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For Germany it says 0.07 USD prepaid for 1.39 MB which is 50 USD for 1 GB. Telekom offers 2 GB for 9.95 EUR prepaid which yields 0.0082 USD and is an order of m

For Germany it says 0.07 USD prepaid for 1.39 MB which is 50 USD for 1 GB. Telekom offers 2 GB for 9.95 EUR prepaid which yields 0.0082 USD and is an order of magnitude lower than the quoted number. And this is literally the first offering I looked at, the second provider I looked at offers 12 GB for 15.99 EUR which brings the number down to 0.0022 EUR. I would take those numbers with a large grain of salt at the very least.

Vahkesh 5y ago
Agreed, I'm trying to figure out where this site is getting their pricing data.
- herbst 5y ago
  I assume its something like numbeo. Thing is with this kind of data there is always a local and a tourist price. In many countries (especially Europe) you can not always buy a prepaid SIM card with a foreign passport (without extra hoops at least) or you need a real residence address. So these prices often reflect the few options that are (visibly) available for tourists.
  - Anderkent 5y ago
    I've never had an issue with a foreign passport buying a SIM. You usually need a local address but you can just use your hotels.
    - herbst 5y ago
      I usually did not either. However Netherlands and Germany have been an exception. In the Netherlands every mobile provider shoo me out of their shop refering to yallo or libera. I had an apartment and was staying 2 months, so this wasn't the issue. And Germany was essentially the same except I only tried with 3 or so providers. Most tourists still pick one of the shitty providers available at the airport or train station and go with that. Some of them provide a faster verification do you can walk out having internet, in Austria if you buy internet at a supermarket (it's uncomplicated there) it can take a few hours to verify. Or Italy, if you arrive in Venedig you find ads for internet packages everywhere. I actually needed to go to the mainland to buy a a normal SIM. As no one on the island acknowledged the cheaper packages available. My point is, it's complicated Source: I've spent months (if not years) with my laptop In Europe and Asia and internet always was the #1 priority. I also do not know if things are better today
      - Symbiote 5y ago
        For a short-term stay, why not just use Lebera, or a similar operator? They have short-term or no-contract options at low prices, and often have a website in English.
        herbst 5y ago
        It's not low price compared to local alternatives. I was work travelling so internet was a must, I always tried getting the best rate as part of my welcome to a new country ritual :) Also what is short? In Austria I get a new prepaid for every few days I stay (because uncomplicated and cheap). In the Netherlands libera was the only real option even thought I was there for 2 months.
      - mejutoco 5y ago
        As another data point. A few years a go I bought a sim card in Germany (mediamarkt I think). They asked for the Anmeldung document (proof of residence, needed also to open a bank account) and photocopied it.
    - herbst 5y ago
      I just remembered the actual issue in Netherland, Germany as well as Switzerland. Normal Prepaid is generally expensive, what you want is a always cancelable contract to get the fairest (most local) price for a short time. And here is where it gets more complicated based on residence and stuff Edit:// I spent over 200€ on prepaid internet that 2 months I was in the Netherlands. A always cancel contract would have costed I think about 20$ a month for unlimited (and way faster) internet
  - account42 5y ago
