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India has the highest data usage per smartphone

thehindu.com

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Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#71

Post by Dylan16807 »

the_duke wrote: post #43
dzhiurgis wrote: post #24

Can someone explain why in countries with established infrastructure, automation and cheaper capital cost (albeit higher labor cost) the internet cost is around 10-20x more than in India? Additionally, it's often ~5x slower than in 2nd world countries...

Comparing dollar prices in isolation makes almost no sense. You need to at least look at average/median monthly income and compare via some normalized metric, like a variant of Purchasing Power Parity [1] . Even if you do this, comparisons are hard. Completely different economies, market structures and target groups, subsidies, taxation, regulation, etc can all have a big effect. Looking at India, it has a GDP per Ca…

If things are competitive, it makes more sense to look at cost than PPP-adjusted price. PPP is an overall metric that doesn't always apply to specific items; it's not like the price of an iPhone is any different in India. And GP gives a pretty fair list of things that influence cost.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#72

Post by tellme_throwa »

lota-putty wrote: post #54

3.5GB/day, 100 SMS/day, unlimited Local/STD calls @ $2/Month at a remote town in India. At peak hours I see 1+ Mbps, 8+ Mbps during least(10pm - 8am) traffic hours. I use DNSFilter along with DoT & DoH for Smartphone. Stubby for my Laptop's Ubuntu over USB hotspot. Yes, JIO changed data market with its bullish 4G investment. Prior to that, subscribers could ride free on with zero/month for only incoming calls. Now ev…

Hello,. also from a remote village but for most people jio has been economical.

I remember browsing at ~10 KiB/s on BSNL 2G network at 20MB/day for INR 4, now at nearly same cost, I can get much better internet, though not even near to foreign speeds.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#73

Post by tellme_throwa »

Think I can list a few reasons.

[] Movie piracy: continuing through telegram groups

[] WhatsApp - people share videos on whatsapp a lot these days..

[] YouTube - Here I don't think ppl are much into paying for Netflix / Amazon, but YouTube is used a lot.

[] Others: services like hotstar, voot ( movie / TV live streaming ), audio streaming services. Most of these are ad supported. And of course, seems quite a lot at adult content..

This is what I observed in surroundings. Indian people don't care much about ads and that also has been a monetization strategy for jio. I personally don't use any of their apps but many do. Also their cheap feature phones embed advertising.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#74

Post by bhouston »

I think it is because there is much less usage of home internet in India. Thus what North America and Europe split between mobile and home internet is all on India's mobile.

This means that India is actually much lower in total bandwidth usage per month per person than North America and Europe overall.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#75

Post by kittiepryde »

justaguyhere wrote: post #70

Americans are going to be livid when they learn how cheap data plans are in India. The reason this works is free market, unlike the US where the likes of Comcast have monopoly in the regions they operate. Hasan Minhaj did a show this week on Netflix, you should watch it - he explains pretty well how horrible Comcast like companies are.

Show is The Patriot Act. Episode is volume 3 episode 6, 'Internet Inequality'.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#78

Post by IAmEveryone »

taneq wrote: post #18
harias wrote: post #7

For 6 dollars 50 cents, you get 1.5 GB/day for 91 days. Data-plans on offer: https://www.jio.com/en-in/4g-plans And they manage to remain profitable (only-telco in India that reported profit this quarter) : https://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/relian...

Holy crap, why am I paying $35/mo for 500mb? >.<

Median income in India is $1670.

That's per year, not month!

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#79

Post by lkbm »

denzil_correa wrote: post #39

This is also because for most people a smartphone is their first computer and mobile Internet is their first Internet connection.

My initial thought was roughly the same -- I have wifi at home, at work, at the gym, at the coffee shop. The only time I go over 2GB in a month is if I turn off wifi for some reason and forget to turn it back on when I got to work/home.

But to your point, I also watch videos primarily on my laptop, not my phone. I also have a phone with plenty of storage so I can cache all my most listened to music, my audiobook, and latest podcasts.

I technically have unlimited data, albeit dropping down to 2G speeds after 2GB, but I almost ever hit that limit. The cost isn't a factor for me, since it's flat-rate. I know it is to some people, but it's the presence of wifi and my preference for watching videos on my laptop that keeps mobile data usage low.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#80

Post by belltaco »

justaguyhere wrote: post #70

Americans are going to be livid when they learn how cheap data plans are in India. The reason this works is free market, unlike the US where the likes of Comcast have monopoly in the regions they operate. Hasan Minhaj did a show this week on Netflix, you should watch it - he explains pretty well how horrible Comcast like companies are.

Probably true, but how does that jive with the perception that it was all triggered by below-cost discounts from the likes of Jio to grab market share at a huge loss, and that it's not sustainable?
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