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The average web page size in 2016 is 2.2MB. Which means that 500MB plan can only load 227 first load web pages (excluding secondary pages on the same site with

The average web page size in 2016 is 2.2MB. Which means that 500MB plan can only load 227 first load web pages (excluding secondary pages on the same site with cached CSS, JS and images for navigation and title/footer). This is entirely excluding any video or audio or any real photo downloads or uploads. 500MB may be enough for you who is a light LTE user and who has access to separate free wifi at work and separately paid for wifi at home. But if your phone is your only access to the internet, 500MB can't do much. Unless you consider loading 7 web pages per day a reasonable restriction. The average income in India was $1,497 in 2013 or $124.75 a month. So that $2 for 500MB means 1.6% of your monthly income is spent on internet to download a few hundred individual pages with no audio or video. In the US, with an average income of $3,769 a month, the equivalent 1.6% of monthly income ($60) can get you unlimited LTE data on a lower-tier provider or MVNO. Quite a big difference between 500MB and unlimited. So, yes, internet access in India is comparably much more expensive than it is in the US.

chongli 10y ago
The average income in India was $1,497 in 2013 or $124.75 a month. So that $2 for 500MB means 1.6% of your monthly income is spent on internet to download a few hundred individual pages with no audio or video. In the US, with an average income of $3,769 a month, the equivalent 1.6% of monthly income ($60) can get you unlimited LTE data on a lower-tier provider or MVNO. Quite a big difference between 500MB and unlimited. This shows just how much we're getting ripped off here in Canada. For a 1GB plan from Rogers you're looking at $90/mo! [0] Rogers doesn't even offer an unlimited data plan; their largest plan is $385/mo for 60GB. [0] http://www.rogers.com/consumer/wireless/smartphone-plans?ipn=1 http://www.rogers.com/consumer/wireless/smartphone-plans?ipn...
- bad_user 10y ago
  In Romania I got a special offer on a prepaid card for 10 GB of bandwidth for 6 EUR per month. And my regular contract is 24 EUR per month and includes 3 GB, in addition to unlimited national calls and SMS in any network and included international and roaming minutes. And for the first year I paid only 12 EUR due to special offer. Data is 4G of course and works well.
- andrepd 10y ago
  I pay 25€ for unlimited 100Mbps (up and down) Internet, plus landline and cable, and another 5 for phone with unlimited calls and SMS and 1gb LTE.
  - rubberstamp 10y ago
    Where do you live? Thats a very good plan. Whats your carrier's name. Is the plan truly unlimited or does it have reduced speed once it hits fair usage limits
- versteegen 10y ago
  I see that CAN$90/month is for a plan that subsidizes the phone. Bring your own phone, it's... $80/month for 1GB. That's awful, but it does include unlimited calling. Here in New Zealand, which also has a low population density (though 4x higher than Canada), you would pay around CAN$20-30/month for 1GB depending on the company. (But most Canada is uninhabited, isn't it? So NZ might actually have a lower average density in inhabited areas.)
- xiaoma 10y ago
  This March, I got a 30 day tourist 3G SIM card in Taiwan and used 304GB of data. It cost under $30 CAD.
bad_user 10y ago
You're probably disconnected from limited data plans. The average web page size may be 2.2MB, but this number requires a source. I find it hard to believe that 2.2MB is the average for mobile websites or the actual download payload that mobile phones actually have to pull. The reason is that for mobile websites bandwidth is not the only bottleneck. I assume you're talking about a gzipped payload, along with images. Feed a megabyte of compressed HTML, CSS and Javascript to your average feature smartphone and you'll find that the phone's CPU and RAM can be an even bigger bottleneck than bandwidth. Therefore webmasters have a serious incentive to cut down on the download size. Also popular Javascript libraries, like JQuery and Angular get served by Google's CDN or cdnjs.com and thus cached locally and reused across websites. Even more, static assets on a website get reused between visits, and if say, you're vising a news website regularly, you're not going to receive the whole payload every time, just the HTML. The reason for why I object to your claim is that I've lived with a 500MB data plan for the whole of last year, consuming between 10 and 30 MB per day chatting, reading/writing email and yes, visiting a lot of websites. And I still experience what it's like to have such limitations when in roaming, as I do a fair amount of traveling in Europe. As long as you don't stream videos or music or download apps, it's totally fine.
- edge17 10y ago
  source: http://mobile.httparchive.org/trends.php#bytesTotal&reqTotal http://mobile.httparchive.org/trends.php#bytesTotal&reqTotal
- seanmcdirmid 10y ago
  My plan on China Unicom is 300 MB and I rarely go over. Many of the sites I want to visit are blocked of course, but for my daily needs, it is more than adequate.
CydeWeys 10y ago
> The average web page size in 2016 is 2.2MB. The average web page that an Indian mobile user is downloading is CERTAINLY not 2.2 MB. You can't just take a statistic from desktop US-centric sites and generalize it to other nations and usage patterns. Keep in mind that a lot of the advantages of bringing mobile phones and mobile Internet to developing nations is simple text communication -- 500 MB is essentially an unlimited number of texts through apps like WhatsApp. And anyway, I am a heavy smartphone user here in the US on a data plan I don't pay for (i.e. I never think twice about accessing anything on my phone), and I average 2-3 GB per month, most of which is mobile games (Ingress and Pokemon Go) and viewing images and videos on Reddit. I could easily make do on 500 MB/month if I had to, and the only thing that would be affected is entertainment.
gautamdivgi 10y ago
Web page sizes are heavy tailed. The average may not be a good estimator of what is "common" in this case.

