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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

#181

Post by inapis »

cameronbrown wrote: post #153
inapis wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You could also imagine why it might be hard for Netflix, Spotify and Prime movies to compete in India Till a certain extent. Netflix, Prime Videos, Hotstar etc have much more variety and higher quality and some are VERY AFFORDABLE. Prime videos and Hotstar (HBO, Game of thrones, Veep, Silicon Valley like shows) can be had for $14 USD per year EACH. So upwardly mobile Indians can subscribe to multiple OTT streaming…

> Indian creators on YouTube have pretty much surpassed every big name streaming company. I think T-Series would like a word. In all seriousness I think the proliferation of independent content creators is incredible. Maybe content is of lower quality, but it's more fun.

T-Series is not comparable to TV Shows. Yes, it has more subscribers on youtube but it doesn't have that stickiness and loyalty that channels live TVF, AIB (did?), Timeliners etc have.

TVF created a series set in 90s India which resonated with the current late 20s crowd so well that it spread like wildfire. If tomorrow, TVF would launch a movie, it will pretty much fill all the theaters in the country.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#182

Post by scarface74 »

deepVoid wrote: post #175
catchmeifyoucan wrote: post #90

I'm from India. I can confirm this. It's because unlimited LTE data costs about rs700 per month or 10 dollars. It can be spotty at times - but it works. Mobile is by far the most used form factor. Search for "Jio" on your app store and you'll see a variety of apps like JioTV, JioCinema, JioNews etc.. That means free news, live tv and movies all for the price of a cell phone subscription. Jio is the name of the servic…

In the US, my phone is on Wifi pretty much most of time during the day. When I am at work, my phone is on Wifi. When I get home, it is on Wifi as well. When I go to Starbucks, my phone connects to Wifi automatically. India has very limited wifi access. The overall data usage is still a lot higher in the US than in India.

This very much mirrors my experience with WiFi vs cellular.

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/wifi_vs_cellular.png

Unless I am at home, I never go through the hassle of WiFi. I have unlimited data on both my phone and cellular equipped iPad.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#183

Post by wtmt »

totaldude87 wrote: post #3

Jio revolution is the main reason for this, after Jio almost every other vendor is giving you 30Gb(1Gb per day) for $5-6 , no wonder, there is a %30-40 utilization of data. Majority of this utilization would be on Streaming, Torrent downloads etc etc, Also to note that , many of the calls made in India are VOLTE calls..

It’s even cheaper than that. 1GB 4G data per day, with unlimited calls (local and long distance) and 100 SMS per day, can be had on prepaid plans that cost about $2 (₹140) per month on longer duration plans (like 84 days). With additional discounts, this can go down even further.

These plans are provided by the other major service providers.

Postpaid plans (contract plans) in India are ripoffs, comparatively.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#184

Post by SJetKaran »

zeristor wrote: post #117
rohan1024 wrote: post #103

Jio has set the entire market on fire. I remember 3 Years back I was paying Rs. 1000/month @ 1Mbps unlimited to my local broadband service provider. Today the same service provider is offering me unlimited data @ 50Mbps without change in cost! Edit: Also, the entire network is ipv6 enabled from the beginning. India went from white to green within months on ipv6 graph at https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.…

How much of the 50mbps do you get though? Contention is one of the names of a high speed internet connection if the company doesn’t invest enough in the backend. Or to put it another way, would you stream 4K video with it?

This mainly depends on the location. In the denser areas of the metros, speed is lower (depends on time of the day as well). But the coverage across the India landmass is pretty good. I was streaming netflix hd on mobile, while traveling to another city on a bus.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#185

Post by wtmt »

nmridul wrote: post #114
Joakal wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia: 3 GB for 30 days $15 AUD or 15 GB for 1 year $99 AUD https://www.aldimobile.com.au/plans/data-packs/

The India data is per day..so for 90 days total bw is 1.5x90 GB

The per day limits get reset at midnight everyday, AFAIK. At least with some providers (or all?) there is no carryover of unused data day by day. It would be 1.5GBx90 only if the user uses 1.5GB every single day.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#186

Post by scarface74 »

dman wrote: post #91
LyndsySimon wrote: post #85

Ugh. I live in Arkansas, and my AT&T bill this month is $410. Granted, about $150 of that are payment plans for devices, but still. The base rate plan is $110, and there's a $20-30 per line fee for four separate lines. I have an iPad Pro 11" LTE and an iPhone X, my wife has an S10+, and I handed down my 6th Gen iPad LTE to my 10-year-old. It's a lot more than "needed", and our aggregate data usage is 30+ GB/month, bu…

Why dont you use tethering and use the connection from your phone on your ipad?

I have T-mobile. I have unlimited tethering but it’s only 512Kbps for tethering, which is surprisingly enough for light dev work in a pinch.

The $130 extra for an iPad with cellular and $20 extra per month for unlimited data on the iPad is well worth the convenience of having two cellular devices.

I pay roughly $210 a month for five phones and two iPads all with unlimited data.

T-mobile also has free data roaming in most other countries where we go on vacation.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#187

Post by firstplacelast »

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.

Had no idea about India, but I am gearing up to move to the UK soon and was looking into phone plans.

Even Europe is way, way cheaper than America. Why is it so expensive here? Anyone know? Is it just that a few companies run the market and can charge what they want? Or are there less nefarious reasons?

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#189

Post by wtmt »

vinay_ys wrote: post #81
sound1 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even though Jio has blocked many torrent website, still people find holes to download the content. In my experience, a lot of people I know switched streaming services instead of torrents. Amazon prime and Hoststar are quite affordable and have decent content now a days and people generally don't bother with the torrents as much as they did a few years ago.

Except for Netflix which is $8/month, rest of the streaming services are very cheap. Hotstar has content from HBO, Showtime etc. Amazon Prime is ok. There are lots of Indian streaming services with Indian content. A lot of data consumption in India is video content hosted within India.

Not comparing the content library, but the cost here. Netflix is not very expensive compared to Hotstar or Prime. The latter two are targeted at family watching. They don’t have the concept of user profiles on a single account. If you have a family of four with each wanting to watch something different without trashing others’ watch lists, progress, etc., then with Hotstar and Prime you’d have to buy four separate subscriptions. With Netflix, you get five separate user profiles for one price.

Also, the quality of video and the user experience on Netflix is leagues ahead of Prime and Hotstar (in that order). Hotstar is very poor on technology and design. It only has its content catalog to lean on.

Re: India has the highest data usage per smartphone

#190

Post by saltcured »

ska wrote: post #147
uep wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be contrary, but that is almost exactly what I pay to T-Mobile (in the US) for unlimited data. I also have great coverage in rural parts of the country. Strictly multiplying by 8 isn't really a good comparison, as the cost of supporting such a network in India isn't going to cost 1/8th as much as the US. I'm sure there's a lot of room for the US cellular carriers to be more efficient.

You pay $18/month for unlimited?

There is a pre-paid T-Mobile MVNO called Mint who will give you 3 to 12GB/month LTE for $15 to $25/month, with unlimited at slower speeds when you go over your limit. To get those prices, you buy in bulk, prepaying 12 months at a time. If you need to buy extra LTE capacity in one month, they charge $20 for 3GB increments.

In reality though, I think many US users here probably get the majority of their bandwidth over WiFi and do not really use that much LTE data. But, if I wanted to replace my $70/month cable Internet with just a Mint subscription, i.e. the $25/month plus 2x $20 refills, that would buy 18 GB/month of LTE.

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