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

• traceroute66 6y ago
  Trouble is that webpage is largely a meaningless waste of time. Anybody who has done business with the mobile operators can tell you that. It doesn't take into account the different types of contracts (e.g. are we talking about personal or business contracts, pay as you go or contract etc. etc. etc. etc.). Nor does it take into account the infinite and ever changing commercial promotions the operators run. If the chart on that website was to be believed, the data on my mobile contract should be costing me 15x more per GB than it actually does ! Load of codswallop.
  • anothermoron 6y ago
    Exactly, just take Canada for example, most expensive 1gb: $99usd, it's clearly not just for a simple "1gb data" plan, it's probably one that allows unlimited call worldwide without any charge... Some places probably doesn't even have those kind of plan so of course they will rank lower if every plans are under $20 because there is nothing worthy in it...
• notRobot 6y ago
  I don't understand, why is it that it costs less than $1 in countries in Asia for a GB of mobile data but costs ~$15 for the same in the United States? Can someone with knowledge of the industry please explain the reasons for this discrepancy to me?
  • otoburb 6y ago
    Demand and supply. Clearing prices are higher in the US for a variety of reasons.
  • Yetanfou 6y ago
    Maybe the word 'cost' is not the right term, better would be to talk about 'price'. The price is as high as the market will bear, clearly people are used to paying more for data in the USA and as such there is less incentive to bring down prices. The actual cost - as in what it costs to send data from A to B inside a carrier network - does not vary much between countries and can even be higher in some of those countries where retail prices are lower than in the USA.
  • inetknght 6y ago
    Rent. American businesses love extracting rent.
    • jeppesen-io 6y ago
      ALL businesses do
    • Gibbon1 6y ago
      In the US Jevons paradox is in play with debt and rents. Baumol's cost disease also means debt and rents are slowly snuffing out other types of economic activity.
      • inetknght 6y ago
        You've got a bunch of buzzwords to describe why telcos in America fleece customers. Make it simpler for the rest of us, would you? Rent isn't a good thing here.
        • Gibbon1 6y ago
          It's exceeding obvious, capital is cheap. The means the finance industry uses more of it. They use it for rent seeking shenanigans that wouldn't make a return if it were higher priced. The problem is increased rent extraction reduces the return on economic activities that require real investment. Because the cost of labor and rents are too high to compete with aforementioned shenanigans. Simple simple simple.
    • cscurmudgeon 6y ago
      Salaries are much higher in the US. Don’t reduce complex economics to simplistic sound bites. Look up PPP.
      • cscurmudgeon 6y ago
        Downvoted without any argument for a valid counterpoint. This site is going downhill with low information posts.
  • jzwinck 6y ago
    Cellular service clearly can be delivered more cheaply in poor countries. Telenor for example is Noweigian (very wealthy country) but offers service at lower prices in Myanmar. One reason is labor costs. Imagine how much it costs to build and maintain one tower in Norway with its high standard of living for everyone vs in Myanmar where people will work for much less, and with lower safety standards. And obviously providers will charge more if they can, less if they have to.
    • MAGZine 6y ago
      Can you point to a source that says labour costs are the reason for high Telco prices? The ongoing maintainence of a tower seems like it would be fractional to operational cost.
      • jzwinck 6y ago
        Of course towers are a fraction of operating expenses. It was just an example of one piece of the puzzle. All labor costs in Myanmar are far lower, from marketing to lawyers to retail store staff. And as I said, there are other reasons such as consumer surplus (rich people can pay more, so they do).
    • jeppesen-io 6y ago
      And cost of land and permitting
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    • skylanh 6y ago
      As an extension to this comment, other costs that could impact the delivery price of 1GB of total usage: - speed - overall saturation of tower (# users per tower) - population density (full coverage of an area may be difficult) - technology; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_mobile_phone_standards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_mobile_phone_sta... which could affect federal regulatory licensing costs, technology licensing and acquisition costs and competitiveness of market to provide technology, tower density, total user capacity This is my laymen's interpretation. For instance, to blanket the US (9.834 million km² and 36 people per Km2) in LTE would be a significantly harder challenge then blanketing Myanmar (676,575 km² and 83 people per Km2) or even Norway (385,203 km² and 15 people per Km2). Just look at the stats for Myanmar, 86 people per Km2, and I might be able to get most of them within 300-500k km2. My subscriber base is excellent!
  • masklinn 6y ago
    They make you pay what they can.
  • rsynnott 6y ago
    Beyond the usual arguments about "the US is big", poor competition is probably a big part of it. US telcos have a lot of lockin, with very long contract lengths, poor acceptance of prepaid plans, and "family plans" being common. All of this makes it less likely that people will move network, so there's less incentive for telcos to actually compete on price. EDIT: On the "US is big" point, it's notable that pricing doesn't really follow population density in Europe. The UK has four times the population density of Ireland, but only fractionally cheaper data. Germany has similar population density to the UK, but far more expensive data (though I wonder are they looking at all extant contracts or something; data recently got a lot cheaper in Germany). All three countries have comparable household earnings. Sweden has a third the population density of Ireland (less than a tenth that of the UK!), slightly higher average data cost, _cheaper_ minimum data cost, and comparable household earnings. In general, any attempt to explain this via recourse to population density, income or GDP fails in the developed world.
    • AmericanChopper 6y ago
      Having lived in a couple of developing Asian countries, there’s a few obvious reasons that the services would be cheaper. For starters, everything about doing business is cheaper, especially salaries. Unreliable service is completely normal. There’s also additional income streams for service providers. Getting spam SMS tailored to your nearest cell tower (like special offers for nearby restaurants) is completely normal. HTTP content is much more common place, and it all has ISP injected advertisements. Service coverage is also much worse, tourist areas have the best coverage, followed by business districts.
      • jeeeeb 6y ago
        That may be the case for some countries but it doesn't really explain the difference between the US/Canada and Europe or Australia.
        • AmericanChopper 6y ago
          If you looked into comparing the services from any two different countries, you’ll find completely different sets of market and geographical circumstances. The costs of providing the service will be different, the actual service provided will be different, and the demand from consumers will be different. If you compare Australia and New Zealand for instance, there’s some very obvious factors that could explain that difference. Australia has a lot more outbound submarine bandwidth than New Zealand has, with New Zealand also being much further away from the rest of the world. Most of Australia has either no service or terrible service. New Zealand has approx the population of Sydney, while having more than 20x the land area. Australia has about 5x the population of New Zealand, so all of your fixed prices per customer are going to be less in Australia. For any two countries you’re going to get an incredibly long list of factors that influence price. Population density seems like it should have a significant impact on the cost of building and maintaining mobile infrastructure for example. The US has close to 10x the population density of Canada, and Europe has over 3x the population density of the US, which I would expect is a non-trivial contributor to the reason that Canada is more expensive than the US, which is more expensive than Europe.
  • polack 6y ago
    You need to build coverage for a huge portion of the population to get a license in many western countries. So all customers in the less densely populated countries have share that cost. There is also strict requirements on uptime and huge fines for telcos in western countries if the service goes down, even for just a moment. Needless to say that creating a resilient network costs a lot more.
  • devonkim 6y ago
    The chart is potentially misleading because it only focuses upon the dimension of transfer when markets can be based upon speed. South Korea oftentimes has tiers of data based around speed rather than a cap or aportionment, which is part of why its cheapest 1 GB is less than 1/4 of what it is in the US but seems comparable. My point is mostly that level of service is another dimension that is hidden from the chart that should be quantified to better understand the underlying trends.
