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.
I get 8gb capped 4g and unlimited 3g with page plus for 39$ a month. (unlimited text+calling)
The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)
191–200 of 415 posts
Re: The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)
#192Not 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…
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.
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.
Re: The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 th…
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.
Re: The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
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.
Re: The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
Re: The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
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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Re: The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
Re: The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)
#198I'm in India and I pay $8 for 84 days and get 2.5GB/day for those 84 days.
Just to add, while technically it's 4G, it's hard to rely on that and most of the time the speed I get is less than 2-3mbps and the connection is really unstable(lived in multiple places all across India). It was much better when jio was just launched due to less users. But now it has become race to the bottom and there is no way to get a good 4G connection in India.
I think the population density of the area where one lives affects the quality of network they experience.
Re: The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)
#199Israeli here, pay 7$ 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.
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?
Re: The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.