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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

#171
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you stream a lot of video or something? I can't figure out how people reach these figures. I mainly use my phone for Web browsing, podcasts (mostly downloaded at home), and chatting, and never remotely get close to these figures.

The way you exceed 10-20+ gb a month is by being so used to having such a high cap if any that you don’t even bother to turn on the WiFi when you’re at home. I too live in Singapore and the internet infrastructure is excellent. Currently I’m sitting at about 10gb/month on 4g without YouTube/Netflix/social media. I do use a fair amount of Reddit though. I don’t really want to go back to having to care about how much d…

That makes sense. My Internet connection and especially WiFi (yay Unifi!) at home are quite great though, whereas cell reception in my apartment building is quite spotty, so WiFi is the obvious no-brainer choice for when I'm at home. And these days most of my phone usage happens at home because of WFH, so yeah, not much mobile data consumption. Even before then though there wasn't much; I don't tend to watch streaming video when I'm out and about.

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

#172
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.

If you dropped the second sentence your comment would be a fine statement about the united states and market failures.

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

#173
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

There was also the trick where "nights and weekends" minutes would start later and later. Initially they were so you werent doing long business calls on them. "Free Night" minutes would start at 5:30pm, then crept to 6pm then to 6:30pm and eventually to 7pm

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

#174
post #89

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)

Fair, but what do you think of the discussion above. I lived thru all that. The discussion shows how bad things were. Then competition came in with amazing products. Now were' vilifying the competition for being too good.

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

#175
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! I hate the fact that iPhones don't update or backup over mobile. My unlimited mobile data is 300mbps compared to my fixed 100mbps. Why, oh why has Apple not allowed me the option of using my mobile data how I want to? I've got my mom and grandpa on same mobile plans without any fixed connectivity and the only time their iPhones backup is when I visit and hotspot them. It's crazy!

That's because Apple cooperated with the cell carriers to help them reduce the data usage from iPhones so that the carriers would push iPhones to consumers.

Fwiw, this was a relatively minor point of cooperation compared to the concessions Apple has extracted from carriers.

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

#176
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a legacy Telstra plan that allows unlimited data, it's truly unlimited.

Assuming that you have the Ultimate plan as I do, have you found a way to get a new phone on it without losing the amazing roaming privileges?

I don't think so :(.

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

#177
post #163
post #57

UK here. I pay £20/month (USD $26) for unlimited data, voice and SMS. I have two such SIMs, one for the home router (because it's cheaper and faster than FTTC) and another for my phone. Usage varies, but on a busy month the home SIM will see 100-300 GB, mostly for Netflix. The phone SIM sees about 10-30 GB. Speed varies by time of day, but at peak it's 90 Mbit/s down, 20 Mbit/s up. At the slowest times of day it drop…

> if they detected it) How can they detect that?

The post at https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/47819/how-can-ph... offers some explanations.

I'm pretty sure I've come across different APNs being used before (on the Giffgaff MVNO using O2s UK network), but don't recall the details.

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

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

If you started a call at 5:59 AM (or whenever it was) would the entire call be discounted?

LOL that would be like AOL in the 90s when people would log on and not log off...because it was so busy and because there was unlimited use pricing.

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

#179
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 on…

They say "Family" but that's for marketing. If you have friends you trust to pay you, they don't actually check social security numbers or anything.

Cricket wants as many subscribers as possible, so they give discounts to groups of four.

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

#180
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

I’m sure there is a price for which you could actually saturate an LTE connection around the clock, but it would be a “we’ll fly out some engineers to sit down with your engineers” kind of deal. Not offered through a mass market consumer sales channel.
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