  • maxerickson 6y ago
    A lot of it is that people pay $15 for the 1 GB in the US. (and $80-100 for the big bucket)
  • missedthecue 6y ago
    Purchasing power parity. Median incomes in the US are far more than 15x what they are in countries like India, Pakistan, or Indonesia. Median income India - $2k Median income USA - $60k
    • HJain13 6y ago
      While I agree with your logic, a small correction: for India the data you found would probably be per capita and for USA its per household (which I think constitutes 3 or 4 members). So something like 10x difference
  • adventured 6y ago
    > costs ~$15 for the same in the United States I'm not sure where you get $15. The linked site says $8: "with 1GB costing an average $12.55 in Canada and $8.00 in the US." Nor do I get why you think all of Asia is inexpensive. South Korea is far worse than the US, despite a far lower median income, at $10.94 average. If you adjust that to the US, it's more like $24 (200% higher than the US). And Japan is fairly bad vs global prices as well when adjusted for income levels (around $6 to $6.50 equivalent in US terms). Why are US prices higher than they should be? Two primary reasons. First, the two big telcos initiated (and held) the market at a very high price point from inception. The US was the first large cellular and smartphone market. It has taken limited competition, primarily in the form of T-Mobile, more than a decade to drag those high prices downward. Second, wealth / income adjustments. Consider the Ukraine example. The US has ~20 times the GDP per capita of Ukraine in a typical year. Their $0.46 cost is comparable to more like $9.20 with a US adjustment, which is higher than the US cost. US median disposable incomes are among the highest, only comparable to smaller affluent countries like Australia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Switzerland. You also can't sell 1gb for $10 in Ukraine, it's not a very good business model. The people can't afford those prices. The telecom operators in countries like Ukraine do not make very much money selling mobile plans. Most telecom operators around the world operate at very thin margins with low profits. Verizon by itself generated $30.4 billion in operating income in 2019. AT&T generated $29.4 billion in operating income. T-Mobile generated $5.7 billion in operating income. So between the three US telecom operators, that's $65.6 billion in operating income every year (best compared to Apple or Microsoft in size). The entire rest of the world has nothing remotely like that profit bonanza, outside of a select few large operators.
  • scarface74 6y ago
    I’m not sure about the other two, but T-Mobile has an unlimited data plan that is $40 a month for unlimited everything for a phone and $20 month unlimited for tablets if you have at least one phone on the plan. They don’t throttle you but they do prioritize your data over 50GB. I’ve never seen it happen. But because you can’t just add more wires to the airwaves, there is a limited amount of bandwidth no matter what you do. So that’s fair. They offer unlimited tethering still 512Kbps.
  • geodel 6y ago
    As someone work in that industry, I see that one huge cost is people (including me) working there. So first step will be eliminate or convert these millions or so jobs in telecom industry which currently offer middle class living to about or below subsistence level. Another will be to bring down quality of service level. A couple of years back I was india and area where my mother lived had service down for like a week. That area must have a population of at least few 100Ks. Third to have very little customer service staff. People here have legitimately said why the hell do I care about 1000s of customer service/call center staff. I want my service cheap. In countries like India they have done that. Social media call these companies evil but I think they are just trying to run cheap service. Fourth is to spend much less on network equipments and field testing. Service is announced at much cheaper price point but backend systems are severely overloaded so one gets much more network/call drops.
    • donmcronald 6y ago
      > Third to have very little customer service staff. People here have legitimately said why the hell do I care about 1000s of customer service/call center staff. I want my service cheap. In countries like India they have done that. Social media call these companies evil but I think they are just trying to run cheap service. In Canada they do that and keep the extra profits. Koodo is one of Telus’ flanker brands (for the illusion of competition) and even though they’ve increased phone and plan pricing a fair bit over the last couple of years they’ve gotten rid of the ability to directly call customer support. The Canadian government has been promising us action in the mobile industry for ages, but year after year after year our prices go up and up and up.
    • distances 6y ago
      I'm sure you've read some of the other comments, but none of this explains the massive price difference to Western European market. It's all about lack of competition due to lack of consumer friendly regulation. A good starting point would be legislation that Israel enacted to get competitive markets as described by rvp-x: > - Ban on SIM-locking of phones to one provider > - Allowing users to change providers without losing their phone number > - Ban on "exit penalties" for customers leaving a contract > - Forcing existing infrastructure providers to share their infrastructure with virtual or not-yet-fully-deployed new providers
  • rvp-x 6y ago
    Israel managed to significantly lower the rates with the introduction of the following changes: - Ban on SIM-locking of phones to one provider - Allowing users to change providers without losing their phone number - Ban on "exit penalties" for customers leaving a contract - Forcing existing infrastructure providers to share their infrastructure with virtual or not-yet-fully-deployed new providers
    • fellellor 6y ago
      The same points hold for India as well. We’ve never had SIM locking and exit penalties and have had number portability for quite a long time. Cellular infrastructure though was handled by “non public facing” companies, owned by consortiums of telecom companies. With the entry of Reliance Jio, these companies joined hands to lock Jio out of their networks. For quite some time, cross network calls would be of very poor quality or almost impossible. Things have improved a lot since then. However, it’s great the Israel has made it possible for infrastructure to be shared as a utility, allowing new players an easier entry. That will keep things competitive for a long time.
• grecy 6y ago
  I drove around Africa from mid 2016 to mid 2019[1]. I bought a SIM in most of the 35 countries I went to, uploaded YT vids, hi-res photos and just video chatted family. Overall the 3G connectivity was impressively fast, and almost always a fraction of the price of Canada or the US. Overall, I was extremely impressed. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waQGUz0Z97Y&list=PLNiCe5roBX1gG0CUhHCsad_hv2qZbGzXc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waQGUz0Z97Y&list=PLNiCe5roBX...
  • pier25 6y ago
    Woah that's quite an adventure! How come you stopped in Egypt and didn't go back to Morocco? Tunisia is a great country to visit.
    • grecy 6y ago
      It was always my dream to complete the loop, but the situation just didn't allow it. It is impossible to get a visa for Libya, and with the ongoing civil war the safety situation is B.A.D. Even if I got a visa, the Egyptian military wouldn't let me get anywhere NEAR the border. They're extremely protective of tourists and won't let them go anywhere "dangerous". They also wouldn't let me drive the Sinai over to Isreal. Also, the border from Algeria into Morocco has been closed for years, and nobody could tell me what would happen if I showed up and tried to cross. So, unfortunately Egypt was the end of the line on that one!
      • sgt 6y ago
        Have you watched Motonomad? I guess Adam Riemann was lucky with the timing being allowed into Sinai.
        • grecy 6y ago
          A motorbike is usually OK on the Sinai. Funny enough, for the Sinai they don't care about me being kidnapped, they care about my Jeep being kidnapped and used by ISIS against them. So a good vehicle like my Jeep is not allowed across the Sinai, but they don't care too much (or at least you can talk your way through) on a motorbike.
• quink 6y ago
  Not sure about South Korea, for instance, being at 202nd place for affordability there when unlimited plans for even pre-paid tourist SIMs are a thing.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • traceroute66 6y ago
    As I said in my post (which seems to be being downvoted despite telling the truth). The webpage is very naive and is not really telling the truth about mobile contracts. The wallet cost of mobile data is lower than the inflated prices shown on the website.
  • devonkim 6y ago
    They're only looking at total transfer costs and not level of service. You pay more for faster speed oftentimes in Korea and the baseline price may be a little higher than something like Cricket in the US but level of service even in the countryside is substantially better.
• chrismorgan 6y ago
  Related discussion from 43 days ago on an article that used this as its source data: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23795147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23795147
• gtirloni 6y ago
  What amazes me the most with my telco is that they charge $60 for a regular plan which includes 4GB of data, SMS and phone calls, but if I want to buy 1GB extra, it's $30-40 bucks. For a single 1GB of download.
  • allset_ 6y ago
    What horrible carrier is that? Even in the US which has high cellular data costs it's usually $10/GB
  • gruez 6y ago
    Makes sense, because it's modeled on your willingness to pay rather than cost. They probably did the market research and figured that people who use more than 4GB of data per month probably depend on it to earn a living, and therefore can charge more. Yet another reason why everyone should get a dual sim phone, which breaks this sort of market segmentation.
    • inetknght 6y ago
      > people who use more than 4GB of data per month probably depend on it to earn a living, and therefore can charge more Just like a hospital who charges $500 for a band-aid.
• franciscop 6y ago
  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.
  • ampersandy 6y ago
    I would have settled for a simple bar chart... these ring plots are useless.
  • llsf 6y ago
    Even European countries are generally cheaper then US when it comes to mobile internet. E.g. France is 10 times cheaper on average. While France minimum hourly wage is $11.83 and US minimum hourly wage is between $7.25 to $14.00 (depending on state). It seems that US is a bit expensive regardless of the salary. Mobile companies are very competitive in Europe, and European regulations put fuel on the fire by making the number portability mandatory very early. Reducing the friction to change mobile operator while keeping the same number and with minimum to no downtime.
  • playpause 6y ago
    It’s a very bad visualisation of interesting data.
• izzydata 6y ago
  I'm doing my part in the US by not paying for a single byte of mobile data. They will have to bring the price down for me to consider it.
  • Scoundreller 6y ago
    Yah, I'm paying ~CAD$35 for 4gb of data (incl. voice/SMS), and while I could upgrade to 10gb for $50, I'm holding out for a 90%+ reduction in prices.
    • donmcronald 6y ago
      Where? What carrier? That’s $15 cheaper than anything I’m aware of.
