The US Is Among the Most Expensive Countries For Mobile Data Plans, Israel the Cheapest (techspot.com) 56
Slashdot reader jjslash writes: The average cost of a gigabyte of mobile data in the U.S. is $6, while the most expensive data plan in the country offers a gig for $83.33. That makes the U.S. one of the most expensive countries in the world for mobile data, even though some plans can still get you a gig for as low as $0.75.
The situation in Canada isn't much better, with an average price of $5.37 per GB, but it's much cheaper to surf mobile internet in the U.K., thanks to an average price of $0.62 for a gig.
The situation in Canada isn't much better, with an average price of $5.37 per GB, but it's much cheaper to surf mobile internet in the U.K., thanks to an average price of $0.62 for a gig.
I wonder who we can blame... (Score:2)
The corporations!
Re:I wonder who we can blame... (Score:5, Insightful)
The lack of competition, rather.
In my tiny home country, we have like 5 mobile providers competing for customers. Mobile plans, for pretty much anything, are dirt cheap.
Re: (Score:3)
The lack of competition, rather.
In my tiny home country, we have like 5 mobile providers competing for customers. Mobile plans, for pretty much anything, are dirt cheap.
I'd expect population density would matter too. I'm hardly surprised tiny, concentrated Israel is inexpensive. It's also the size (and population) of New Jersey.
Re: I wonder who we can blame... (Score:3)
So why isn't mobile data cheap in New Jersey? And how do you explain Italy at #2, with a large rural area and significant rural population?
Re: (Score:2)
In case it isn't obvious, it's because you can't (and no one would want to) buy a mobile plan that only covers NJ.
Italy is also tiny compared to the US, plus you don't know how deep they've taken LTE/5G there in rural areas. For all you know, there's shit service in rural areas of Italy.
Re: (Score:3)
Due to EU regulations it's also virtually impossible now to buy a mobile plan that only covers one EU country.
Re: (Score:2)
So why isn't mobile data cheap in New Jersey? And how do you explain Italy at #2, with a large rural area and significant rural population?
To be clear, I can't explain pricing. It depends on a zillion factors: demographic, geographic, business, societal, political, historical. I'm sure they all figure in a great deal. Any serious study would need to include all of them. You could probably write a book comparing just New Jersey to Israel.
In terms of comparison, Italy is about the same size as California and has roughly twice the population. Just eyeballing the maps, Italy seems to have its population more evenly distributed. California has enor
Re: (Score:2)
I mean I think the explanation is pretty clear -- the US has a small set of carriers that move in lockstep and compete only notionally.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: I wonder who we can blame... (Score:2)
What "lack of competition"?
Is there really only one or two national carriers in the U.S.? No, when you start looking around there are a plethora of wireless carriers in the U.S., and interoperability is not a problem...
Role of MVNOs (Score:3)
The United States has three wireless carriers with their own networks (AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile). It also has numerous mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) that resell service on the big three networks to end users.
Re: (Score:2)
Here's the long list of US MVNOs served by the 3(!) actual US mobile telecom companies [wikipedia.org].
Re: I wonder who we can blame... (Score:2)
I've got 5 different retail carrier stores in my local mall, I win!
Re: (Score:2)
The lack of competition, rather.
No, it's the collusion of the companies that 'compete' with each other. I was recently in Romania - walked into a Vodafone store for a pre-paid SIM. 5 minutes and 35 lei (about $7.50) I had a 100GB SIM card good for a month. Yes, the relative cost is higher for locals but they also can do post-paid and (almost everyone is) unlikely to use 100GB in a month.
Re: I wonder who we can blame... (Score:2)
The average cost of a gigabyte of mobile data in the U.S. is $6, while the most expensive data plan in the country offers a gig for $83.33. That makes the U.S. one of the most expensive countries in the world for mobile data, even though some plans can still get you a gig for as low as $0.75.
WTF? We have plans in the US that range from $0.75/GB to one plan that charges $83.75, but the average is just $6/GB, so we're the most expensive?
What do GBs cost on the cheapest country?
So, because there's one plan at $83.75/GB, the researchers conclude that America, with its$6/GB average and some plans as cheap as $0.75/GB is among the most expensive countries?
$6/GB is far from an abusive rate in my opinion - let's compare the cost of GB in relation to average (or median) income levels...
The $0.75/GB plan might be hard to qualify for (Score:2)
some plans as cheap as $0.75/GB is among the most expensive countries?
