In Russia I pay $2 for 100 min + 11GB of traffic which I never use (less than 1GB each month) because of WFH. It'll be around $3 for unlimited traffic though.
what's WFH ?
I assume "Work From Home".
In Finland the average amount of data transferred per SIM card is 17.3GB/month
151–160 of 191 posts
Re: In Finland the average amount of data transferred per SIM card is 17.3GB/month
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not throwing shade but I’m genuinely curious what the infrastructure cost per user is when comparing Europe and US and Canada. Surely it might be part of the problem.
Probably more down to limited competition in the US, honestly. Comparing costs across Western Europe, it’s hard to make the case that it’s an infrastructure cost problem; Germany (dense) is more expensive than Ireland (non-dense) which is more expensive than the UK (dense) which is more expensive than Finland (very non-dense).
Do you consider the cost of frequency bands a part of infrastructure costs, or is that separate?
https://www.dw.com/en/fnord/a-49168657 was the top hit just now when I searched for 5G auctions. I've no idea how much telcos pay in other countries, but the top six hits for my search were all about Germany, which at least doesn't suggest that Finland is raking in record sums from its auctions.
Re: In Finland the average amount of data transferred per SIM card is 17.3GB/month
#153Earlier 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.
Nothing is infinite however. The concept of unlimited is never correct without disclaimers.
Well, it's limited by the advertised max speed times one month (per month).
Re: In Finland the average amount of data transferred per SIM card is 17.3GB/month
#154> 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.
Economics is seldom about absolutes.
It's about trade-offs. Ie how much would it inconvenience you to be hardwired vs the other guy? How much are you willing to pay?
Re: In Finland the average amount of data transferred per SIM card is 17.3GB/month
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That's how the apps make their money.
Which is a problem, because honest people make money in exchange for providing a valuable service - not by stealing your resources from you to steal your data from you, and make money off giving that to malicious third parties.
Re: In Finland the average amount of data transferred per SIM card is 17.3GB/month
#156I'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 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.
Interesting, because until recently I had the reverse problem. I had to fight everything on my phone (and occasionally, my system) to stop doing updates and backups over mobile connections, because those were always limited in Poland. I'm not sure if anyone truly does offer an unlimited plan here (other than bullshit "unlimited, but we'll throttle you down for the rest of the month after a gigabyte or three"). Bottomline: it's not just US. I think most of the world doesn't have ubiquitous unlimited mobile data.
Re: In Finland the average amount of data transferred per SIM card is 17.3GB/month
#157> 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.
Indian here. I just use the 3GB/day plan + 50GB top-ups when required. I get a constant 40-50Mbps. My monthly average is around 100GB. Internet cost is around $8 for 55 days. 50GB top-ups cost an extra $4.
Yeah, same plan. Maybe the throttling is region specific.
Re: In Finland the average amount of data transferred per SIM card is 17.3GB/month
#158> 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.
Your argument might be null though, because I still end up paying for mobile data, so I can use it outside my house.
And the tariff here is kinda rigged to make you buy data. The economics don't work out unless you subscribe to a daily data plan in addition to the voice plan.
Re: In Finland the average amount of data transferred per SIM card is 17.3GB/month
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Legal frameworks are mostly there to help the people / companies with the better lawyers. What you are looking for is competition, and lower barriers to entry.
Do you have any examples of competition leading to more honest advertisements? It seems to me that it mostly leads to a race to the bottom that just optimizes for hiding your dishonesty better.
Of the top of my head: grocery retail in the UK and the impact of the German hard discounters Aldi and Lidl.
The UK used to be famous for really confusing strategies, like bogus discounts (50% off on an item that's just priced 2x normal), or buy-3-get-5 offers, that sometimes mysteriously wouldn't be registered at checkout.
The UK regulator often dinged the supermarkets for such behaviour, and gave them various stipulations. But as far as I can tell, they only really got better when Aldi and Lidl seriously started taking market share.
Aldi and Lidl have a very German no-nonsense approach to advertising. There's a single simple price that you pay.
Similarly in the UK, the regulator always told off the retail banks for their bad behaviour, but they never really changed their tune much. I am hoping that challengers like Monzo are changing that. (I left the UK nearly three years ago, so I don't know how retail banking has come along in the meantime.)
UK retail banks usually advertise that their accounts are 'free', but then have lots of hidden fees. Monzo doesn't have those hidden fees. (Eg when you try to make a transfer when you are out of money, Monzo just fails your transfer. My previous British retail banks charged you for that. And they typically gave you an 'unarranged overdraft' that you couldn't decline.)
Keep in mind that these are two examples of the top of my head. You can probably find more with a more scientific inquiry.
> It seems to me that it mostly leads to a race to the bottom that just optimizes for hiding your dishonesty better.
Do you have any examples of that?
Competition usually leads to customers getting more of what they are willing to pay for. Of course, that's not always what customers say they want, if you ask them outright.
(Eg Starbucks sells well. But what they are selling is not what people say they value in coffee.
I wouldn't call that dishonesty on Starbucks site. People pay for having a spot with free wifi to idle or work while sipping some acceptable beverages. People who go to Starbucks are not there to satisfy a distinguished taste in coffee. But Starbucks advertisement compliments on their good taste, anyway.)
Re: In Finland the average amount of data transferred per SIM card is 17.3GB/month
#160> 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.
Can confirm I've had a similar experience, especially recently. A 4g hotspot worked perfectly for my work from home situation up until July. Post July I started seeing significant degradation in connection quality on Zoom calls that didn't occur on a WiFi network in the same house. Plus reduction in overall speeds beside Zoom during specific times of the day almost like clockwork, this too in recent months also made…
That may be just saturation, which isn't rare if a lot of people is connected to the same BTS. Your ISP can do little to nothing about it.