chongli 10y ago

The average income in India was $1,497 in 2013 or $124.75 a month. So that $2 for 500MB means 1.6% of your monthly income is spent on internet to download a few hundred individual pages with no audio or video. In the US, with an average income of $3,769 a month, the equivalent 1.6% of monthly income ($60) can get you unlimited LTE data on a lower-tier provider or MVNO. Quite a big difference between 500MB and unlimited. This shows just how much we're getting ripped off here in Canada. For a 1GB plan from Rogers you're looking at $90/mo! [0] Rogers doesn't even offer an unlimited data plan; their largest plan is $385/mo for 60GB. [0] http://www.rogers.com/consumer/wireless/smartphone-plans?ipn=1 http://www.rogers.com/consumer/wireless/smartphone-plans?ipn...

bad_user 10y ago
In Romania I got a special offer on a prepaid card for 10 GB of bandwidth for 6 EUR per month. And my regular contract is 24 EUR per month and includes 3 GB, in addition to unlimited national calls and SMS in any network and included international and roaming minutes. And for the first year I paid only 12 EUR due to special offer. Data is 4G of course and works well.
andrepd 10y ago
I pay 25€ for unlimited 100Mbps (up and down) Internet, plus landline and cable, and another 5 for phone with unlimited calls and SMS and 1gb LTE.
- rubberstamp 10y ago
  Where do you live? Thats a very good plan. Whats your carrier's name. Is the plan truly unlimited or does it have reduced speed once it hits fair usage limits
versteegen 10y ago
I see that CAN$90/month is for a plan that subsidizes the phone. Bring your own phone, it's... $80/month for 1GB. That's awful, but it does include unlimited calling. Here in New Zealand, which also has a low population density (though 4x higher than Canada), you would pay around CAN$20-30/month for 1GB depending on the company. (But most Canada is uninhabited, isn't it? So NZ might actually have a lower average density in inhabited areas.)
xiaoma 10y ago
This March, I got a 30 day tourist 3G SIM card in Taiwan and used 304GB of data. It cost under $30 CAD.

bad_user 10y ago

You're probably disconnected from limited data plans. The average web page size may be 2.2MB, but this number requires a source. I find it hard to believe that 2.2MB is the average for mobile websites or the actual download payload that mobile phones actually have to pull. The reason is that for mobile websites bandwidth is not the only bottleneck. I assume you're talking about a gzipped payload, along with images. Feed a megabyte of compressed HTML, CSS and Javascript to your average feature smartphone and you'll find that the phone's CPU and RAM can be an even bigger bottleneck than bandwidth. Therefore webmasters have a serious incentive to cut down on the download size. Also popular Javascript libraries, like JQuery and Angular get served by Google's CDN or cdnjs.com and thus cached locally and reused across websites. Even more, static assets on a website get reused between visits, and if say, you're vising a news website regularly, you're not going to receive the whole payload every time, just the HTML. The reason for why I object to your claim is that I've lived with a 500MB data plan for the whole of last year, consuming between 10 and 30 MB per day chatting, reading/writing email and yes, visiting a lot of websites. And I still experience what it's like to have such limitations when in roaming, as I do a fair amount of traveling in Europe. As long as you don't stream videos or music or download apps, it's totally fine.

edge17 10y ago
source: http://mobile.httparchive.org/trends.php#bytesTotal&reqTotal http://mobile.httparchive.org/trends.php#bytesTotal&reqTotal
seanmcdirmid 10y ago
My plan on China Unicom is 300 MB and I rarely go over. Many of the sites I want to visit are blocked of course, but for my daily needs, it is more than adequate.

CydeWeys 10y ago

> The average web page size in 2016 is 2.2MB. The average web page that an Indian mobile user is downloading is CERTAINLY not 2.2 MB. You can't just take a statistic from desktop US-centric sites and generalize it to other nations and usage patterns. Keep in mind that a lot of the advantages of bringing mobile phones and mobile Internet to developing nations is simple text communication -- 500 MB is essentially an unlimited number of texts through apps like WhatsApp. And anyway, I am a heavy smartphone user here in the US on a data plan I don't pay for (i.e. I never think twice about accessing anything on my phone), and I average 2-3 GB per month, most of which is mobile games (Ingress and Pokemon Go) and viewing images and videos on Reddit. I could easily make do on 500 MB/month if I had to, and the only thing that would be affected is entertainment.

gautamdivgi 10y ago

Web page sizes are heavy tailed. The average may not be a good estimator of what is "common" in this case.