      • Scoundreller 6y ago
        Fido has 9gb for that price. Retentions can usually work better deals. Wind has 20gb for $50, but it’s Wind :) I always investigate here: https://forums.redflagdeals.com/ongoing-deal-discussion-f129/ https://forums.redflagdeals.com/ongoing-deal-discussion-f129...
  • monksy 6y ago
    I get 8gb capped 4g and unlimited 3g with page plus for 39$ a month. (unlimited text+calling)
• chiefalchemist 6y ago
  This is great. But additional and important context is speed. Knowing coverage would be a plus as well. Slow with mediocre coverage might be inexpensive but that waiting (and swearing?) comes with a cost.
  • Scoundreller 6y ago
    In Canada, it's the opposite. Due to high prices, the speeds are very fast. But this can also mean that a single poor decision can leave you data less (or rationing) for the rest of the month. Most plans just lock you up until you pay more, rather than continue throttled. Then you have software obviously written by people with zero consideration for data costs. NPR One app thinks it's a great idea to pre-stream hundreds of MB of content. Thanks NPR. Zoom doesn't have any low-bandwidth modes. While iOS lets you enforce a 'low-data mode' when tethering to metered connections, OS X doesn't. Thanks OS X for downloading that update while I was on a train. I was doing my best to ration what I had left by using Lynx for fuck's sake.
• rsynnott 6y ago
  I'd wonder how they're accounting for 'unlimited' plans. In Ireland, for instance, about a third of people would be using Three, and most of their plans are 'unlimited' (in practice, there are limits after which they'll throttle you, I believe, but they're high).
  • traceroute66 6y ago
    They're not. They're deluded if they think anybody in Western Europe is paying $3.13 per GB in 2020. ;-)
    • detaro 6y ago
      Someone having a 1GB plan might, because of the base costs. But of course someone with a larger plan wouldn't, which makes it impossible to get a meaningful "average" here (+ the question if you value phone minutes/SMS or not). Comparing pricepoints of similarly sized plans would be a lot more meaningful.
  • georgiecasey 6y ago
    Not only that, but at peak times in rural areas where people use mobile broadband as their main connection, Three internet slows to a crawl. I suspect it's the backhaul from the mobile mast but I'm not sure. That's what's always missing from these tests, reliability. It's more important than data cap and speeds.
    • rsynnott 6y ago
      > I suspect it's the backhaul from the mobile mast but I'm not sure. It might be in some cases, but in most cases that backhaul will be a very scalable fibre line. It's probably more down to limited spectrum. Three attracts heavy users, because their pricing is designed around them, so they have the most loaded network, and they can't just manufacture new spectrum (they can add new towers up to a point, but there's a lot of cost to that). 5G should help, somewhat.
  • RandomBacon 6y ago
• qalmakka 6y ago
  I'm Italian and I pay ~9 euros per month for 130 GB of uncapped 4G mobile Internet, so I can't really complain about it. Some new offers I've seen are as low as 6.99 for 100 GB + infinite calls. A few days ago I told this to a friend of mine who lives in the UK and he was shocked because he pays a lot more for like 2GB a month. I guess healthy competition can really be good for consumers when it works as it is supposed to.
  • StavrosK 6y ago
    Meanwhile, Greece with its telecom cartel is a few spots from last, with such good company as Turkmenistan, the Virgin Islands and, for some reason, Canada. I might as well get a SIM shipped to me from Italy every three months or so, it'll be lots cheaper.
    • t- 6y ago
      Canada also has a telecom cartel. The CRTC, which is the gov't regulatory body (and which is controlled by the telecoms), limits access to the market.
      • throw0101a 6y ago
        > The CRTC, which is the gov't regulatory body (and which is controlled by the telecoms), limits access to the market. The CRTC does not limit access to the market, the elected government does. For national security purposes foreign ownership is restricted: > As it stands now [in 2018], foreign ownership of a telecommunications company is limited to no more than 20 per cent of a company’s voting shares and no more than 33.3 per cent of the voting shares of a carrier’s holding company, and an effective total limit of 46.7 per cent (as long as the foreign entity doesn’t have control). On top of that, at least 80 per cent of the board members must be Canadian citizens. * https://financialpost.com/telecom/tight-reins-leaves-our-telecom-sector-open-to-criticism-but-sadly-not-competition https://financialpost.com/telecom/tight-reins-leaves-our-tel... See Telecommunications Act, Section 16. That dictates only domestic companies can really do much, which is the incumbents of Bell, Telus, Rogers, etc. Reduce foreign operator restrictions and foreign operators may come into the market and provide more competition.
• RantyDave 6y ago
  Yeah, this isn't right. I pay (New Zealand) a hundred and something a month for 100GB 4G or 5G if you can get it.
  • amanzi 6y ago
    Agree - these numbers are way off and to be honest are pretty difficult to calculate. There are a number of 'unlimited' mobile data plans and at the same time you can still get charged 50c per MB ($500/GB) on some pay-as-you-go plans.
  • nisse72 6y ago
    Sounds a bit high? Vodafone NZ offers 300 GB of 4G broadband for $73 at the moment.
    • RantyDave 6y ago
      That's just broadband though. My phone is my sole internet connection these days. We live in the future.
      • nisse72 6y ago
        My phone has also been my sole internet connection for the last 12 years. What I don't get is they are selling wireless broadband at the price I mention above, but if you buy what is essentially the same product as part of a phone plan instead (i.e. they've simply packaged it differently), you pay something along the lines of 10x or 20x the price per GB.
  • james_s_tayler 6y ago
    Yeah my plan is $40NZD and only has 4GB a month :( was on a 10GB plan for $60.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• chatman 6y ago
  I'm in India and I pay $8 for 84 days and get 2.5GB/day for those 84 days.
  • YetAnotherNick 6y ago
    Just to add, while technically it's 4G, it's hard to rely on that and most of the time the speed I get is less than 2-3mbps and the connection is really unstable(lived in multiple places all across India). It was much better when jio was just launched due to less users. But now it has become race to the bottom and there is no way to get a good 4G connection in India.
    • ramraj07 6y ago
      At least where I live (or honestly wherever I've been in South India) Jio has been mostly reliable enough for me to even work remotely with zoom calls and ssh/slack. So YMMV is the real conclusion.
      • perryizgr8 6y ago
        I second this. My Jio connection is fast enough for me to VPN in and work, combined with Zoom calls. It's always 20-30Mbps whenever I test it.
    • sbmthakur 6y ago
      I think the population density of the area where one lives affects the quality of network they experience.
    • shklnrj 6y ago
      I have definitely worked on Jio's network without issues. But have also been to areas where it is patchy. But things have definitely improved in terms of both data plans and their speeds ever since jio came into the market.
• bchip 6y ago
  I am in the US. I pay $80 a month for TWO phones. My plan provides unlimited calls, texts, and shared 2GB of 4G data. When my data runs out, my data speeds go to 100kb/s.
  • jacobkania 6y ago
    Does that include phone payments at all? Because it sounds like you’re getting a not so great deal. I’m also in the US and pay that much for unlimited everything on 2 phones
  • ab_testing 6y ago
    You need to look at prepaid options. All major carriers have those. They are not bad if you like in or around a metropolitan area. TMobile -> Metro PCS Verizon -> Visible ATT -> Cricket
  • pkaye 6y ago
    I'm on a T-Mobile 4 line plan at $30/line. Unlimited everything except I think it deprioritizes data over 50GB/month/line. But I've never exceeded 10GB/month yet.
• MayeulC 6y ago
  This data is worthless and likely very skewed by the use of mean prices instead of the median, while not displaying the standard deviation. Take France, for instance. 42 plans. 0.11 for the cheapest. 108 for the most expensive. How the hell are they finding 0.81 average, BTW? Same with South Korea. Also, in my experience, the bigger the plan, the less expensive it is, so they should have sorted "per 1 GB/month plan" or controlled for that issue somehow.
  • fireattack 6y ago
    > How the hell are they finding 0.81 average Probably by using median as you suggested? Because it's impossible for mean to be less than 2.68.
    • makapuf 6y ago
      Which is not reality, if there were 1$, 100$ and 200$ you wouldn't say the avg person would pay 100.
      • pavanky 6y ago
        Thats not what they said. If it was the average, the sum of all plans (42 @ 0.81) would be 34.02 which is less than the most expensive plan at 108.
        • makapuf 6y ago
          Avg would be 100.3, but médian would be 100.