    > I assume its something like numbeo. Thing is with this kind of data there is always a local and a tourist price. In many countries (especially Europe) you can not always buy a prepaid SIM card with a foreign passport (without extra hoops at least) or you need a real residence address. In the EU there are still some countries where you can buy SIM cards without ID so you can just order one of those online and then use roaming, which does not have additional charges within the EU.
    - herbst 5y ago
      Which ones? AFAIK that ID thing was an EU law? Also roaming is a good point. 5 years ago when I was active travelling this was no option yet as only contracts had proper roaming. Cheap roaming in the EU is basically new, and some ex. Switzerland is mostly still excluded
- OJFord 5y ago
  https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Pages/ICTprices/default.aspx https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Pages/ICTprices/defa...
00deadbeef 5y ago
Yeah the UK price is quite wrong too. I pay £20 per month for 160GB which is £0.125 per gigabyte or $0.17. Other networks offer unlimited data for the same cost. At my rate, reddit.com should cost $0.0002363
- tonyarkles 5y ago
  The site says they're using the least expensive plan with >500MB data for each country, presumably as a benchmark for what someone on a very limited budget would pay. Maybe that's a methodological problem though. Unrelated, wow, thank you for reminding me how badly we're getting screwed in Canada :). Approximately $90 CDN here for a 15GB soft-cap with "unlimited" slow usage beyond that.
- beardyw 5y ago
  It says "Prices were collected from the operator with the largest marketshare in the country" so I guess it depends who that is.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
From reading the comments, it appears that most of the prices on this website are wrong for most people. They might be taking either the worst-case price or the least value data plan (500MB starter plans) instead of the average data plan. These cost analyses are always popular for people to brag about how much cheaper their country's data plans or broadband speeds are, but I seriously doubt that many Canadian Redditors are paying $0.17 for every page load. Simply browsing the front page and clicking on a few comment sections could cost $10 or more. Doesn't pass the sniff test.
- ivirshup 5y ago
  But they claim: > Because these numbers are based on the least expensive plan, they are best case scenarios. Which is... a weird statement. Best case scenario for what? The cheapest plan is the best case if you wanted to access the site once per billing period. But then price per visit is the cost of plan? I don't know what they're trying to say here.
  - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
    Good catch. The cheapest plan is almost always the worst cost per GB. It seems they’ve crossed terms and chosen the opposite of what they wanted to represent.
- greenshackle2 5y ago
  I'm in Canada, it's true that telcos are expensive here but $0.17 for 1.39MB is like $120 per GB which is absurd. I pay $40 for 8GB/month (USD). Even additional data (if you go over plan limits), which is by far the most expensive way to get data, is less than that, it's $104 per GB with my provider.
maury91 5y ago
Also in Italy the price is wrong, Iliad offers 120GB for 9.99€ + SIM ( 9.99€ ), considering the worst case scenario ( using the offer for 1 month only ). It become 19.98€ for 120GB: 19.98 / (120 * 1024) * 1.39 = 0,00022€, almost 2 orders of magnitude less than 0.01$ ( 0.008€ ) ( pre-paid price shown in the website ). Price can go further down if you keep the SIM for 1 year or more: ( 9.99 * 13 ) / ( 120 * 12 * 1024 ) * 1.39 = 0,00012€ The only thing required to buy a SIM is a passport so every foreigner can buy one.
- tomcooks 5y ago
  Lycamobile is about 15 for unlimited data eh, give it a spin
  - gpas 5y ago
