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In India, for approximately 2 USD per month, you get 1.5 GB 4G data per day and unlimited calls. These days, data limit is nothing to worry about in India.
by mayankkaizen 8y ago
In India, for approximately 2 USD per month, you get 1.5 GB 4G data per day and unlimited calls.
These days, data limit is nothing to worry about in India.
- Waterluvian 8y agoHow does that scale? Because that sounds awesome if compared to just my own phone plan. But if you say that also fills the role of my home internet, then it's about 1TB too little.
- govg 8y agoUsually home internet is via other providers, who also have cheap plans. For instance, ACT Giga is 1Gbps, 2.5 TB for about 100 USD per month. Post this limit, speeds usually drop to 1Mbps.
- Waterluvian 8y agoInteresting. Thanks! I was under the impression that most Indians can't get broadband at home.
- prab97 8y agoIn all tier 1 cities, which are at least 10, you can get 100Mbps broadband with about 750GB to 1TB data for close to 20 dollars a month. In villages (at least 100 thousands of them) and small towns (roughly 8 thousand of them) where most population resides, the story is different. Only wired broadband provider for them is govt. owned named BSNL whose service is quite unreliable. 4G high speed wireless is accessible everywhere for cheap though.
- govg 8y agoYou're right in that "most" Indians probably do not have broadband access / 4G access. But the urban centers certainly do,and they have enough by way of people to become a huge market. To put it in context, there are at least 46 cities with population > 1M (2011 census), and the top 7 cities by population will certainly have access to broadband as well as cheap 4G. These 7 will account for 50M - 55M in population. In comparison, the US has 10 cities with > 1M population ( as far as I can see on Wikipedia). So even when you account for the lesser internet penetration in India as a whole, the number of people who can possibly access streaming services is quite large.
- akhilcacharya 8y ago$100 USD per month is absolutely crazy. My cousin pays ~$30 from MTNL and thinks it's incredibly expensive.
- sailfast 8y ago$100 the cost of a 1Gbps Verizon FiOS subscription in the US (though theoretically your data transfer is unlimited and not capped at 2.5TB). Seems reasonable to me but I don't know what that equates to when you factor in purchasing power parity.
- govg 8y agoEven for the young employed folks this is quite the sum. The fact is though, that over the course of an average month it's pretty hard to hit these caps. Its about 800 hours of Netflix HD streaming, and you're probably not going to be able to watch that much just at home.
- akhilcacharya 8y agoThe salaries in India are a tiny fraction of what they are in America even for professionals.
- govg 8y agoThat's the absolute top-end of the plans they have in Bangalore. It's around 2000INR (<30$) per month for a much more moderate 150Mbps / 875GB per month plan. And consider that a lot of the urban crowd we are talking about here will be sharing the cost with 1-3 others, considerably bringing down costs.
- cageface 8y agoI was shocked to see how cheap data was there too. You hear a lot of hectoring about being considerate of users in developing countries and being frugal with their data when designing apps and websites but at least in India it's not an issue at all.
- cbzbc 8y agoIt's still an issue on the backhaul though which is still heavily contended in many of those markets.
- deepGem 8y ago"being considerate of users in developing countries and being frugal with their data", This is probably applicable to other developing countries, definitely not to India. Man, data is so cheap, 4G is widespread even in tier 2 cities. Am not sure about tier 3 towns and villages but so far, I am hard pressed to find large tracts of dead zones.
- justaguyhere 8y agoI concur. Once you get used to mobile data plans in India, you'll realize how much American consumers are getting screwed by the likes of AT&T. AT&T behaves as if they are doing a favor to their consumers and that data is like gold, to be used with extreme respect and care. BTW, only senders are charged for SMS in India, not receivers, unlike American carriers. American Internet and communications service providers need some serious competition.
- mayankkaizen 8y agoThat was shocking to know that users are charged for receiving SMS in US! By the way, In India most plans have some quota for free sms, which almost always go unused. Anyone who uses whatsapp doesn't even bother about sms.
