Live data from Hacker News

The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)

cable.co.uk

301–310 of 415 posts

Re: The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)

#301
>> In Mexico you’ll pay an average of $4.77 for 1GB of data, making the biggest country in Central America also the second-most expensive on average when it comes to buying mobile data

I am a reasonably educated person within the United States. I may be wrong, but I believe that I've always been taught that Mexico was within the North American Continent.

Honest question, Am I incorrect about Mexico being in North America? and If so, Am I also incorrect about what I believe i was taught (its happened before)?

Re: The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)

#302
post #101

Should also take into account cost of living. I believe Internet cost much more in poor countries.

I'm surprised to have to come to the second page for this, was expecting this top or second comment to link to a table where these prices are compensated for purchasing power.

The cost of the labor to keep these networks running should obviously factor into the price as you can't take data from Indonesia and use it elsewhere (you can manufacture things in Indonesia and ship them here, so for goods it might make sense to compare global prices; not so for data plans). The best way to do that is probably purchasing power.

Re: The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)

#303
post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment makes a strong implication that prices are correlated with quality (and thus attempts to provide justification for price gouging by Canadian telcos) but the rest of the data makes it clear that’s not the case.

The comment really doesn't and I don't think you can conclude that generalization in another way either because there are too many counterexamples in the map. There's no way the expensive Internet in Uganda is superior to Sweden's. Furthermore, qualitiy varies much more in the US than it does in Sweden where its universally high quality and slightly cheaper. French and German internet are both pretty good but seem to…

[deleted]

Re: The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)

#304

>> In Mexico you’ll pay an average of $4.77 for 1GB of data, making the biggest country in Central America also the second-most expensive on average when it comes to buying mobile data I am a reasonably educated person within the United States. I may be wrong, but I believe that I've always been taught that Mexico was within the North American Continent. Honest question, Am I incorrect about Mexico being in North Ame…

Wikipedia seems to agree with you :-) TIL

Re: The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)

#305

This is an amazing visualization and clearly shows what I found while traveling through Asia. Would love to see this mixed with average salary per country, which I expect will show an inverse correlation.

It’s a very bad visualisation of interesting data.

Re: The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)

#306

>> In Mexico you’ll pay an average of $4.77 for 1GB of data, making the biggest country in Central America also the second-most expensive on average when it comes to buying mobile data I am a reasonably educated person within the United States. I may be wrong, but I believe that I've always been taught that Mexico was within the North American Continent. Honest question, Am I incorrect about Mexico being in North Ame…

Continent models are very arbitrary and vary based on where you are, what language you’re speaking, etc.

Fun fact, in Mexico (and most of Latin America), North America is simply a subregion of the real continent “America” that includes North, Central, and South as one.

Prior to WWI or II, the US used that definition (The Americas) as well IIRC.

Re: The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)

#307
post #268
post #209

I am wondering how did they get their data especially for Switzerland. Here most of the plans have unlimited GB, so getting the price of a single one is quite tricky. Also, looking at the price for the most expensive one (~50USD) makes me think: did they maybe just took the price of an unlimited plan and used that as price for a GB? Lastly, average in this analysis does not really make sense to me. Especially as some…

> I am wondering how did they get their data especially for Switzerland. Here most of the plans have unlimited GB, so getting the price of a single one is quite tricky. Not sure where you get that impression, but I don't think it is true at all. The following are the standard CH mobile plans by the largest providers in Switzerland. Swisscom: 3×unlimited, 3×limited Salt: 3×unlimited, 2×limited Sunrise: 1×unlimited, 2×…

Thanks for the observation.

Still I do not understand how would they have extrapolated price per GB when considering an unlimited plan. Can that be that they just took the price of the unlimited plan and assumed that's the price of 1GB? That would not be wrong, but a bit deceiving to say the least. Otherwise I would not know how the max price is ~50USD. Swisscom gives me ~15CHF per 1GB, and that is usually seen as the most expensive company.

Re: The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)

#308
post #293

Not all Internet experiences are equal though. 1 GB of internet in Pakistan ($0.69) ≠ 1 GB of internet in Canada ($12.55). I would gladly trade my Pakistani internet plan for my Canadian internet plan. Last month, when I was in Pakistan, my experience was: + highly censored to the point where even services like Cloudflare's edge-node's within the country were being MiTM-ed by the censors [0]; + I couldn't use "any mo…

This isn't necessarily true in all cases - I can cite you an opposite example. Pre-covid, I was in Singapore. You pay $10 SGD for 1GB of data ONLY (no calls included). The top network operator in Singapore is state-backed Singtel. Their network coverage is very poor in many areas within the city. Singapore is almost literally just one big city and yet, the 4G experience is extremely poor. Also, customer support is ve…

>$10 for 1.5GB of data DAILY. to be clear you paid $10 and you got 1.5GB daily for a Month, correct? If not you are taken for a ride by Airtel. Jio charges ~$5 for a month and you get 1.5GB daily with unlimited calls.. bandwidth ~40mbps in tier 1 cities and 10mbs tier2 and tier3..

Re: The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)

#309
I am curious how this study differentiates between different regions. I have been to many parts of the US, and my experiences have differed wildly enough that I'd say that the differences might be as much as the global highest/lowest quality in terms of bandwidth. Not in terms of censorship (I've experienced that first hand in completely unrelated circumstances).

Re: The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)

#310

This is a little off-tangent but as a newly repatriated Dane, can another Dane explain to me how we manage to both have a mega-monopoly telco in TDC and yet have such good prices on internet and phone plans? The only ISPs available to me at my home here are all wholly owned subsidiaries of TDC: none of the others want to touch my address. That sounds like exactly the "any color you want so long as its black" choice I…

Most locations have multiple service providers plus mobile data so they have to proceed for that. TDC is also required to resell service to fixed line mvno's.
Post reply on HN