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I am always surprised by these expansive US plans. In France for instance, you can have 50 GB LTE for 20 € per month (with Free). In Austria, 10 GB LTE for 15
by programLyrique 11y ago
I am always surprised by these expansive US plans.
In France for instance, you can have 50 GB LTE for 20 € per month (with Free). In Austria, 10 GB LTE for 15 € is not uncommon.
- dep_b 11y agoFrance is pretty unique and shows that in most countries telco's act as a cartel to keep prices inflated artificially.
- agumonkey 11y agoIt wasn't much different before Free mobile kick in the hive.
- Maakuth 11y agoIt's hardly unique. Here in Finland, the prices are comparable, though data caps are rare. 20€/mo gets you LTE with some bundled calls and SMS. Rest of the Nordics should be fairly similar. Currently I pay 18€/mo for my 50Mbps uncapped LTE, I use it as my home connection.
- programLyrique 11y agoFor Free, the maximum debit is 150Mbit/s, and they throttle to 128Kbit/s after the 5OGB...
- Mikeb85 11y agoThose damn socialists, with their paid vacations, short working days, good infrastructure, cheap services, and free school and healthcare. Not to mention all the wine, cheese, secularism and protesting. Heathens...
- pfortuny 11y agoWOW I SAY WOW!! No way you can get that in Spain!
- yoodenvranx 11y agoSame here in Germany, our mobile prices are ridiculous.
- prodmerc 11y agoWell if Germany is ridiculous, US/Canada is ludicrous :D
- thekingofspain 11y agoBased on my experience being in Germany recently, it's worse or about the same as Canada/US.
- photonios 11y agoYou haven't seen Romania. At RCS & RDS here I pay 4.84 euros for unlimited 4G/LTE + 500 minutes of international/national calling. http://www.rcs-rds.ro/telefonie-digi?t=telefonie-mobila&pachet=digi_mobil_optim_5 http://www.rcs-rds.ro/telefonie-digi?t=telefonie-mobila&pach...
- Raphmedia 11y agoFrance is the size of my backyard. Of course the cost of infrastructure & maintenance is going to be lower. That being said, yes, we are getting very bad price on that side of the ocean because of price inflation.
- distances 11y agoAlways the same excuse that doesn't even hold up. * US population density: 35/km2 * Finland population density: 18/km2 It's not about the size of the country, it's because in Europe the infrastructure owners are required to let others in [1]. In US the operators are natural monopolies with very little incentives for competition. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_virtual_network_operator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_virtual_network_operato...
- repsilat 11y agoFinland has a higher proportion of urban residents than the US. The US is also known for its huge number of small and mid-sized cities and population spread all over the country, whereas (proportionately) more of Finland is essentially empty.
- distances 11y agoThat may be true but doesn't really factor in to the discussion of coverage and competition: even if essentially empty, Finland is still covered. Coverage maps for the two biggest operators: * Sonera: http://www.sonera.fi/asiakastuki/verkkokartat/kuuluvuuskartta http://www.sonera.fi/asiakastuki/verkkokartat/kuuluvuuskartt... * Elisa: http://elisa.fi/kuuluvuus http://elisa.fi/kuuluvuus Notice how 4G already covers almost half of Finland, and 3G basically everything excluding larger swaths of forest.
- Raphmedia 11y agoI am from Canada. Our population density is 3.7/km2 and infrastructure owners are also required to let other in. The prices are still very high. The coverage is big and winter put a big load on the infrastructure.
- afreak 11y agoFrance and Austria, unlike Canada are very much dense so the infrastructure required to setup an LTE/UMTS/etc network is less costly. To travel from Vancouver to the next principal Canadian city (Calgary), it requires 900 KM of driving and there's only really one metropolitan area of sorts between the two, meaning that you're going to be setting up cell towers that handle only so much traffic in a day. As a result, to get service where you end up with just traffic shaping once you go beyond 6 GB (beyond that there is no real limit really), you need to go with a carrier that only services the larger cities. So in my case, my carrier services just Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto, and Ottawa, which are fairly dense areas with a combined population of 18 million or so, or just about half of the country's population. Once I leave the city, I have to piggyback on to other carriers however. Hence why mobile carriers suck in Canada because the bigger carriers do not want to eat into their fairly large profit margins. They can afford to offer such plans, but they simply don't want to. For the record, I pay $40 CAD/month ($30 USD or 27 EUR) for unlimited North American calling and text plus the "unlimited" data use.
- oldmanjay 11y agoWhat impulse makes people think that comparing an isolated fact from something so multidimensional makes for an interesting contribution? Particularly considering this isolated fact is contributed to every tangentially related conversation, I really struggle to see the value in commenting with it.
- vbezhenar 11y agoI have internet plan for 20 GB/month for 20 €/year (single payment) in Kazakhstan. But, unfortunately, only 3G. They promised 4G this year.
- r3bl 11y agoWell, at least you have a constant 3G connection. I can't even get that. In a freaking capital of the country (Bosnia & Herzegovina).
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- lucaspiller 11y agoAcross the border here in Italy, 5GB for €20/month is a good deal. If you are very lucky you can even get a 4G signal.