  • danpalmer 6y ago
    This is very obvious to me too. Australia is placing better than the UK, despite mobile contracts being almost universally more expensive and less good in Australia. It seems to be because there's an expensive UK plan skewing the data, despite not being what most people have.
• amingilani 6y ago
  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 mode of communication such as VPN by means of which communication becomes hidden or encrypted is a violation of PTA regulations" in the words of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authoruty (PTA) —Pakistan's FCC-equivalent. I asked them if TLS/SSL was included but they never tweeted back; and + I didn't have access to services like Paypal, and when a service hadn't rolled out "globally", it wasn't available to me. Oh, and while I had "unlimited" internet, I was subject to my carrier's "Fair Use Policy" which had an unspecified maximum download limit after which your internet would be cut off. This was reported by a lot of people during the initial work-from-home boost during the pandemic when home-data-usage spiked. Now that I'm in Canada, my internet is nearly unrestricted. Edit: previous said my ISP restricted IRC. Just rechecked, it no longer does. [0]: https://twitter.com/amingilani/status/1283448960666009601 https://twitter.com/amingilani/status/1283448960666009601
  • koolba 6y ago
    Does it call out IRC servers specifically? Or any type of server?
    • bityard 6y ago
      It probably does, and you'll find lots of ISPs, VPS and hosting providers also forbid IRC servers. The main reason for the blanket ban is that once upon a time (and perhaps still) IRC servers were widely used for malicious bot command and control systems and it's easier to just forbid them at all than pay people to spend their time sorting the good guys from the bad guys.
      • ralph84 6y ago
        Even legitimate IRC servers are DoS attack magnets.
• Thaxll 6y ago
  Canada #209 out of 228 I'm not surprised, CRTC is useless, mobile / internet is still crazy expensive in 2020.
  • donmcronald 6y ago
    Weird how Harper and Trudeau both promised to address it and we got nothing.
• mythz 6y ago
  When leaving Australia in 2005, it had one of the worst value mobile/internet plans, was pleasantly surprised returning after 15 years to find it now offers some of the best value. Currently on a Woolworths no-contract pre-paid mobile, A$150 for 12 months for 84GB Data / unlimited mobile/SMS [1]. Works out as USD $8.95 /mo for 7GB / unlimited calls/SMS [1] https://mobile.woolworths.com.au/Shop/Plans/Woolworths-Phone-Plans/c/postpaid?default=starterpackplans https://mobile.woolworths.com.au/Shop/Plans/Woolworths-Phone...
  • ouchjars 6y ago
    We've come a long way from $20,000 per GB (the rate on Telstra prepaid circa 2011, as I discovered when I put my SIM into my first smartphone).
• ziptron 6y ago
  1 GB of 24/7 access to unrestricted internet is different than 1 GB of always down or censored internet. They should consider that in the next "study".
• TMWNN 6y ago
  I pay $25 including taxes and fees for two unlimited lines on Sprint in the US, thanks to $15 Kickstart two years ago and the recent free line for life promotion.
• benbristow 6y ago
  Awesome site. Most expensive in the UK $64? That's insane. Would be interesting to see where the sources of these prices were. I downloaded the spreadsheet but it just tells you the numbers, not the providers.
• maple3142 6y ago
  Taiwanese here, I think Taiwan's data is inaccurate. Our mobile carriers have a "unlimited" plan, which you can actually use unlimited data. The price of the plan varies a lot, but my unlimited plan only costs 499TWD/m(16.9USD/m), and I use nearly 50GB per mounth. But I'd like to mention there is no such as unlimited texts here, only unlimited data. I think this is why SNS is preferred over SMS and iMessage.
  • bhahn 6y ago
    Hmm, that’s interesting. Why is there no unlimited texting?
    • qalmakka 6y ago
      Here in Italy lots of plans actually stopped offering unlimited SMS because nobody uses them anymore. I think I must have sent less than 10 SMS in the last 5 years or so.
      • nottorp 6y ago
        SMS is the backup if all of the data using messengers fail. They generally don't. In Romania everyone is on Whatsapp. It has basically replaced text messages. Actually, any widespread messaging app is better than the original text messages. And don't even get me started on MMS.
  • Loranubi 6y ago
    True. There might be other more expensive contracts, but most people in Taiwan that I know either have a "real" unlimited data contract for like 17 USD per month or a "fake" unlimited contract (with like 25GB and reduced but still acceptable speeds afterwards) for about 14 USD per month. One example provider would be Tstar. Nobody uses SMS anymore.
• ekianjo 6y ago
  How do they take in account unlimited plans in some countries for which 1GB costs becomes actually incalculable?
• nippoo 6y ago
  I've been amazed at the effects of this every time I've visited India. With data so cheap, social media use is prolific - people share videos and stream all day long - and public WiFi is far less commonplace since essentially /everybody/ owns phones with almost unlimited data plans. India still has a long way to go in terms of social equality, poverty and breaking up the caste system, but providing fast, cheap Internet for all is undoubtedly a great first step.
  • geodel 6y ago
    Sorry, But I have seen the opposite effect of cheap internet there. People spend lot of time in spread hatred, fake news and animosity using internet service. I have seen this first hand with so many of my educated friends and relatives who were reasonable folks before internet boom and now they come across caricature of dimwit person. With so much information available on internet they still chose to pick lowest quality sources.
    • mumblerino 6y ago
      I don’t know why this is being downvoted. It’s the truth, except that it doesn’t happen just in India. Every country has their own version of this.
    • noisy_boy 6y ago
      Not sure why you were downvoted because this is exactly what is going on. One might say that the problems were societal and already there - technology has just provided the bandwidth for explosive spread of these things. To be fair, it has also provided an amazing increase in outreach. A person in a village with barely any infrastructure can have a video call with their friends/family - that is empowering.
    • Sebb767 6y ago
      This might be true (it appears we have similar people in the western world). However, I think you're being downvoted because it seems you're advocating less internet access in the hopes of more equality. It brings up an interesting question, though: Assuming for the moment that internet access actually increases hatred - is more hate towards a group a good tradeoff for empowering them by giving them internet access as well?
• inglor 6y ago
  Israeli here, pay 7$ for 200GB of data (well I pay 14$ for 400GB and use one as home internet backup because it is cheap). It used to be quite expensive here at around $100/mo for 10GB but the government broke up the monopoly and forced competition into the market by making existing players share infrastructure. We went up from main 3 providers to around 10 and prices dropped sharply. My government screws up quite a lot in my opinion but credit is due and that reform was quite successful.
  • brightball 6y ago
    Amazing what competition does
    • gingerlime 6y ago
      It didn't happen with competition alone though. There was competition before in Israel on the telecom market, but prices were very high. Then one of the ministers stepped-in and regulated to make it more consumer-friendly. disclaimer: I'm an ex-Israeli, so my knowledge about it is very limited, and I don't follow Israeli news. But that's broadly my understanding of what happened to drive prices down and improve consumer value. EDIT: found an article from 2014[0] that mentions it [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/israel-telecommunications-reform/israel-shakes-up-telecoms-market-to-lower-prices-for-consumers-idUSL6N0T82MB20141118 https://www.reuters.com/article/israel-telecommunications-re...
    • yoavm 6y ago
      Competition didn't do it. For years. Regulation did, and in something like 2 months. The coolest part? All those threats about "companies will leave a highly regulated market" never materialized.
      • yuvalr1 6y ago
        The market was not really competitive because of a very high barrier for entrance (building the communication infrastructure). The regulation forced competition, then the prices fell of their own, when new players joined.
• iamAtom 6y ago
  In India BSNL Fibernet has stepped up their game. Even rural towns and villages (not all but the list is growing) now have access to 100Mbps internet for ~10 USD
  • avasthe 6y ago
    $10 per month is too costly for many, we are happy with 30 GB per month 4G data which costs around $2.
• makecheck 6y ago
  One of the things that frustrates me about apps/web is that most people have no idea what individual apps/sites are “costing” them. Without additional tools and watching Cellular Data settings like a hawk, stupid things can slurp up your data plan. Entire books could be sent to people in a sane format but a 3-line web page wrapped in garbage takes dozens of megabytes? An app that does “very little” is consuming 100 MB in no time? Worse, no one seems to want to “pay” for apps anymore (demanding everything be free) but then they blow $10 on data because their “free” app is routinely shoving unnecessary amounts of data to their device. We need some hard limits on data; if I give your app 100 K, you shouldn’t be able to use any more. Furthermore, the default data limits should be very low (with big scary dialogs appearing when apps request more) to discourage lazy designs that offload their true costs onto unsuspecting consumers.
