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

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

#311
post #34

I'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 have definitely worked on Jio's network without issues. But have also been to areas where it is patchy. But things have definitely improved in terms of both data plans and their speeds ever since jio came into the market.

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

#312
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…

> the government broke up the monopoly and forced competition into the market by making existing players share infrastructure.

Yeah, this was excellent for 4G prices (I'm paying $8/mo for 40 GB), but now telecom companies are wary of installing 5G infrastructure, because they are forced to share it with other service providers who did not have to invest millions in new 5G infrastructure.

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

#313
post #293

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…

This isn't necessarily true in all cases - I can cite you an opposite example. Pre-covid, I was in Singapore. You pay $10 SGD for 1GB of data ONLY (no calls included). The top network operator in Singapore is state-backed Singtel. Their network coverage is very poor in many areas within the city. Singapore is almost literally just one big city and yet, the 4G experience is extremely poor. Also, customer support is ve…

Misleading. You didn't do five minutes of research.

Singtel (the most expensive telco) has multiple plans for visitors (100GB for $12 + 500mins talk + 1GB roaming + $3 to spend on public transport). If you want prepaid month to month, it's still nowhere in the stratosphere of $10/GB.

Also 4G coverage is virtually 100%, buildings and Faraday cages aside. (source: living in Singapore for 10 years, through 3G to 4G migration)

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

#314
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, that’s interesting. Why is there no unlimited texting?

Here in Italy lots of plans actually stopped offering unlimited SMS because nobody uses them anymore. I think I must have sent less than 10 SMS in the last 5 years or so.

SMS is the backup if all of the data using messengers fail. They generally don't.

In Romania everyone is on Whatsapp. It has basically replaced text messages.

Actually, any widespread messaging app is better than the original text messages. And don't even get me started on MMS.

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

#315

I’m in Denmark. I have “3” as a phone provider and have essentially an unlimited plan for 30usd, with free roaming in most of the world. My home internet is served as an IOT plan with a “300MB” plan that in practice the network owned by the old national provider don’t cap, so I hit 1TB on 4G with a monthly fee of ~4.7USD. I know many people who does the same. The US really seem like in need of some good old competiti…

Could a random person show up in Denmark and buy this plan? That sounds amazing

There is a limitation for that.

"A surcharge may be applied if: * you use roaming services more than domestic services and spend more time travelling than in Finland"

https://www.traficom.fi/en/communications/broadband-and-tele...

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

#316

>> In Mexico you’ll pay an average of $4.77 for 1GB of data, making the biggest country in Central America also the second-most expensive on average when it comes to buying mobile data I am a reasonably educated person within the United States. I may be wrong, but I believe that I've always been taught that Mexico was within the North American Continent. Honest question, Am I incorrect about Mexico being in North Ame…

Continent models are very arbitrary and vary based on where you are, what language you’re speaking, etc. Fun fact, in Mexico (and most of Latin America), North America is simply a subregion of the real continent “America” that includes North, Central, and South as one. Prior to WWI or II, the US used that definition (The Americas) as well IIRC.

I think most Americans do implicitly treat it as one continent because if you talk about Central America you kind of have to, otherwise Central America would be part of North America and that's just weird.

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

#317
post #67

I've been amazed at the effects of this every time I've visited India. With data so cheap, social media use is prolific - people share videos and stream all day long - and public WiFi is far less commonplace since essentially /everybody/ owns phones with almost unlimited data plans. India still has a long way to go in terms of social equality, poverty and breaking up the caste system, but providing fast, cheap Intern…

India is a remarkable success story in mobile data. A great deal of that success is due to Reliance Jio, who launched an LTE-only network in 2016 and totally disrupted the Indian market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jio

Sounds a bit like Free in late-90s french internet which just set the entire market on fire (to the significant benefit of consumers).

Hopefully unlike free they don't become entrenched players resting on their laurels.

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

#318

Earlier 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.

I do not regard the parent as cherry picking data at all. I travel a lot, internet experience varies wildly especially in locations where restrictions are in place. For example typing this on a phone in a coffee shop in China, VPNd as for some non-reason HackerNews is blocked. MBps has with it a lot of nuance, and then infra.

Maybe if you compared the EU to NA, and ME with other ME, and SEA with other SEA you would have less cherry picking going on. Apples to apples.

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

#320
1 GB may show some statistics but it doesn't reflect the reality. Most of the time I find many other things matter like latancy, throughput,qos. I am currently on 45 mbps but still when i download it starts from 1 mbps and takes like 2 minute to reach 45 mbps meaning do matter especially browsing. However I must say during my intership at India the internet was very good. Its like 10$ and you are done for 1 month with free calls .
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