Perhaps the 0.75 USD per gigabyte plan is available only in a small geographic area. Or it's a Lifeline plan not available to the general public. The Lifeline program (sometimes referred to as "Obama phone") requires the subscriber to also qualify for some other means-tested entitlement, such as Medicaid or SNAP. Or it's the largest plan that a particular carrier offers, incorporating a quantity discount for more data in a month than most users would know what to do with unless they're using it for home Int
Re: (Score:1)
$6/GB is far from an abusive rate in my opinion - let's compare the cost of GB in relation to average (or median) income levels...
Is it? I currently pay AU$10 a month for 4GB with unlimited calls & text included.
I would guess cost of living is comparable here to the US and population density is even lower.
Re: (Score:2)
I pay $25 for unlimited talk, text and data off a reseller (Visible). 5g works on Verizon network. Seems pretty cheap to me to be honest. In Southern California.
France roaming better than Canada local (Score:4, Insightful)
With free.fr you can have 300GB roaming, for less than a 25GB limit would cost you in Canada with a local Canadian plan.
If you are travelling outside of North America, then you really donâ(TM)t want to be using your Canadian plan. Always get a dual SIM phone and get a local SIM or eSIM.
Re: France roaming better than Canada local (Score:4, Insightful)
I can get mobile data at about 8 cents per gig on Free in the Caribbean (120 gigs on 4G, 9.99 euros is the monthly price for the subscription all else included as well, not a fixed term contract). It is markedly cheaper than competitors. It is unbelievable how expensive mobile data is around the world. In Finland all plans are unlimited, and they are not expensive. Fair use is mentioned in the terms of services, but to get notified about it requires a huge amount of usage.
Re: (Score:2)
>In Finland all plans are unlimited, and they are not expensive.
They all used to be outright cheap at way less than 20 eur/month, but now mostly 25-50 eur/month, with 18 eur/month the lowest I could find. So definitely going up faster than most inflation.
(I do not count the 2-5 mbit/s and similar plans in that as that is good for only messaging/text only emails. Those can be had for around 16 eur)
Not surprsing in the least (Score:3)
For the longest time the U.S. had the highest prices and slowest speeds for broadband in the industrialized world. It is only recently (within the past 3 years?) that we cracked the top ten. That mobile speeds should be so expensive shouldn't surprise anyone. As a poster further up said, lack of competition. When large parts of the country have the choice of one ISP or, if they're really lucky, two ISPs who charge the same high prices for the same slow speeds, why would mobile plans be any different?
Re: (Score:2)
When large parts of the country have the choice of one ISP
The subject is mobile data plans. The telecoms would like you to believe that mobile == broadband. But the competition is not even close*.
*Unless you find a spot with more than one bar, park there and camp like a hobo.
Re: (Score:2)
Not even close (Score:2)
Liberalised UK market (Score:3)
I have a prepaid SIM from Tesco that I've paid nothing for in 4 years yet still receives incoming calls.
Prepaid is min €20 a month in France.
Contracts are roughly equivalent.
Whilst it's not quite free market capitalism (bandwidth had to be bid for), it's a rare case where near-free-market works very well. Britain also had cheap home broadband in the early 2000s. France only got it recently I believe, with the introduction of "Free".
fun hacky VoIP trick to save money, as you've done (Score:2)
Here's a neat VoIP trick:
Buy a cheap grocery SIM as you've done, and incoming calls are paid for by the caller. So €1 for the SIM and you have a mobile connection, as you've already discovered. Sure it comes with €5 credit, but you don't need it, and it only lasts 30 days. Still, you can always receive calls for a long time, because the caller pays, (outside of the US), and the SIM card provider is happer.
www.nerdvittles.com is your friend. There's a wealth of recipes (Debian/FreePBX is default).
Re: (Score:2)
FWIW, my central PBX server also manages PSTN SPAM. I meant to include that detail. That's one reason I use dirt cheap, private, disposable mobile SIM DID numbers. For my own peace and sanity.
Aren't there uncapped plans? (Score:3)
All prices seem to reference price per units transferred. Aren't there unlimited plans?
They're pretty normal here in Finland. Capped plans with additional fees for more data are more rare (but cheaper if you're not a heavy mobile data user).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Unlimited plans with various asterisks are the default in US as well.
Should have left that "as well" out, since here in Finland we do not have those asterisks.
Before getting FTTH, I was running my house's "fixed" conenction through a 4G modem with directional antenna on the external wall pointing to the most suitable tower - got a steady 150-200 Mbit/s with price of 19,90 euros per month. No caps of throttling whatsoever. 20+ devices, 5 people with e.g. video streaming devices using this.