    Unfortunately, if I'm not wrong, they don't have that plan anymore. Best they can do now is 100GB/€11.99 for new sims or 100GB/€7.99 with number portability, 4G LTE connectivity. Not a great deal if you ask me. For example Iliad is offering 120GB/€9.99.
latk 5y ago
The site does explain its methodology. By default, it shows the costs when using the cheapest post-paid plan with at least 500MB allowance for at least 30 days – cheapest in absolute terms, not per GB. You can toggle the option to show prepaid plans with the same parameters (at least 500 MB for at least 30 days). But since it takes data from the ITU and not from the real market, the numbers do indeed seem inflated. One of the cheapest (in absolute terms) prepaid plans for mobile internet in Germany is AldiTalk at 4€/1GB/4 weeks, so that the pageload should cost even less than 1ct (0.0056 EUR). Similarly, your Telekom plans are for 4 weeks. Maybe they've excluded these plan because it's not for at least 30 days.
- ketzu 5y ago
  One possible reason is that 4 weeks are 28 days, which is less than 30 days, their minimum.
- Ajedi32 5y ago
  The problem with that methodology is that the cheapest plans in terms of cost/month are actually likely to be the most expensive in terms of cost/GB. If a service provider offers a $20/month plan with 500 MB of data, their $40/month plan will almost certainly offer a lot more than 1000 MB. The cheapest plans are usually designed specifically for people who don't plan to use a significant amount of data.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - tobyjsullivan 5y ago
    Alternatively you could argue that the cheapest plans are targeted at people who have the least money to spend on wireless data. It seems reasonable that these are the people who would be most sensitive to the unit cost of accessing a single website.
tkadlec 5y ago
I built the site and I agree. :) Two things: 1. The data is in the process of being updated. Prices change quickly and from the trend of past changes I fully expect these prices to drop as soon as I make the change. 2. While the ITU (and other data sources) try their best to look at all sources, I have to take them at their word. I've heard several times that they seem to have overlooked plan A or plan B, so it doesn't surprise me if there are other plans lurking out there. Long-story short, it's absolutely best to consider this as a gauge/appromixation, rather than a scientific exact number.
- deathanatos 5y ago
  The site has a pre-paid US plan at $103 / GiB. ($0.14 / (1.39 MiB / 1024 MiB/GiB)) This doesn't seem like "plans change" levels of error, this is more than twice what I pay for all service (SMS, voice, data) since I first got a plan that included (allegedly unlimited, but actually not) data a decade ago… The site also says "Prices were collected from the operator with the largest marketshare in the country" but follows it with "Because these numbers are based on the least expensive plan, they are best case scenarios." which doesn't logically follow. But going with that, the largest carrier in the US is apparently AT&T, and just the first plan on their site offers a 4GB plan at $50, or ≈$12.50 / GiB, which is an order of magnitude lower than the figure on the site?
  - mkr-hn 5y ago
    Carriers probably display different prices for different people.
- Kranar 5y ago
  But the conclusions are wrong by orders and orders of magnitude. For example your calculation is that 1.39 MB costs Canadians 0.17, that would mean 1 GB costs Canadians 125 US dollars. There isn't a single plan in Canada that charges 125 dollars for 1 GB of data. This isn't just a minor inaccuracy of +/-10%, this is off by literally a factor that's closer to 15-20x.
nicbou 5y ago
I'm on Vodafone CallYa and I pay 10€ a month for 2-4GB (I forgot). As a Canadian, these prices are crazy low, but to EU citizens, they're allegedly pretty high.