- fernandotakai 8y agoin brazil, it's the same thing. i don't even remember the last time i sent an sms! even companies are using whatsapp for notifications.
- 05 8y agoAnd how much is $2/mo when adjusted from local income/cost of living to US standards?
- tjbiddle 8y agoThis is the real question. I'm in Indonesia currently and I pay ~$13 USD for 25GB of data.
- wizardofmysore 8y ago1$ has a purchase power of ~18 rupees. So 140rs in India is equivalent to 7$ if you do a PPP conversion. This is based on 2016 rates. https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/india/ppp-conversion-factor https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/india/ppp-conversion-factor
- mayankkaizen 8y agoFor 2-4 USD, you can have breakfast, lunch and dinner, depending on location and your preferences. For about 30 USD, I can buy vegetables (excluding groceries) for the family of 2 for a month. Milk is about .75 USD per liter. 300-400 USD per month is the rent for 3 BHK apartment in good location. (I pay 220 USD for 2 BHK). For cable tv subscription, I pay around 5 USD.
- vinay427 8y agoSomewhat unsurprisingly, unprepared food costs are similar to in most developed countries while everything else is far cheaper.
- Consultant32452 8y agoMedian per capita income in India is about $650/yr. I don't know how many hours a median worker works, but to use the US standard of 2k hours per year, that's $0.32 per hour. So two dollars per month is approximately 6 hours of labor. Now let's try this same calculation with the US. US median per capita income is about $32,000 or $16/hr. The T-Mobile One plan is currently listed on their website at $70 for a single line. That's 4.3 hours. This is obviously a GROSS estimate, but it appears an Indian worker has to work approximately 1.39x the amount of hours a median American worker has to work for a "good" cell phone plan. You can get much cheaper pay as you go plans, but I wanted to use "mainstream" as much as possible.
- Eldt 8y ago2 USD/1.5GB absolutely sounds like something to worry about. Perhaps with such limits you learn to moderate your usage...
- anu7df 8y ago2USD/ month for 1.5GB per day..
- NeutronStar 8y ago2USD for 30x1.5GB, so 2 USD for 45GB.
- hoffs 8y ago2 USD per month, you get 1.5 GB 4G data per day 1.5GB every day for 2 USD per month
- TheLoneAdmin 8y agoYou are comparing monthly subscription prices to daily bandwidth limitations. $2 USD for 45GB monthly or $0.07 USD for 1.5GB/daily
- izzydata 8y agoIs it so cheap because it hasn't reached market saturation yet? Maybe not a lot of people actually use lots of data and as soon as too many people do the prices will go up.
- blocked_again 8y agoIndia has 2nd highest number of Internet users in the world mate.
- izzydata 8y agoBut do they all download 100gb of data on their LTE each month?
- blocked_again 8y agoThey dont download 100GB. But almost all of them finish their data quotas everyday by watching YouTube and Hotstar videos. Thats like 30GB - 60GB a month.
- theblackcat1002 8y agoI heard this comes with forced inserted ads when browsing as well as limited internet access ( only facebook, twitter is available ), is it still valid today?
- mayankkaizen 8y agoYou can access anything. No restrictions. Advertisements are not that much of a concern.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- SJetKaran 8y agoThat statement was never valid in India. Facebook introduced (or tried to) FreeBasics, but they had to withdraw after Net Neutrality regulations.
- blocked_again 8y agoI live in India only. 1.5GB per day wont even last you through 5 HD YouTube videos. Its a good plan for people who are conservative with their Internet usage. I would probably believe 1 million users with fibre connection wasting their data just for bragging. Definitely not the people who are on 1.5 GB data plan.
- zambal 8y agoHD videos take a lot of bandwidth. Spotify's default quality (I guess the highest you can get with the free tier) is only 96kbps. So if you stream that 24 hours a day it takes: (96 / 8) * 3600 * 24 / (1024 * 1024) = 0.99GB