! I mean £52… WFT.
Apart from internet experience (speed, coverage, etc.) this should also be corrected for the purchasing power parity as paying 12USD in Canada is very different from paying that in e.g. India.
Awesome site.
Most expensive in the UK $64? That's insane. Would be interesting to see where the sources of these prices were. I downloaded the spreadsheet but it just tells you the numbers, not the providers.
Most expensive in the UK $64? That's insane. Would be interesting to see where the sources of these prices were. I downloaded the spreadsheet but it just tells you the numbers, not the providers.
This is great. But additional and important context is speed. Knowing coverage would be a plus as well.
Slow with mediocre coverage might be inexpensive but that waiting (and swearing?) comes with a cost.
Slow with mediocre coverage might be inexpensive but that waiting (and swearing?) comes with a cost.
In Canada, it's the opposite. Due to high prices, the speeds are very fast.
But this can also mean that a single poor decision can leave you data less (or rationing) for the rest of the month. Most plans just lock you up until you pay more, rather than continue throttled.
Then you have software obviously written by people with zero consideration for data costs. NPR One app thinks it's a great idea to pre-stream hundreds of MB of content. Thanks NPR. Zoom doesn't have any low-bandwidth modes. While iOS lets you enforce a 'low-data mode' when tethering to metered connections, OS X doesn't. Thanks OS X for downloading that update while I was on a train. I was doing my best to ration what I had left by using Lynx for fuck's sake.
But this can also mean that a single poor decision can leave you data less (or rationing) for the rest of the month. Most plans just lock you up until you pay more, rather than continue throttled.
Then you have software obviously written by people with zero consideration for data costs. NPR One app thinks it's a great idea to pre-stream hundreds of MB of content. Thanks NPR. Zoom doesn't have any low-bandwidth modes. While iOS lets you enforce a 'low-data mode' when tethering to metered connections, OS X doesn't. Thanks OS X for downloading that update while I was on a train. I was doing my best to ration what I had left by using Lynx for fuck's sake.
In Shanghai I pay $11 per month for 16GB mobile data plus a 50M broadband at home. I pay a bit more than that for the cloud VMs on which I install VPN services.
This seems inaccurate.
I live in Finland and I have unlimited mobile data.
That is quite common.
I live in Finland and I have unlimited mobile data.
That is quite common.
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I pay $25 including taxes and fees for two unlimited lines on Sprint in the US, thanks to $15 Kickstart two years ago and the recent free line for life promotion.
1 GB of 24/7 access to unrestricted internet is different than 1 GB of always down or censored internet.
They should consider that in the next "study".
They should consider that in the next "study".
I'm doing my part in the US by not paying for a single byte of mobile data. They will have to bring the price down for me to consider it.
Yah, I'm paying ~CAD$35 for 4gb of data (incl. voice/SMS), and while I could upgrade to 10gb for $50, I'm holding out for a 90%+ reduction in prices.
Where? What carrier? That’s $15 cheaper than anything I’m aware of.
Fido has 9gb for that price. Retentions can usually work better deals.
Wind has 20gb for $50, but it’s Wind :)
I always investigate here: https://forums.redflagdeals.com/ongoing-deal-discussion-f129...
Wind has 20gb for $50, but it’s Wind :)
I always investigate here: https://forums.redflagdeals.com/ongoing-deal-discussion-f129...
I get 8gb capped 4g and unlimited 3g with page plus for 39$ a month. (unlimited text+calling)
It would be interesting to see the numbers relative to purchasing power parity.
For an ordinary Indian person 0.07 usd might still be relatively expensive
For an ordinary Indian person 0.07 usd might still be relatively expensive
Thats 5.25 Indian Rupee, even Beggars would earn more than that in a day. Hourly minimum wage is 30cents, which as sad as it is, is still 4x the cost of 1GB data. I would argue cost of smartphones as a bigger deterrent. While in most countries an okay smartphone would cost 20x the cost of a GB of data, in India its roughly 50x
Trouble is that webpage is largely a meaningless waste of time. Anybody who has done business with the mobile operators can tell you that.
It doesn't take into account the different types of contracts (e.g. are we talking about personal or business contracts, pay as you go or contract etc. etc. etc. etc.).
Nor does it take into account the infinite and ever changing commercial promotions the operators run.
If the chart on that website was to be believed, the data on my mobile contract should be costing me 15x more per GB than it actually does !
Load of codswallop.
It doesn't take into account the different types of contracts (e.g. are we talking about personal or business contracts, pay as you go or contract etc. etc. etc. etc.).
Nor does it take into account the infinite and ever changing commercial promotions the operators run.
If the chart on that website was to be believed, the data on my mobile contract should be costing me 15x more per GB than it actually does !
Load of codswallop.
The map isn't that useful without showing what type of data it is. 1GB data is very different over 2G, 3G and 4G.
I've used 2.93 TB of data in 7 months on my £30/month unlimited 5G plan. So £0.07 (USD $0.09) per GB, I guess?
I'd like to see this compared with a coverage map as well.
Mexico is part of North America, not Central America.
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Superficial looks suggests that price is inversely proportional to area size where infrastructure is needed and population density willing to pay for it.
5G4G3G(2)
Last month, when I was in Pakistan, my experience was:
+ highly censored to the point where even services like Cloudflare's edge-node's within the country were being MiTM-ed by the censors [0];
+ I couldn't use "any mode of communication such as VPN by means of which communication becomes hidden or encrypted is a violation of PTA regulations" in the words of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authoruty (PTA) —Pakistan's FCC-equivalent. I asked them if TLS/SSL was included but they never tweeted back; and
+ I didn't have access to services like Paypal, and when a service hadn't rolled out "globally", it wasn't available to me.
Oh, and while I had "unlimited" internet, I was subject to my carrier's "Fair Use Policy" which had an unspecified maximum download limit after which your internet would be cut off. This was reported by a lot of people during the initial work-from-home boost during the pandemic when home-data-usage spiked.
Now that I'm in Canada, my internet is nearly unrestricted.
Edit: previous said my ISP restricted IRC. Just rechecked, it no longer does.
[0]: https://twitter.com/amingilani/status/1283448960666009601