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

cable.co.uk

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

#221
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

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

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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

#223

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. Bett…

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.

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

#224
post #209

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…

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 t…

> what a weird american way to measure network

I believe the report is written in the UK.

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

#225
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…

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 ;-)

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

#226
post #171
post #163

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

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…

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.

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

#227
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…

Amazing what competition does

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...

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

#228

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…

> 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.

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.

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

#229

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.

> 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.

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

#230
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

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