  • avasthe 6y ago
    This is why I disable background data for individual apps and keep data saver on whenever possible. Also, browsing can be something like: - Ad blocking - Javascript disabled by default - remote fonts disabled - media eg images disabled if possible - cookies disabled by default The first 2 are possible using UBlock Origin + Firefox on Android devices. Ad blocking is a must. Also, you can use some local VPN app like netguard to restrict app's data usage. I don't remember whether you can specify data usage limits though. But it can prevent entire apps from accessing internet. Then about web pages. On desktop I routinely use text browsers or simple GUI browsers because they are so fast. Even your regular browser can go a long way with JS disabled by default and ad blocking.
    • aembleton 6y ago
      uBO also lets you set the maximum size of media elements so that you can restrict them to say 50KB max. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site-switches#no-large-media-elements https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site-switches#no-...
  • tialaramex 6y ago
    Out of the box Android will alert you if an application seems to be using a lot of bandwidth on either the cellular connection or a WiFi link marked as costing money. [Of course an Android modified by your phone company or product manufacturer may not do this] There's also an overall summary month-by-month for apps. Long press the mobile connection, pick App data usage and you get a chart and a list, ordered by amount used and with a warning that your operator might count things differently† Mine says Pokemon Go uses a lot of bandwidth, which makes sense, also one of the free games I play made some requests while I was away from home and I unblocked it, after that comes Chrome looking at web sites. †e.g. New Zealand zero rated all their COVID-19 related government services, and as a free bonus they get to find out how much the providers think that's worth and decide if in fact they'd prefer all government services were zero rated forever)
• lmilcin 6y ago
  I live in Poland. I have, personally, no less than three plans. 1 for my mobile phone where I have something like 15GB of data for equivalent of 20USD (that including unlimited calls). 1 for my laptop, where there is a limit of 100GB for equivalent of 10USD 1 for my emergency mobile Internet which is unlimited monthly transfer but limited bandwidth to 20Mbit/s (I have tested, I have not yet reached a limit after uploading/downloading hundreds of GBs in one month I had to move to my parents in law), for equivalent of 10USD per month. This came with a LTE to WiFi router. I use it as emergency (I work from home, I need it in case my 1Gbit broadband fails) and I take it on trips with family so we have good quality unlimited Internet wherever we are. It seems silly to me that you can have basically free broadband and so expensive mobile in a western country with technically advanced infrastructure. I could understand operators wanting to recoup their initial investments but in the long run mobile should be cheaper to transfer than broadband (there less physical infrastructure having to be laid and maintained).
• BeeOnRope 6y ago
  I wonder how they factor unlimited plans into this? In Chile, the mobile internet is quite cheap (and usually plenty fast, LTE is widespread and download speeds > 10 Mbps are common) per GB but unlimited plans are also common. E.g., I pay something like $1.50 a week for unlimited internet and calls, and since I can use 60 GB a month easy, that works out to ~10 cents a GB, considerably cheaper than what the chart shows for Chile. It's also about 100x cheaper than the $10/GB ballpark I paid in Canada. Yeah, one hundred times cheaper.
• z3t4 6y ago
  Should also take into account cost of living. I believe Internet cost much more in poor countries.
  • Aachen 6y ago
    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.
• martinmunk 6y ago
  I’m in Denmark. I have “3” as a phone provider and have essentially an unlimited plan for 30usd, with free roaming in most of the world. My home internet is served as an IOT plan with a “300MB” plan that in practice the network owned by the old national provider don’t cap, so I hit 1TB on 4G with a monthly fee of ~4.7USD. I know many people who does the same. The US really seem like in need of some good old competition.
  • onemiketwelve 6y ago
    Could a random person show up in Denmark and buy this plan? That sounds amazing
    • martinmunk 6y ago
      Not sure. Some limitations were removed when EU rules for roaming charges were put in place. To be fair, my “IOT” plan is Denmark-only.
    • Leherenn 6y ago
      I don't know about Denmark in particular, but in other EU countries they stipulate you have to spend the majority of time/data in the "home" country or the expensive roaming fees apply. Not idea whether they actually check/apply this though.
    • jnieminen 6y ago
      There is a limitation for that. "A surcharge may be applied if: * you use roaming services more than domestic services and spend more time travelling than in Finland" https://www.traficom.fi/en/communications/broadband-and-telephone/roaming-prices-europe https://www.traficom.fi/en/communications/broadband-and-tele...
  • gorgoiler 6y ago
    Ironically, for “competition” you might well have said “free market capitalism”. Except that provision of basic mono-utilities such as drinking water, roads, and The Internet is probably best provided by the state. At least the cell phone tower part, leaving the internet exchange part upwards to private companies. (This pre supposes a level of benevolence / lack of malevolence from the state, or a faith in protocols further up the stack to have end to end security. At least one of these exists.)
• Reason077 6y ago
  I've used 2.93 TB of data in 7 months on my £30/month unlimited 5G plan. So £0.07 (USD $0.09) per GB, I guess?
• tjbiddle 6y ago
  American living in Indonesia here. I never bother to purchase actual "minutes" on my local SIM. Instead I just buy pure data plans and run everything through there. I usually just load up ~14GB for $7 which lasts 30 days - it could be even cheaper if I bought more in bulk, but I never need it. Almost all of my communication is done over WhatsApp, and when I need to call an actual number I use Google Voice / Hangouts which which is over data and has very cheap minutes. In comparison, whenever I visit the US I pop in my T-Mobile SIM and buy a prepaid plan from them for a month. I think it's usually ~$50-70/mo. A lot of my family is on Google Fi and said I should switch over since it's "So easy for my international travels" but it just makes zero sense. If I pop over to another country it's very simple to just buy a local SIM at the airport and I'm good to go.
• CGamesPlay 6y ago
  Funny story about my vodafone.es SIM card I bought last year. I used it for about 3 months while traveling in Europe and Turkey. I bought 8 GB for around 10 EUR, and didn't use nearly that much. I renewed that plan the following month, but due to some glitch in Vodafone's system, the same 10 EUR bought me 16 GB for the upcoming month. I renewed the following month, and my 10 EUR again bought me 32 GB! I hope I can reactivate that SIM when I go back to Europe, the monthly alotment should be up in the PBs by now.
• henrikf 6y ago
  If I understand the methodology correctly this study seems to penalize unlimited plans quite a lot. In the linked methodology pdf they specify that the price for 1 GB of data for unlimited plans is calculated by dividing by the average data usage per user but limited plans are divided by the limit. For example in Finland almost all plans are unlimited and users regularly use a lot of mobile data. Average monthly use is 34 GB and median 6 GB [0]. The cheapest mobile plan I can find is 9.90€/month for unlimited data at 1 Mbit/s [1]. Dividing it by 6 GB median data use gives $1.95 for 1 GB which is close to the their reported minimum price of $1.75. However if this plan was instead marketed with 100 GB monthly cap they would have divided it by 100 GB instead giving a much cheaper price. [0] https://blog.telegeography.com/finns-lead-the-way-in-mobile-data-usage https://blog.telegeography.com/finns-lead-the-way-in-mobile-... [1] https://elisa.fi/kauppa/puhelinliittymat https://elisa.fi/kauppa/puhelinliittymat
  • fyfy18 6y ago
    I live in Lithuania and that also appears to be the case here. The cheapest mobile plans from the main operators start at around 8€/mo for 1GB data with unlimited calls and texts. To be fair I would say these type of plans are actually quite expensive compared to the rest of Europe. But there are plenty of data-only plans which work out a lot cheaper. The cheapest provider sells unlimited data for 2.90€/mo, but the speed is limited and they are a smaller player so their coverage is too. From the big players, truly unlimited data with no speed caps is 20€/mo (the largest capped plan is 120GB for 11€/mo, 0.09c/GB). And of course they have discounts if you have other services from the same provider.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • iagovar 6y ago
    We also have "unlimited" plans in Spain, however at +40€ typically, and under "fair use" use clauses.
    • the_mitsuhiko 6y ago
      The question is always what fair use is. Phone contracts with unlimited data set the fair use clause in Austria to 1.5TB a month and have no such limitation for data only sim cards (home use). On the other hand unlimited in Germany often means ISDN speeds after 50GB.
• soneca 6y ago
  I believe the data should add the comparison using purchase power parity. The price in USD being higher in the US than in Brazil doesn’t mean that the internet is more expensive in the US
  • goshx 6y ago
    Thank you. It is silly to convert everything to USD, unless the list is built to know how much who earns their salary in USD would pay in those countries.
