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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

#181

Post by bogidon »

ulfw wrote: post #149
bogidon wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've had every single Apple Watch since the original one and never had the need to get cellular for it. What's the use case for when you got a watch on you but no phone near it (but still NEED to be reachable somehow)?

I got the cellular version to make tech detoxing easier. I find I can think more creatively when I leave my phone at home when going on walks. With a watch with cellular I could see myself regularly going weekends without my phone.

What I’m doing in the meantime is popping my sim from my smartphone into an old Nokia.

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

#182

Post by northwest65 »

tzs wrote: post #93
northwest65 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Where I live I pay one bill, and that gives me unlimited bandwidth on my home fibre connection, mine and my wife's mobiles, and unlimited minutes and text messages. I've used the same free email provider for 20 years!

>what is mind boggling

What's your phone number? I'll txt you every 10 minutes for a month. And you'll pay for it. Like it or not. Mind boggling.

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

#183

Post by vaccinator »

unnouinceput wrote: post #28
vaccinator wrote: post #2

I average 2gb because I restrict myself since the rates I get are outreageous here in the US... I use wifi whenever I can to limit mobile usage (which is of course not included in the 2gb figure).

Meanwhile, checked just out of curiosity, I used 640 GB in past 30 days. That's just my PC. Then there is wife's laptop and cell & kids laptops & cells. I suspect my household "eats" every month 1 TB of data. Not that we care anyway.

I was talking about mobile data... my PC uses cable and the limit per month is 1-TB before I get charged extra...

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

#184

Post by bane »

TuringNYC wrote: post #51
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…

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…

I sort of remember somebody calculating back then that the total cost per byte of SMS messages exceeded the cost of the sending data through NASA's deep space network.

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

#185

Post by Godel_unicode »

ornornor wrote: post #120
northwest65 wrote: post #63

Earlier 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 you used to pay for incoming calls as well. Now most plans are unlimited. I guess the rationale was that there is no difference in the numbering plan in North America between cell phones and land lines. Calls to a cell phone cost more but the caller has no way to tell they’re calling one. So the caller pays the same to call a cell or a landline and the callee pays to receive the call too so that overall carriers…

That's not true, there were definitely blocks of numbers which were and were not allocated to cell providers. Anyone implementing a "prefer landlines, fail over to cell" system was able to do so. Ask me how I know...

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

#186

Post by Godel_unicode »

pferdone wrote: post #164
TeMPOraL wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 up…

But it‘s not just about unlimited data. I wasnt able to download a podcast bigger than 200MB during vacation, because it requires you to have a wifi connection. It just doesnt let you.

Don't buy an iPhone if you want to be able to make these kinds of decisions for yourself...?

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

#187

Post by eru »

closeparen wrote: post #180
eru wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Depends on the market, I guess?

Saturating the connection between your handset and the LTE cell tower shouldn't put that much of a strain on the fibre glass backhaul of the tower.

At least where I live, I doubt it would warrant flying engineers around some planes. (But then, you'd be hard pressed to find a domestic hardwired connection below 500 Mbps. 1 or 2 Gbps are more common for domestic connections here. And we have some spots with faster than gigabit LTE connections.)

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

#188

Post by sumedh »

lozf wrote: post #177
sumedh wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Interesting, didn't know that.

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

#189

Post by mdrzn »

gorgoiler wrote: post #109
jlokier wrote: 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…

Who are your providers, and did you have to negotiate these tariffs or do they come as standard offerings? Crucially: how long are you contractually tied to your cell provider?

When I visited the UK for a couple months in late 2014, as soon as I landed I bought a random sim card (I think the provider was "3 UK"), and for £15 a month I had unlimited internet data. And no contract, it was a monthly rechargeable plan. I'm sure they're even more available now. In Italy now most of the mobile providers give 50GB/7€/month.

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

#190

Post by fierarul »

Hamuko wrote: post #137
fierarul wrote: post #134

It's a good thing that with EU's "Roam Like at Home" people from Finland can go transfer those 17GB/month in any other EU country, but people from Romania saw the introduction of "national" SIM cards which leave you literally stranded (no signal) when crossing the border. Better roaming for me but not for thee.

We don't actually get unlimited EU data here. DNA offers 7–15 GB a month (unlimited in the Nordics and the Baltics), Elisa 13–30 GB a month (unlimited in the Nordics and the Baltics) and Telia 4–25 GB a month.

This reminds me of the Homer Simpson quote: "We should exchange insurance information. I have none!"

The average Romanian would cross the national border and notice the phone have NO signal. No data, no GBs, no voice, only 112.

Truth be told we have only been in the EU for the past 13 years...

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