They appear expensive because the expectation in people's minds is that email, and most online services are free. Personally I find email to be the most import

They appear expensive because the expectation in people's minds is that email, and most online services are free. Personally I find email to be the most important online service. Everything depends on email. While I can live a non luddite life without Netflix and Dropbox and cloud VMs, and Facebooks, I quite literally can't live my normal life without email. For me, it's more important than a phone. Because of this, I would expect to pay less for a mobile plan than for email, but even with "expensive" email service, the situation seem reversed. If the idea of paying for online services were more entranced in people's mind, there would be more competition and there would be email providers offering services at any price point. Now we only have free email, and "expensive" email, for "those" people.