I have some hope that Amazon and SpaceX will force prices to go down for at least home internet by bypassing the ISP monopolies. Might be a while though if ever. Google Fiber has sadly fizzled out because of the anticompetitive practices of the local monopolies.
In Finland the average amount of data transferred per SIM card is 17.3GB/month
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Re: In Finland the average amount of data transferred per SIM card is 17.3GB/month
#62The left side of the chart is a surprising cohort, hardly the usual suspects when it comes to being behind the curve. There’s the US, sure, but it’s actually slightly ahead of Norway, and significantly ahead of both Canada and Japan! You have two Scandinavian countries on opposite ends of the spectrum, two east Asian countries on opposite ends, and even two countries with significantly large landmass (look at Russia…
I don't know how the numbers on this chart are created, but in Japan, the largest mobile operator (the former government telco monopoly) charges €55/mo for a plan with 60 GB of data, which should put it much further to the right. It says "median plan cost" so I wonder what terrible under-specced plans they've dug up for the comparison.
The Japanese government is concerned about the high prices and low competition and is currently in the process of having the legacy telco parent company (with 30% government ownership) re-acquiring the mobile operator. https://www.lightreading.com/5g/ntt-to-reacquire-docomo-for-...
Re: In Finland the average amount of data transferred per SIM card is 17.3GB/month
#63I've got unlimited mobile data for a great price in spain as well. Honestly, I hope the us catches up at some point because software still doesn't even consider it an option - I have to actively fight all my settings so I can get updates, backups, streaming at high quality and the like because the OS considers they should always be done on wifi. Sometimes, the situation has been so absurd that I've had to use the sha…
Just a decade ago, SMS messages in the US cost 10 to 25 cents per SMS . You also got charged for spam SMS. Prices were completely disjointed from the reality of underlying costs (zero for the telcos). My college CS professor gave senate testimony on this: https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/keshav_testim... (side rant: in the following ten years, the tech giants sweeped in, competed, provided a better serv…
>You also got charged for spam SMS
Wait what? They charge you for receiving text messages or am I not reading that right? Do they also charge you to receive phone calls haha?
Re: In Finland the average amount of data transferred per SIM card is 17.3GB/month
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just a decade ago, SMS messages in the US cost 10 to 25 cents per SMS . You also got charged for spam SMS. Prices were completely disjointed from the reality of underlying costs (zero for the telcos). My college CS professor gave senate testimony on this: https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/keshav_testim... (side rant: in the following ten years, the tech giants sweeped in, competed, provided a better serv…
>You also got charged for spam SMS Wait what? They charge you for receiving text messages or am I not reading that right? Do they also charge you to receive phone calls haha?
Yes. In the US, cellular calls are charged by air time so you pay for incoming calls as well. I think all plans are unlimited these days though.
Re: In Finland the average amount of data transferred per SIM card is 17.3GB/month
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just a decade ago, SMS messages in the US cost 10 to 25 cents per SMS . You also got charged for spam SMS. Prices were completely disjointed from the reality of underlying costs (zero for the telcos). My college CS professor gave senate testimony on this: https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/keshav_testim... (side rant: in the following ten years, the tech giants sweeped in, competed, provided a better serv…
>You also got charged for spam SMS Wait what? They charge you for receiving text messages or am I not reading that right? Do they also charge you to receive phone calls haha?
Yes. Just to clear things up this was a big surprise to me as a european the first times I visited the US.
Re: In Finland the average amount of data transferred per SIM card is 17.3GB/month
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just a decade ago, SMS messages in the US cost 10 to 25 cents per SMS . You also got charged for spam SMS. Prices were completely disjointed from the reality of underlying costs (zero for the telcos). My college CS professor gave senate testimony on this: https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/keshav_testim... (side rant: in the following ten years, the tech giants sweeped in, competed, provided a better serv…
>You also got charged for spam SMS Wait what? They charge you for receiving text messages or am I not reading that right? Do they also charge you to receive phone calls haha?
