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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)

#391
Bulgaria here. I don't know if the comparison is even relevant as we don't have normal mobile data plans anymore. Most of the plans are providing 5-10 GB of data to all networks and websites and some GBs to specific websites like social media and popular ones. So for example I can have a data plan with 20 GB but after the first 10 GB I have fast internet just for facebook and whatsapp. The rest of the internet is almost not accessible as it takes ages to load.

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

#392
post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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most people have no idea what individual apps/sites are “costing” them It's not an issue with web apps but issue with outdated bandwith limiting.

Wireless frequencies are a limited resources and bandwidth will always be metered, more so if lazy devs ignore efficiency.

That's not true at all, as many people pointed out in this thread there's a lot of bandwidth even with 3g connections however it is being artificially limited as a revenue stream.

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

#393
If you were looking for a mobile deal, then I think you would go for the cheapest one, so I have created the interactive map again using the data for the lowest price per US$

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQzJcAT0HcgB...

I've removed those countries that are over $5/GB/month such as Greenland because it caused the whole map to be green due to how the data is skewed and the limitations of the geo chart in Google maps.

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

#394
post #45

This data is worthless and likely very skewed by the use of mean prices instead of the median, while not displaying the standard deviation. Take France, for instance. 42 plans. 0.11 for the cheapest. 108 for the most expensive. How the hell are they finding 0.81 average, BTW? Same with South Korea. Also, in my experience, the bigger the plan, the less expensive it is, so they should have sorted "per 1 GB/month plan"…

This is very obvious to me too. Australia is placing better than the UK, despite mobile contracts being almost universally more expensive and less good in Australia. It seems to be because there's an expensive UK plan skewing the data, despite not being what most people have.

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

#395
post #108
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Important point. I was talking to my brother in India. Last month internet service was down in their building for 4 days. Unlike folks who go apoplectic over this, he understands that 3rd world prices do not come with first world service quality in practice. Most people do not have an option to move across continents just because somethings are cheaper there. And internet service is one small part of overall things o…

> Last month internet service was down in their building for 4 days I don't live in India, but if it happened in an individual building that sounds like perhaps this was due to management of that building and was just an isolated incident.

For buildings and apartment complexes, they usually have a dedicated switch/line (I don't know the technical term).

So, it's most likely that the cable got damaged due to bad weather (rainy season, laying out cable open to the sky), or the closest switch suffered a damage due to electricity fluctuations. These are the 2 main reasons for internet going down for that long. With me, it usually happens during a power cut. While I have UPS power backup and my router keeps running, it seems the local (geographical) area hub doesn't and internet goes down for 5 minutes.

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

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely, they can't be MITMing HTTPS traffic without Cloudflare's blessing? Services not being available by region, that can be a bummer but that's not really a problem on internet service provider as such. Also, I am surprised that one more country is building a GFW.

> surprised that one more country is building a GFW Likely helped by China too, considering it's Pakistan

I would've bet money if Pakistan starts building a GFW, it would be with china's help but no, they bought equipment for this from an american company called Sandvine.

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

#397

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…

This is why I disable background data for individual apps and keep data saver on whenever possible. Also, browsing can be something like: - Ad blocking - Javascript disabled by default - remote fonts disabled - media eg images disabled if possible - cookies disabled by default The first 2 are possible using UBlock Origin + Firefox on Android devices. Ad blocking is a must. Also, you can use some local VPN app like ne…

uBO also lets you set the maximum size of media elements so that you can restrict them to say 50KB max. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site-switches#no-...

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

#398
post #321

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…

At $35 per gigabyte, visiting a badly written website could cost $0.5 just for opening a home page. And it's not like people don't have FOSS tools to optimize images, or read for free on how to make browser load smaller or different format (like webp) of images on smaller screen devices. Often times developers just don't care because it doesn't cost them anything. So disabling all images in the browser is a must if o…

Or you could limit the size of media elements https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site-switches#no-...

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

#399

From what we can see in many of the comments, the research is deeply flawed. E.g. In Roumania with 6e you get over 50gb. Actually Digi(RDS), telco has 4$ subsription with 100gb lte plus additional 50gb 3G (total 150gb)/month. As for the speed, Bucharest was found the best internet connection in the world for games (a research released few days back). Thanks to the EU roaming law, some people realized that it's so goo…

[deleted]

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

#400
From what we can see in many of the comments, the research is deeply flawed. E.g. In Roumania with 6e you get over 50gb. Actually Digi(RDS), telco has 4$ subsription with 100gb lte plus additional 50gb 3G (total 150gb)/month. As for the speed, Bucharest was found the best internet connection in the world for games (a research released few days back). Thanks to the EU roaming law, some people realized that it's so good that you can use it anywhere in Europe long term (years, without going back to Romania). Subscribe in ro with the smallest plan 4$/month, and enjoy 1.7e/Gb anywhere in Europe, as long as you want!!! This is only for Digi (not organge/vodafone/tmobile). ONLY Digi allows you to stay long term in roaming (years). Here are full prices(use google translate): "Tarifele de roaming, cu TVA inclus, care se aplica de la primul min/MB/SMS utilizat sunt: apeluri locale si catre tari UE/SEE 0.0183 Euro/min; catre alte tari 1.4875 Euro/min si 0.0060 Euro/SMS trimis. Apeluri primite 0.0094 Euro/min si 0 Euro/SMS primit. Trafic date 0.0017 Euro/Mbyte. Apeluri gratuite in UE/SEE: 112 (Urgenta) si +40314007777 (info tarife). Multumim, echipa DIGI." So, if you are anywhere in Europe with higher than 1.7e/gb, make a Digi subscription and you all set.
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