The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)

#181

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 4:30 AM UTC

Sebb767 wrote: post #140

geodel wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 qua…

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 a…

[deleted]

Re: The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)

#182

Post by fbelzile » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 4:32 AM UTC

guidedlight wrote: post #160

amingilani wrote: post #47

Not all Internet experiences are equal though. 1 GB of internet in Pakistan ($0.69) ≠ 1 GB of internet in Canada ($12.55). I would gladly trade my Pakistani internet plan for my Canadian internet plan. 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 mo…

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.

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.

Re: The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)

#183

Post by tialaramex » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 4:38 AM UTC

ars wrote: post #125

inglor wrote: post #69

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…

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.

> 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.

Re: The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)

#184

Post by monksy » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 4:42 AM UTC

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

Re: The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)

#185

Post by jeeeeb » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 4:43 AM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #24

notRobot wrote: post #3

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?

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 do…

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.

Re: The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)

#186

Post by jeeeeb » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 4:44 AM UTC

AmericanChopper wrote: post #73

rsynnott wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 do…

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 norm…

That may be the case for some countries but it doesn't really explain the difference between the US/Canada and Europe or Australia.

Re: The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)

#187

Post by perryizgr8 » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 4:46 AM UTC

ramraj07 wrote: post #60

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)

#188

Post by tialaramex » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 4:46 AM UTC

makecheck wrote: post #92

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 M…

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)

Re: The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)

#189

Post by rapind » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 4:48 AM UTC

29083011397778 wrote: post #177

donmcronald wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pr…

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 numbe…

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_...

Re: The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)

#190

Post by smabie » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 4:54 AM UTC

soneca wrote: post #180

smabie wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 v…

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.

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.