    • smabie 6y ago
      PPP converts everything into USD, just using a different method. PPP has nothing to do with a person's salary. If they used PPP, every GB would be the same price for every single country. That's where the "parity" part comes in.
  • smabie 6y ago
    That doesn't make any sense, PPP is used to come up with "real" exchange rates based on price differentials. If you used PPP as the exchange, all countries would have the exact same price per GB. For example, if a GB is $1 in America and 2 euros in Germany, then we would use a 1:2 ratio for converting the price. So Germany's PPP price would now be $1 in dollars as well. As you can see, this isn't very helpful. PPP's fundamental assumption is the law of one price, so it's no surprise that all the prices would be the same using it.
    • soneca 6y ago
      It would compare the price relative to other goods in the same country. It makes sense to me, what am I missing?
      • smabie 6y ago
        PPP's fundamental assumption is that a product in one place and the same product in another place have the same price. It's used to determine a relative exchange rate, by setting the price of the goods to be equal. Using PPP methodology for GBs of data, we would first assume that all GBs in every country are the same price. We would then use that fact to come up with a conversion rate between currencies. This isn't very helpful for price comparison, since it's very literally assuming that the prices are equal. Working back from the exchange rate makes much more sense, because we are interesting in the cost difference between a GB here and one there. We can't compare the cost difference if we assume a priori that they must equal each other.
• codetrotter 6y ago
  One thing that is essay to miss if you glance at the map, is just how much cheaper mobile data plans are in Denmark than in Norway. I recently learned about this when a friend of mine pointed it out to me while we were talking about the pricing of the mobile data plans here in Norway. Here is a Danish website comparing providers in Denmark: https://telepristjek.dk/data-billige-priser/ https://telepristjek.dk/data-billige-priser/ Here is a Norwegian website comparing providers in Norway: https://www.tek.no/mobilt-bredbaand/ https://www.tek.no/mobilt-bredbaand/ You’ll be able to read the tables even if you don’t speak Danish nor Norwegian, since the tables show contain the word “GB” for gigabytes of data, and the price which is in DKK and NOK respectively. In addition to those tables mentioned, some currency exchange rates are useful to make sense of the data if you live in another country: 100 NOK 🇳🇴 ~= 70 DKK 🇩🇰 100 DKK 🇩🇰 ~= 143 NOK 🇳🇴 100 NOK 🇳🇴 ~= 9.42 EUR 🇪🇺 100 DKK 🇩🇰 ~= 13.43 EUR 🇪🇺 100 NOK 🇳🇴 ~= 11.10 USD 🇺🇸 100 DKK 🇩🇰 ~= 15.84 USD 🇺🇸
• monksy 6y ago
  The cost for a 1 gb plan is insane in india. I paid about $3.30 for a 2gb plan for a month. By 2gb .. I mean it was 2gb of data per day. Granted the coverage wasn't great and the network was way overloaded. https://www.jio.com/en-in/4g-plans https://www.jio.com/en-in/4g-plans
• nromiun 6y ago
  The map isn't that useful without showing what type of data it is. 1GB data is very different over 2G, 3G and 4G.
• tbronchain 6y ago
  This study is great, as it points out huge disparities that are more than often not justified. People have mentioned it and sometimes opening to competition have made huge changes on the market. Take France for example, people used to pay around $10/GB not so long ago. A new player came on the market and yes, didn't have the same quality of service at first, but clearly cut the price and now a GB is 10x cheaper. Better, they now provide unlimited data for ~20$/month (!!). As some have also mentioned, unlimited is something clearly missing as it can make the price/GB completely meaningless in some cases. I currently live in Georgia and at the moment there are plans for ~1.5$/week for truly unlimited data - speed is also great with ~50-100mbps and I live in a metropolitan, dense area. A last point is roaming. This is where I believe most unfairness lies with big profits and ridiculous disparities. Some carries will charge $100+/GB for roaming. Sometimes could even be $1000+(!!!) if you didn't think of buying a plan. But in the other hand, using my French simcard (the one with unlimited data for $20) I can get 25GB in most countries in the world (that include all Europe, USA, Canada, China, Australia, etc.) And that's sometimes cheaper than local plans. Sometimes even better as it gives me the ability to switch between networks when coverage is low. I know from friends who have been working in the industry that, prior the shake in France, carriers used to sit back and relax while making tremendous profits. There has been cases of illegal agreements between the 3 "competitors"/actors. Having a new actor and real competitor breaking the prices didn't slow down network quality and growth, btw. Why not letting carriers from other countries propose roaming plans to people worldwide, regardless of your country of residence? That would become interesting...
  • BrandoElFollito 6y ago
    When that new operator started (Free Mobile), it had had already revolutionized fixed internet. Then the operators went to the state to cry there and say thousands of people will lose their work. They cried, cried, saw that they would not get anything so they came back home and lowered their prices to align with Free Mobile. There were no massive layoffs. This is one of there rare cases where the French slowness to change was different.
• sytelus 6y ago
  Superficial looks suggests that price is inversely proportional to area size where infrastructure is needed and population density willing to pay for it.
• rendall 6y ago
  I don't know if "cable.co.uk" reads HN, but there is a mistake in the article: "Estonia is the cheapest of the three with 1GB costing an average of $1.27 and sits in 53rd place in the world, while in Estonia 1GB costs $1.85 on average" One of those Estonias should likely be Lithuania
• pw6hv 6y ago
  I am wondering how did they get their data especially for Switzerland. Here most of the plans have unlimited GB, so getting the price of a single one is quite tricky. Also, looking at the price for the most expensive one (~50USD) makes me think: did they maybe just took the price of an unlimited plan and used that as price for a GB? Lastly, average in this analysis does not really make sense to me. Especially as some very expensive plans can skew it to very large values.
  • kabacha 6y ago
    Exactly, what a weird american way to measure network. I've traveled to many places around the world and bandwidth is rarely directly capped. It's usually unlimited* with a speed cap. Right now for example I'm paying 50$ for 30mbps unlimited* yearly plan here in Thailand. The map in the article puts Thailand at avg 1.2$/GB which would net 42GB a year for 50$ which is a much worse deal. Finally I feel it's very hard to measure this. If you look at the article's map the avg/cheapest/most expensive vary by an absurd margin. Again Thailand is 0.2$ cheapest and 7.2$ most expensive — that 32x difference. This data seems to be absolutely useless for drawing any sort of conclusions. \* unlimited up to some point.
    • nl 6y ago
      > what a weird american way to measure network I believe the report is written in the UK.
  • uallo 6y ago
    > 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×limited In total they have 7 unlimited and 7 limited plans. The unlimited are mostly very expensive. Also note that the article mentioned they measured 14 plans in total which exactly matches the total number of plans above. But that of course might be a coincidence. Most plans of smaller providers are also limited in my experience.
• Maha-pudma 6y ago
  I'm paying £9 for 30GB but that also includes unlimited minutes and texts. So I'm pretty near the lowest in my country, UK. My only question is, who in their right mind is paying the highest?! I mean £52… WFT.
• kristopolous 6y ago
  I've met a few people in california that have a mexico cell phone plan and claim to pay less despite it being international than they would if they got an american plan. I haven't tried it myself though. I'm on an expansive "family plan" with 6 people I know instead right now. These are the same companies that charged more for calling across town with a "local toll rate" than across the country merely 20 years ago, they'll invent whatever they can to justify a fee
• hboon 6y ago
  I'm waiting for a long-running job while reading this and noticed that it says "228 countries". Supposedly there are about ~200 countries. https://www.worldometers.info/geography/how-many-countries-are-there-in-the-world/ https://www.worldometers.info/geography/how-many-countries-a... says there are 195. Anyway, these are the ones if anyone is curious about this like me. The few I looked up on Wikipedia showed that they are indeed not a country (not that it matters for this survey..): American Samoa Anguilla Aruba Bermuda British Indian Ocean Territory Cape Verde Caribbean Netherlands Cayman Islands Cocos (Keeling) Islands Curaçao Falkland Islands Faroe Islands French Guiana French Polynesia Gibraltar Greenland Guadeloupe Guam Guernsey Hong Kong Isle of Man Jersey Macau Macedonia Martinique Mayotte Montserrat New Caledonia Palestine, State of Réunion Saint Barthélemy (St. Barts) Saint Helena Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Saint-Martin (France) Sint Maarten Svalbard and Jan Mayen São Tomé and Príncipe Taiwan Tokelau Turks and Caicos Islands Virgin Islands (British) Virgin Islands (U.S.) Western Sahara Åland Islands
• chousuke 6y ago
  How do they measure unlimited plans? I've never had to pay attention to traffic metering since in Finland virtually all operators offer unlimited data. I seem to use about 100GB a month at worst which would put the price at around 30 cents per GB on my rather overspecced 150Mb/s 4g plan.