Correct, before 2011ish, you were charged for SENT and RECEIVIED messages. They often had "plans" where you would get 100sms/month or 250 sms/month, or a-la-carte. If you got an SMS spam, that counted to your allotment. SMS was so expensive compared to GChat/YahooMessenger/ICQ/etc that I didnt use it. But then you were on the "a-la-carte" plan of 10 or 25cents per message depending on your provider. Godforbid you sent an international SMS, those were 50cents a message and MMS (SMS with image) was 5o to 75 cents per message. My provider had no apparent way to not have the service, so you were essentially bullied into paying a-la-carte or bullied into a plan.
Friends would get angry at each other for sending a message, or breaking a sentence into two messages.
Again, I think it is INSANE that half the US legislature is trying to fault WhatsApp (100% no dollar cost) for being a "monopoly" given the situation that was fixed. https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/competition_in_dig...
Re: In Finland the average amount of data transferred per SIM card is 17.3GB/month
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just a decade ago, SMS messages in the US cost 10 to 25 cents per SMS . You also got charged for spam SMS. Prices were completely disjointed from the reality of underlying costs (zero for the telcos). My college CS professor gave senate testimony on this: https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/keshav_testim... (side rant: in the following ten years, the tech giants sweeped in, competed, provided a better serv…
>You also got charged for spam SMS Wait what? They charge you for receiving text messages or am I not reading that right? Do they also charge you to receive phone calls haha?
Yes that is how it used to work for sms. My first cell I had to convince people to not text me because I didn't pay the extra ~$35 a month for texting, which I think got you 500 monthly texts. Friends that didn't know or when it was "an emergency" would send a few texts and cost me extra couple bucks a month.
For calls you used to get a pleasure with a set amount of minutes, such as 200, 500, and 1000 per month. Most carriers let you "roll over" unused minutes and typically anything after 9pm didn't count. Though I remember cingular offering 7pm as the unlimited time if you paid an extra fee (don't remember the cost).
Slowly larger plans, then unlimited became more normal. I can of remember it becoming more cost effective the same time more people were getting internet through cable or dsl, instead of dial up. So 2002-2005ish?
Re: In Finland the average amount of data transferred per SIM card is 17.3GB/month
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
>You also got charged for spam SMS Wait what? They charge you for receiving text messages or am I not reading that right? Do they also charge you to receive phone calls haha?
Yes. Just to clear things up this was a big surprise to me as a european the first times I visited the US.
I'm not surprised, that really does boggle the mind.
Re: In Finland the average amount of data transferred per SIM card is 17.3GB/month
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
>You also got charged for spam SMS Wait what? They charge you for receiving text messages or am I not reading that right? Do they also charge you to receive phone calls haha?
Yes that is how it used to work for sms. My first cell I had to convince people to not text me because I didn't pay the extra ~$35 a month for texting, which I think got you 500 monthly texts. Friends that didn't know or when it was "an emergency" would send a few texts and cost me extra couple bucks a month. For calls you used to get a pleasure with a set amount of minutes, such as 200, 500, and 1000 per month. Most…
> Though I remember cingular offering 7pm as the unlimited time if you paid an extra fee
I also seem to remember that if you started a call at (for example) 6:59pm, and it lasted an hour, all 60 minutes were "premium" minutes, not 1 "premium" and 59 "free/unlimited".
Re: In Finland the average amount of data transferred per SIM card is 17.3GB/month
#70I have some hope that Amazon and SpaceX will force prices to go down for at least home internet by bypassing the ISP monopolies. Might be a while though if ever. Google Fiber has sadly fizzled out because of the anticompetitive practices of the local monopolies.
I would maintain some hope for municipal fiber. Our local power company deployed one carefully, and was very successful despite repeated suits by the cable-internet provider. Eventually the ISP fought back at the state government level which limited the fiber's expansion, but lots of rural areas launched their own using similar models. Apparently the cable monopolies didn't feel it was worth competing for rural areas, meaning a number of farmhouses, hours away from cities, have better service for cheaper.