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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

#91

Post by ulrikrasmussen »

closeparen wrote: post #88
devxpy wrote: post #4

> Over here, unlimited mobile data means unlimited mobile data. This. Although India has the cheapest data next to Finland, the ground reality is quite different. I tried using 4G as my primary internet connection after COVID, and I got frustrated by "hidden" limits and random throttling from the ISP - ended up getting a fiber line. The 4G modem was a complete waste of money.

>ended up getting a fiber line. This seems like the market functioning correctly. People who can be hardwired should be hardwired, so that scarce RF spectrum is available for those who don't have an alternative.

I'm not sure an economist would call that a case of a well-functioning market. The parent poster pretty much gave up on a product because the information asymmetry made it impossible to choose something that could satisfy his/her needs, and to compare options. If there had been an option to pay maybe twice as much for the subscription to get a reliable connection while saving the cost for establishing fiber, wouldn't all market participants then have been better off?

Re: In Finland the average amount of data transferred per SIM card is 17.3GB/month

#92

Post by lopmotr »

mortenjorck wrote: post #49

The 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…

That chart could mean just about anything. If a country has most of its plans with very generous data but expensive/limited talk, and vise versa, the data plans won't appear on the chart because they don't have 1000 minutes or might not affect the median because there might only be handful of them, even if they're the most popular. With only the notes shown, it's pretty much meaningless.

Re: In Finland the average amount of data transferred per SIM card is 17.3GB/month

#93

Post by tzs »

northwest65 wrote: post #68
tapland wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We do the same thing with internet in the US. E.g., if someone sends me an email, I'm the one that has to pay my email provider for handling it, and I'm the one that has to pay and bandwidth costs to download it from my email provider to my computer.

Isn't that how it works elsewhere?

If so, what is mind boggling about the US using the same system for other communications networks besides the internet?

Re: In Finland the average amount of data transferred per SIM card is 17.3GB/month

#94

Post by msh »

pathseeker wrote: post #85
dheera wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wish the US could institute some legal framework against deceptive advertising. Unlimited should mean unlimited, not throttled. If you are offering a 20GB plan, just say you are offering a 20GB plan. I've tried to use a 4G hotspot to setup my laptop and do work in outdoor parks but the number of times I can do that per month is limited.

>Unlimited should mean unlimited, not throttled. Throttled is still unlimited in the same way as any other connection. Your connection is always throttled, it's just a question if there are two different speeds with the latter triggering after a particular threshold.

If there is a threshold then it's not unlimited!

Re: In Finland the average amount of data transferred per SIM card is 17.3GB/month

#95

Post by jankotek »

pjc50 wrote: post #89
TuringNYC wrote: post #51

Earlier 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…

The key word there is "competed". Everyone is aware that it's not some benevolence of one company over another but actual market operation that brings down the prices. That's why Apple's ability to impose restrictions and take a 30% cut of unrelated transactions is concerning: there's no market for competing Apple stores. (There have been telcos that tried to ban VOIP, but not in the West)

Decade ago I used 20GB monthly on 3G SIM. It was on plan mandated by Irish goverment to bring internet into rural areas. Sometimes you need regulations to break monopoly.

Re: In Finland the average amount of data transferred per SIM card is 17.3GB/month

#96

Post by dehrmann »

dheera wrote: post #5
devxpy wrote: post #4

> Over here, unlimited mobile data means unlimited mobile data. This. Although India has the cheapest data next to Finland, the ground reality is quite different. I tried using 4G as my primary internet connection after COVID, and I got frustrated by "hidden" limits and random throttling from the ISP - ended up getting a fiber line. The 4G modem was a complete waste of money.

I really wish the US could institute some legal framework against deceptive advertising. Unlimited should mean unlimited, not throttled. If you are offering a 20GB plan, just say you are offering a 20GB plan. I've tried to use a 4G hotspot to setup my laptop and do work in outdoor parks but the number of times I can do that per month is limited.

It's tricky because for 98% of consumers, "unlimited" is unlimited enough. The realities of operating a mobile network mean you will be throttled when there are a lot of users in your cell so that your Youtube stream drops from 4k to 480p so that someone can browse their Facebook feed. How to advertise this so it isn't deceptive? I'm not sure.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/E2dmfnSarDI?feature=oembed

Re: In Finland the average amount of data transferred per SIM card is 17.3GB/month

#97

Post by alanbernstein »

torben-friis wrote: post #11

I'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…

That's odd, I feel like I'm always fighting my phone to make it stop using data. It's really my top complaint about smartphone apps.

Re: In Finland the average amount of data transferred per SIM card is 17.3GB/month

#98

Post by paranoidrobot »

viraptor wrote: post #86
paranoidrobot wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely affected throughput. i.e take the phones out, and run all the speed tests at once - the business plan was guaranteed to run faster. It wasn't like it was an issue with one particular phone just being better - you could swap the sim cards between phones and no matter what device the business sim was in, it got the best throughput. How they actually implemented it I don't know, all we could go on was base…

I should've been more explicit. I meant, does it impact speed in a meaningful way? Once we can send+receive real time high quality video stream on a retail plan... Does it matter that is slower than the business one?

It'll depend on your use case, and your location and other conditions.

It wasn't done as a "isn't that interesting" thing, it was because of some specific problem with a client that was reporting poor performance.

Re: In Finland the average amount of data transferred per SIM card is 17.3GB/month

#99

Post by bogidon »

Causality1 wrote: post #90
ineedasername wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checkout Mint Mobile: $15/month if you prepay for a year otherwise $20. You get unlimited talk and texts, 4GB data. https://www.mintmobile.com/

Good if you're single but if you have family something like Cricket's Unlimited Basic gets you unlimited (22GB before throttling) data and talk/text for $25/line for four lines is better.

As an aside, as a single person I feel the discounts that come with family plans to be weirdly discriminatory. I go with prepaid TMobile (10gb for $40) because it’s much cheaper than a regular(?) plan with only 1 line. But to hook my Apple Watch up to cellular, I need the regular plan ($75 for one line + $10 for Apple Watch) as prepaid tech is years behind and second tier (most MVNOs included). That means that the only way I can use an Apple Watch on cellular as a single person is by paying $45 more per month. Complaining about an Apple Watch is a first world problem, but I think the pricing system is unfair.

I really wonder whether young members of the family consume more or less data, or what other reason could be used to justify family-discounting.. but it’s probably like a parent comment said: there’s no correlation between costs to the carrier and price the consumer pays; the single/family split exists to create the maximum profit off both groups by penalizing single people and convincing families to add all younger members to the plan (even those that might not need it). IMO carriers should give an age discount for under 18, not a per-line reduction the more members are in your plan.

Re: In Finland the average amount of data transferred per SIM card is 17.3GB/month

#100

Post by ksec »

torben-friis wrote: post #11

I'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…

I have been thinking for many years, why doesn't Apple works with Carrier on this.

OS Update ( and may be App Update ) Download should happen during Midnight when everyone is asleep ( when the network is quiet ) and those Data should be exempt from their Data Allowance.

There are increasing amount of people with no WiFI or Wired Internet connection at home. ( Mostly because how convenient Mobile Phone and Network has become ), but they still need OS update. Software and Apps still take the view many features requires a WiFi.

5G will massively improve Network Capacity, but at the current rate of things it still take at least 4 years for most of the iPhone users to be 5G Ready. Which means we wont see any of these WiFi by default changes in the foreseeable future.

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