  • unnouinceput 6y ago
    I don't know, it seems stuff like this are outliers. My country has the same - 1GBps/5G plan and when in middle of nowhere (like in vacation with kids at their grandparents in the country side), missing a broadband connection we all use hotspot from mobile, with easily using 50GB/day at least. And for 5 euro/month subscription that gives like 5 / (30 x 50) => 0.(3) cents per GB.
• shinryuu 6y ago
  It would be interesting to see the numbers relative to purchasing power parity. For an ordinary Indian person 0.07 usd might still be relatively expensive
  • HJain13 6y ago
    Thats 5.25 Indian Rupee, even Beggars would earn more than that in a day. Hourly minimum wage is 30cents, which as sad as it is, is still 4x the cost of 1GB data. I would argue cost of smartphones as a bigger deterrent. While in most countries an okay smartphone would cost 20x the cost of a GB of data, in India its roughly 50x
• siikanen98 6y ago
  I live on Finland and I've got unlimited everything for 16,9€/month. This includes calls, sms and 200mbps LTE data. There is no data caps (not even throttling, since that would be against the law) and I've had months with 400+gb data transferred, no issues.
  • trm42 6y ago
    Yep, the price published for Finland feels really weird. The operators are nowadays selling even even unlimited data prepaids for 20-30 euros or 1 eur per day. This of course makes gigabyte price comparison a bit hard as it depends how much you download.
• ez86 6y ago
  Russian Siberia here ;) Mobile LTE 50Gb data + 300 minutes coutrywide calls is just $3/month. Proxies and VPNs work ok.
• throwaway936482 6y ago
  UK and $13 for 30gb 4g on a rolling monthly contract but there are a lot of more expensive plans out there and people don't switch as often as they could.
• zahma 6y ago
  The cost of 1GB doesn't seem to take into account the entrance to having a line in the first place. I might not pay more than 1€ a GB but I still have to pay 10€ to be on the network and I can't only buy 1GB, I have to buy 2, 10 or 50 or 100. The "base plan" is where the ISPs get you. That plus data is just the modern day rents for tech companies. It doesn't really make sense to compare data prices when the telecoms are charging varying entrance rates.
• nabla9 6y ago
  The Great Reversal -How America Gave Up on Free Markets by Thomas Philippon https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674237544 https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674237544 The Economist: https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2019/12/12/are-anti-competitive-firms-killing-american-innovation https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2019/12/12/a... Article by Philippon: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/europe-not-america-home-free-market/600859/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/europe-not... "Chapter 8 How European Markets Became Free" Is funny story how EU accidentally tricked itself into creating competitive markets for products and services. EU governments have tradition of protecting their own economies and shaping their industrial policy as they have done in the past. Distrust between countries led to the only working solution: independent regulators and fair markets. Ruhr Authority in 1949 was already independent from from the control of any European country but it took several decades for Europe to create broad, independent, and powerful regulators. And the results are clear: EU has state aid rules for example, the US does not. In the US corporations have incentive to shop around for subsidies, pitting one state against another and leading to inefficient outcomes.
• bserge 6y ago
  The price should be calculated for ~10GB, or better yet 50 or even 100GB, as the prices tend to be lower the more GB you pay for, which becomes really noticeable with "unlimited" packages. Some countries/networks have true unlimited 4G, some give you a set amount of GB at full speed, after which it drops to something barely usable (128-1024 Kbps). I could use ~1TB/month on 4G on Three UK for ~40 Euros. That's unbeatable in Europe to my knowledge. Never got higher than ~300 GB/month though - even at that price per GB only some Eastern European networks become competitive.
• thom 6y ago
  I worked on a project for a major telco who regularly struggled with customer bill shock. Business travellers would go abroad, run up bills without knowing it (literally tens of thousands of pounds) and then complain that the provider never warned them or set a cap. Often the provider would have to eat the cost (it wasn’t massive markup, these were just the underlying trunk costs). We spent a long time building alerting and monitoring tools, which would even lock out your 3G dongle if you’d spent too much. Unfortunately for us (but fortunately for customers) the EU introduced legislation to cap this spend and things have been pretty good since then in those parts of the world. I’m hoping UK customers don’t go back to the old days post Brexit. I do some business in Egypt and it was my first experience in a decade of actually having to worry about it and wasn’t prepared at all.
  • Tijdreiziger 6y ago
    For this reason I'm with a telco that just locks me out when I reach my cap. The only thing I can do at that point is purchase an add-on package (which is good for the rest of the month) and then the internet is turned back on. When outside the EU, it locks me out by default unless I purchase an international data package.
• est 6y ago
  The ones with Huawei devices are generally cheaper. Especially India Jio
  • akritrime 6y ago
    smasung built Jio's network.
• jakub_g 6y ago
  Kyrgyzstan is in top 3 cheapest. I've been there hiking last year and was mind blown. We've bought a local SIM card + several GB of data for ~1USD. Then we went hiking and in a village which is hiking base, in the "middle of nowhere", at 3000m altitude, we had 20 Mbps LTE connection.
• tarasmatsyk 6y ago
  I can confirm, internet in Ukraine (top 5) is super cheap, most people don't even realize how inexpensive it is comparing to other countries. Mobile traffic is so cheap that it gets very inconvenient to keep your internet habits when you are in other countries. Italy seems like a great country to spend more time in, thank you for report!
• emptysongglass 6y ago
  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 so enjoyed in the US. How does Denmark do this? What is the special sauce?
  • klausjensen 6y ago
    Fierce competition, really. Many mobile companies competing - some even loss leaders, who are then bought up by one of the giants for their customers. And switching providers is pretty easy, so people shop around. This has driven down prices. For internet, the widespread introduction of fiber has really made a huge impact. My father, who lives in a rural area, has 1000GB internet at 40 EUR per month.
  • msh 6y ago
    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.
• 5G4G3G 6y ago
  This article is terrible. It’s a classic example of garbage in, garbage out. The analysis is egregiously wrong, the methodology terrible and the source data isn’t available. This really belongs in the trash bin. EDIT: I dare downvoters to speak up. It’s not like I’m wrong.
  • vardump 6y ago
    Yes, you're right. The article makes little sense. I think you're being downvoted because you didn't describe why you think it's senseless. I can list one reason: this study didn't account for unlimited plans. I think that alone is a pretty bad omission. In some cases you could use N terabytes per month for pretty marginal extra cost.
  • dang 6y ago
    The problem is that a comment like this is mostly just calling names and the rest of it is just empty claims without explaining anything, such as why the analysis is wrong. It's great if you see things that others don't, but when posting here, please provide real information that others can learn from. Just fulminating about how bad something is—even when you're right—only makes the thread worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• kylehotchkiss 6y ago
  I bought a bag of chips in India (near Delhi) yesterday that had an Airtel coupon code for 2gb of free mobile data. The chips cost 20 rupees, or about $.25. Not bad at all! (the codes didn't work but I thought it was a great giveaway concept)
  • ebg13 6y ago
    Is it a giveaway if the codes didn't work?
• bastijn 6y ago
  Apart from internet experience (speed, coverage, etc.) this should also be corrected for the purchasing power parity as paying 12USD in Canada is very different from paying that in e.g. India.
• fastball 6y ago
  I'd like to see this compared with a coverage map as well.
• bogdanu 6y ago
  I don't think the stats are that relevant, at least for romania. For example I pay 6 eur/month for a prepaid sim that has something like 2k minutes and sms, and 6 gb of traffic. The thing is that my carrier (Orange) always offers an extra 50gb of traffic for free. Afaik, most carriers have a deal like this. The quality is decent, they have 4G coverage almost everywhere, maybe except in the mountain areas, but that's to be expected.
• CraigJPerry 6y ago
  Why is the American market so expensive for data? Is there some kind of market manipulation going on? I’d naively expect free market ideals to put America near the bottom of the price range for a commodity.
• anotheryou 6y ago
  Germany is usually notoriously expensive. I'm surprised to see it on-par with the US here. Also what does cheapest mean? For germany I'd want to see 8eur for 3gb. That's the budget default here set by Aldi (including phone/text flat, I guess 7eur without that), Lidl allays following them after 1-2 weeks.
• ilovetux 6y ago
  >> 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)?
  • spacechild1 6y ago
    Wikipedia seems to agree with you :-) TIL
  • readarticle 6y ago
    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.
