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The risks of "$15 for $2097 worth of mobile internet"

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Re: The risks of "$15 for $2097 worth of mobile internet"

#22
post #7

The price and quality of communications in Australia is absolutely ridiculous. I mostly blame the monopoly/biopoly (Telstra and somewhat Optus) but the competitors aren't much better either. It's also just going to get worse with the new "cleanfeed".

It certainly is. When we moved from Aus to Europe, we shopped around for broadband plans and I kept asking what the download limit was. Lots of blank looks. I used to have a 30GB/month plan in Aus. They don't have limits here. In fairness, Europe and US have large populations accessing data over many links, so the cost is spread wide. Australia accesses much US data over few links and must bear the cost of that. Data…

I've had the same experience with broadband in the UK - unlimited is the norm. The international link costs probably do have an effect with this, but I don't think it is for mobile data. If international links were the limiting factor we'd see ADSL suppliers selling usage at similar rates, but $15 for a GB seems much higher.

I think it's actually the capacity of the mobile network. To support more throughput they'll need to install more cell towers, which is a capital expense. The telcos probably find it more profitable to restrict usage and just charge the higher users as much as possible for as long as the network will sustain it.

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