Vahkesh 5y ago

Agreed, I'm trying to figure out where this site is getting their pricing data.

herbst 5y ago
I assume its something like numbeo. Thing is with this kind of data there is always a local and a tourist price. In many countries (especially Europe) you can not always buy a prepaid SIM card with a foreign passport (without extra hoops at least) or you need a real residence address. So these prices often reflect the few options that are (visibly) available for tourists.
- Anderkent 5y ago
  I've never had an issue with a foreign passport buying a SIM. You usually need a local address but you can just use your hotels.
  - herbst 5y ago
    I usually did not either. However Netherlands and Germany have been an exception. In the Netherlands every mobile provider shoo me out of their shop refering to yallo or libera. I had an apartment and was staying 2 months, so this wasn't the issue. And Germany was essentially the same except I only tried with 3 or so providers. Most tourists still pick one of the shitty providers available at the airport or train station and go with that. Some of them provide a faster verification do you can walk out having internet, in Austria if you buy internet at a supermarket (it's uncomplicated there) it can take a few hours to verify. Or Italy, if you arrive in Venedig you find ads for internet packages everywhere. I actually needed to go to the mainland to buy a a normal SIM. As no one on the island acknowledged the cheaper packages available. My point is, it's complicated Source: I've spent months (if not years) with my laptop In Europe and Asia and internet always was the #1 priority. I also do not know if things are better today
    - Symbiote 5y ago
      For a short-term stay, why not just use Lebera, or a similar operator? They have short-term or no-contract options at low prices, and often have a website in English.
      - herbst 5y ago
        It's not low price compared to local alternatives. I was work travelling so internet was a must, I always tried getting the best rate as part of my welcome to a new country ritual :) Also what is short? In Austria I get a new prepaid for every few days I stay (because uncomplicated and cheap). In the Netherlands libera was the only real option even thought I was there for 2 months.
    - mejutoco 5y ago
      As another data point. A few years a go I bought a sim card in Germany (mediamarkt I think). They asked for the Anmeldung document (proof of residence, needed also to open a bank account) and photocopied it.
  - herbst 5y ago
    I just remembered the actual issue in Netherland, Germany as well as Switzerland. Normal Prepaid is generally expensive, what you want is a always cancelable contract to get the fairest (most local) price for a short time. And here is where it gets more complicated based on residence and stuff Edit:// I spent over 200€ on prepaid internet that 2 months I was in the Netherlands. A always cancel contract would have costed I think about 20$ a month for unlimited (and way faster) internet
- account42 5y ago
  > I assume its something like numbeo. Thing is with this kind of data there is always a local and a tourist price. In many countries (especially Europe) you can not always buy a prepaid SIM card with a foreign passport (without extra hoops at least) or you need a real residence address. In the EU there are still some countries where you can buy SIM cards without ID so you can just order one of those online and then use roaming, which does not have additional charges within the EU.
  - herbst 5y ago
    Which ones? AFAIK that ID thing was an EU law? Also roaming is a good point. 5 years ago when I was active travelling this was no option yet as only contracts had proper roaming. Cheap roaming in the EU is basically new, and some ex. Switzerland is mostly still excluded
OJFord 5y ago
https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Pages/ICTprices/default.aspx https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Pages/ICTprices/defa...

00deadbeef 5y ago

Yeah the UK price is quite wrong too. I pay £20 per month for 160GB which is £0.125 per gigabyte or $0.17. Other networks offer unlimited data for the same cost. At my rate, reddit.com should cost $0.0002363

tonyarkles 5y ago
The site says they're using the least expensive plan with >500MB data for each country, presumably as a benchmark for what someone on a very limited budget would pay. Maybe that's a methodological problem though. Unrelated, wow, thank you for reminding me how badly we're getting screwed in Canada :). Approximately $90 CDN here for a 15GB soft-cap with "unlimited" slow usage beyond that.
beardyw 5y ago
It says "Prices were collected from the operator with the largest marketshare in the country" so I guess it depends who that is.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

From reading the comments, it appears that most of the prices on this website are wrong for most people. They might be taking either the worst-case price or the least value data plan (500MB starter plans) instead of the average data plan. These cost analyses are always popular for people to brag about how much cheaper their country's data plans or broadband speeds are, but I seriously doubt that many Canadian Redditors are paying $0.17 for every page load. Simply browsing the front page and clicking on a few comment sections could cost $10 or more. Doesn't pass the sniff test.

ivirshup 5y ago
But they claim: > Because these numbers are based on the least expensive plan, they are best case scenarios. Which is... a weird statement. Best case scenario for what? The cheapest plan is the best case if you wanted to access the site once per billing period. But then price per visit is the cost of plan? I don't know what they're trying to say here.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  Good catch. The cheapest plan is almost always the worst cost per GB. It seems they’ve crossed terms and chosen the opposite of what they wanted to represent.
greenshackle2 5y ago
I'm in Canada, it's true that telcos are expensive here but $0.17 for 1.39MB is like $120 per GB which is absurd. I pay $40 for 8GB/month (USD). Even additional data (if you go over plan limits), which is by far the most expensive way to get data, is less than that, it's $104 per GB with my provider.

maury91 5y ago

Also in Italy the price is wrong, Iliad offers 120GB for 9.99€ + SIM ( 9.99€ ), considering the worst case scenario ( using the offer for 1 month only ). It become 19.98€ for 120GB: 19.98 / (120 * 1024) * 1.39 = 0,00022€, almost 2 orders of magnitude less than 0.01$ ( 0.008€ ) ( pre-paid price shown in the website ). Price can go further down if you keep the SIM for 1 year or more: ( 9.99 * 13 ) / ( 120 * 12 * 1024 ) * 1.39 = 0,00012€ The only thing required to buy a SIM is a passport so every foreigner can buy one.