    • mantap 6y ago
      I think most Americans do implicitly treat it as one continent because if you talk about Central America you kind of have to, otherwise Central America would be part of North America and that's just weird.
    • qalmakka 6y ago
      AFAIK South and North America belong to two independent tectonic plates that happened to merge a few millions of years ago; North America was part of Laurasia, while South America was part of Gondwana and it was originally attached with Africa. So I guess you can indeed argue that North and South America are two different continents...
• ilovetux 6y ago
  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).
• nobrains 6y ago
  The data is not adjusted for purchasing power. $1 goes much longer in South East Asia (India, Pakistan, etc.) than it does in North American, for example.
• shirshak55 6y ago
  1 GB may show some statistics but it doesn't reflect the reality. Most of the time I find many other things matter like latancy, throughput,qos. I am currently on 45 mbps but still when i download it starts from 1 mbps and takes like 2 minute to reach 45 mbps meaning do matter especially browsing. However I must say during my intership at India the internet was very good. Its like 10$ and you are done for 1 month with free calls .
• einpoklum 6y ago
  The things about the cheap mobile data plans in Israel is, that you sell you a 50 GB/month or 200 GB/month even if you absolutely don't need it. You can't (?) get a 2 GB/month plan. So it's the price that stays fixed and the amount of data that goes up. I'm usually quite critical of the state where I live (Israel) - oppression, social inequality, racism corruption in government... but at least we have decent mobile plans for 10 USD/month. That's something I guess.
• Synaesthesia 6y ago
  In South Africa data is really expensive, and we don’t have a lot of disposable income. There isn’t really an excuse for it since Kenya has way cheaper internet. We’ve just allowed our service providers to get away with extortionate pricing.
• preek 6y ago
  It's an interesting statistic. But it can paint a warped picture. For example, it ranks Switzerland at #191 which probaby is correct. Othe other hand, since 7 years, I have a contract with 2 SIMs for 39CHF/m on which I'm well in the 3-digits GB/m. Hence, 1GB can also just cost cents.
• vmception 6y ago
  I have all sorts of international roaming perks, but if you actually want that high speed in any other country you still need to buy a sim card in that country. Fix that, and then we can talk about comparative 1GB costs.
• lifthrasiir 6y ago
  In South Korea, where avg price is $10.94/GB and min price is $0.43/GB, mobile data plans are so much segregated that the goverment had to push cheaper MVNOs to the wider public. For technologically aware people it's more like $2--3/GB and telcos tend to exploit who are technologically less aware. Given this and that telcos are universally known to be not super customer friendly, average price seems a pretty limited metric and distribution analysis should be required. Unfortunately their raw data has no actual data points for each plan...
• gattacamovie 6y ago
  From what we can see in many of the comments, the research is deeply flawed. E.g. In Roumania with 6e you get over 50gb. Actually Digi(RDS), telco has 4$ subsription with 100gb lte plus additional 50gb 3G (total 150gb)/month. As for the speed, Bucharest was found the best internet connection in the world for games (a research released few days back). Thanks to the EU roaming law, some people realized that it's so good that you can use it anywhere in Europe long term (years, without going back to Romania). Subscribe in ro with the smallest plan 4$/month, and enjoy 1.7e/Gb anywhere in Europe, as long as you want!!! This is only for Digi (not organge/vodafone/tmobile). ONLY Digi allows you to stay long term in roaming (years). Here are full prices(use google translate): "Tarifele de roaming, cu TVA inclus, care se aplica de la primul min/MB/SMS utilizat sunt: apeluri locale si catre tari UE/SEE 0.0183 Euro/min; catre alte tari 1.4875 Euro/min si 0.0060 Euro/SMS trimis. Apeluri primite 0.0094 Euro/min si 0 Euro/SMS primit. Trafic date 0.0017 Euro/Mbyte. Apeluri gratuite in UE/SEE: 112 (Urgenta) si +40314007777 (info tarife). Multumim, echipa DIGI." So, if you are anywhere in Europe with higher than 1.7e/gb, make a Digi subscription and you all set.
  • deleted 6y ago
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• trenchgun 6y ago
  This seems inaccurate. I live in Finland and I have unlimited mobile data. That is quite common.
• ezoe 6y ago
  It's useless. Some countries has strict data cap. The first 1 GB may be cheap and bandwidth is good, but you can't keep using it with the advertised bandwidth even for 1 hour. The data cap can be reached less than 30 minutes and you are stuck with low bandwidth for a month. I really don't like the business model of mobile network. They shall be banned to advertise a few hundred of Mbps. What's good at 100+ Mbps when transfer mere 9 GB within 3 days window results bandwidth restriction of 1 Mbps. It's a fraud.
• cromulent 6y ago
  Finland at 87, Australia at 16. Hilarious. I came to Finland from Australia and asked what the limit was. 40Mb/s I was told (quite some years ago). No, per month. They didn't understand the question. There are no limits. 40Mb/s, times the number of seconds in a month. Quick check: Optus is 10AUD per GB extra on all the plans. They don't mention the speed, of course. This is a bad piece of research.
• NorwegianDude 6y ago
  The numbers for Norway makes no sense at all. Cheapest is supposedly $0.62, but you can get 1GB for less than $0.0046, if you pay for unlimited usage and coverage is good so you can average 200 Mbps. And the average is much too low for 1GB if this was supposed to not include transfer as part of a larger package. Either way, the numbers makes absolutely no sense.
• deleted 6y ago
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• gastlygem 6y ago
  In Shanghai I pay $11 per month for 16GB mobile data plus a 50M broadband at home. I pay a bit more than that for the cloud VMs on which I install VPN services.
• k_sze 6y ago
  I think the comparisons could also use some normalization with respect to per capita income (mean, mode, median?). 1 USD in the US doesn't mean the same thing as 1 USD in China. From the consumers' perspective, it's about affordability, not absolute cost.
• bump64 6y ago
  Bulgaria here. I don't know if the comparison is even relevant as we don't have normal mobile data plans anymore. Most of the plans are providing 5-10 GB of data to all networks and websites and some GBs to specific websites like social media and popular ones. So for example I can have a data plan with 20 GB but after the first 10 GB I have fast internet just for facebook and whatsapp. The rest of the internet is almost not accessible as it takes ages to load.
• aembleton 6y ago
  If you were looking for a mobile deal, then I think you would go for the cheapest one, so I have created the interactive map again using the data for the lowest price per US$ https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQzJcAT0HcgBIUmoSUFa6R1TdqmM4AXBVmcEB2SU1j04S6HzaqA8XxK2Vpm1ynVYxOyLXC_n0z8Vufa/pubchart?oid=747437768&format=interactive https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQzJcAT0HcgB... I've removed those countries that are over $5/GB/month such as Greenland because it caused the whole map to be green due to how the data is skewed and the limitations of the geo chart in Google maps.
• gattacamovie 6y ago
  From what we can see in many of the comments, the research is deeply flawed. E.g. In Roumania with 6e you get over 50gb. Actually Digi(RDS), telco has 4$ subsription with 100gb lte plus additional 50gb 3G (total 150gb)/month. As for the speed, Bucharest was found the best internet connection in the world for games (a research released few days back). Thanks to the EU roaming law, some people realized that it's so good that you can use it anywhere in Europe long term (years, without going back to Romania). Subscribe in ro with the smallest plan 4$/month, and enjoy 1.7e/Gb anywhere in Europe, as long as you want!!! This is only for Digi (not organge/vodafone/tmobile). ONLY Digi allows you to stay long term in roaming (years). Here are full prices(use google translate): "Tarifele de roaming, cu TVA inclus, care se aplica de la primul min/MB/SMS utilizat sunt: apeluri locale si catre tari UE/SEE 0.0183 Euro/min; catre alte tari 1.4875 Euro/min si 0.0060 Euro/SMS trimis. Apeluri primite 0.0094 Euro/min si 0 Euro/SMS primit. Trafic date 0.0017 Euro/Mbyte. Apeluri gratuite in UE/SEE: 112 (Urgenta) si +40314007777 (info tarife). Multumim, echipa DIGI." So, if you are anywhere in Europe with higher than 1.7e/gb, make a Digi subscription and you all set.
• lobo_tuerto 6y ago
  Mexico is part of North America, not Central America.
• Blackstone4 6y ago
  Not sure if this will be a perfect comparison since some providers provide unlimited data for a fixed price with high caps (i.e. 1000gb of fair usage). I pay 32 British pounds a month for unlimited 4G with a fair usage cap of 1,000GB so that comes to $0.03 per GB....