tomcooks 5y ago
Lycamobile is about 15 for unlimited data eh, give it a spin
- gpas 5y ago
  Unfortunately, if I'm not wrong, they don't have that plan anymore. Best they can do now is 100GB/€11.99 for new sims or 100GB/€7.99 with number portability, 4G LTE connectivity. Not a great deal if you ask me. For example Iliad is offering 120GB/€9.99.

latk 5y ago

The site does explain its methodology. By default, it shows the costs when using the cheapest post-paid plan with at least 500MB allowance for at least 30 days – cheapest in absolute terms, not per GB. You can toggle the option to show prepaid plans with the same parameters (at least 500 MB for at least 30 days). But since it takes data from the ITU and not from the real market, the numbers do indeed seem inflated. One of the cheapest (in absolute terms) prepaid plans for mobile internet in Germany is AldiTalk at 4€/1GB/4 weeks, so that the pageload should cost even less than 1ct (0.0056 EUR). Similarly, your Telekom plans are for 4 weeks. Maybe they've excluded these plan because it's not for at least 30 days.

ketzu 5y ago
One possible reason is that 4 weeks are 28 days, which is less than 30 days, their minimum.
Ajedi32 5y ago
The problem with that methodology is that the cheapest plans in terms of cost/month are actually likely to be the most expensive in terms of cost/GB. If a service provider offers a $20/month plan with 500 MB of data, their $40/month plan will almost certainly offer a lot more than 1000 MB. The cheapest plans are usually designed specifically for people who don't plan to use a significant amount of data.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tobyjsullivan 5y ago
  Alternatively you could argue that the cheapest plans are targeted at people who have the least money to spend on wireless data. It seems reasonable that these are the people who would be most sensitive to the unit cost of accessing a single website.

tkadlec 5y ago

I built the site and I agree. :) Two things: 1. The data is in the process of being updated. Prices change quickly and from the trend of past changes I fully expect these prices to drop as soon as I make the change. 2. While the ITU (and other data sources) try their best to look at all sources, I have to take them at their word. I've heard several times that they seem to have overlooked plan A or plan B, so it doesn't surprise me if there are other plans lurking out there. Long-story short, it's absolutely best to consider this as a gauge/appromixation, rather than a scientific exact number.

deathanatos 5y ago
The site has a pre-paid US plan at $103 / GiB. ($0.14 / (1.39 MiB / 1024 MiB/GiB)) This doesn't seem like "plans change" levels of error, this is more than twice what I pay for all service (SMS, voice, data) since I first got a plan that included (allegedly unlimited, but actually not) data a decade ago… The site also says "Prices were collected from the operator with the largest marketshare in the country" but follows it with "Because these numbers are based on the least expensive plan, they are best case scenarios." which doesn't logically follow. But going with that, the largest carrier in the US is apparently AT&T, and just the first plan on their site offers a 4GB plan at $50, or ≈$12.50 / GiB, which is an order of magnitude lower than the figure on the site?
- mkr-hn 5y ago
  Carriers probably display different prices for different people.
Kranar 5y ago
But the conclusions are wrong by orders and orders of magnitude. For example your calculation is that 1.39 MB costs Canadians 0.17, that would mean 1 GB costs Canadians 125 US dollars. There isn't a single plan in Canada that charges 125 dollars for 1 GB of data. This isn't just a minor inaccuracy of +/-10%, this is off by literally a factor that's closer to 15-20x.

nicbou 5y ago

I'm on Vodafone CallYa and I pay 10€ a month for 2-4GB (I forgot). As a Canadian, these prices are crazy low, but to EU citizens, they're allegedly pretty high.