Re: (Score:2)
For comparison, my current personal phone is on a data limited plan since I'm almost always in range of a wi-fi and it's only 9 EUR/month base price. The interesting part is that "asterisk" part on the plan is beneficial to me.
I.e. phone calls are charged per call... but only up to 4 EUR extra, after which they're unlimited. I get free 6 gigs of data, after which I pay for up to extra 10GB if I used it, and then it automatically becomes unlimited for the rest of the month.
So the asterisks are pro-consumer,
ARTICLE IS NOT CREDIBLE (Score:5, Informative)
I live in Zambia. It is stating that per GB is around 2-5 USD per GB. You can buy per GB at 0.40 per GB or even at 0.20 USD per GB (this is on a SIM that has voice and data). For a special data only SIM I just bought a bundle of 120GB for 0.16 USD per GB. You normally buy GB in addition to a phone plan. Most everything here (and a lot of Africa I believe) is pre paid. I typically pay around 100 kwacha which is $5 USD for a combined voice (minutes) and data plan which includes 400 minutes of talktime and also 1GB of data. You typically just add additional GB to a phone (buy data by itself). I haven't been to Zimbabwe in many years, but I really don't believe it costs $63 per GB in Zim. I just did a search for mobile carriers in Zim and I came up with Econet for Zimbabwe. They have USD priced bundles on their website. The link is: https://www.econet.co.zw/servi... [econet.co.zw] . You can get 1.2GB of data for 1 hour for $1 USD or for 30 days you can get 30GB for 30 days for $38 USD. That is just over $1 USD per GB. THE ARCTICLE IS NOT CREDIBLE. Please check yourself through the link.
Re: (Score:3)
Good info.
Years ago data in Zimbabwe was *crazy* expensive which led to some very innovative uses of technology that we never saw elsewhere.
Like local copies of wikipedia for small population clusters, or restaurants where they had a 'Menu' SSID and a captive portal that redirected any HTTP request to a local menu html page. I heard funerals commonly had a slideshow wifi access point for remembrance.
Clever evolutions of technology given different constraints.
I recall a pair of T3's for the whole country at
Re: (Score:2)
You do realize that the article is using average rates right?
Just because you can buy a cheap plan doesn't mean that there aren't more expensive plans and that some people may not have an option but to use those higher rate plans.
In Other News (Score:2)
Water is wet
Film at 11
What relevance is the "most expensive" plan? (Score:4, Insightful)
The article says that the "most expensive" plan in the US is $83.33 per GB. Is that a plan that anybody actually uses? More than likely, it's a budget plan for dumbphones that are intended for users who don't need data at all, or tiny amounts.
But whatever the reason...the fact that the most expensive cars in the world cost more than $1 million https://www.motor1.com/feature... [motor1.com] says nothing about the price of cars in general.
Most plans don't charge by the GB (Score:2)
Most plans these days offer unlimited data at a fixed price. Even prepaid plans offer this these days. Yes, I know, the data rate slows down after some threshold, but the data itself is still "free."
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
While you are correct, I don't know how you translate that limit to a "cost per GB." Is it "cost per GB at the highest bitrate"? And if you go above the throttling threshold, does the cost calculation assume you have to buy another plan?
Experience from Israel (Score:3)
There was some legislation a few years back that opened the mobile market to competition.
I don't really know what that entailed, but now most communication companies offer cell service, ISPs, cable companies, satellite TV, etc.
I currently pay a bit under $7 per month, with a 250GB plan.
That's the cheapest, most limited plan I could find from a big company, because I don't actually use my phone or data on it that much.
As far as switching is concerned, they just sent a courier with a SIM card the same day and my number was transferred to the new provider within an hour of changing the SIM.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I never actually bothered to check what my bandwidth is supposed to be, since I'm connected to WIFI like 90% of the time and don't do anything bandwidth-intensive on my phone anyway.
Looks like I'm currently getting 30ms, 15Gbps 4G+, but that's only because I have about 1-2 bars of reception right now.
I only went over the quota once with my previous provider when I moved and didn't have broadband for a week, but I think they just started charging per GB at a higher rate.
Looking at my provider's plans I could
UK..SIMs (Score:2)
We also used "free wifi" in the likes of Maccers as much as we could, the rates in the USA are extortionate.
Re: (Score:2)
US carrier roaming prices to the world are also insane.
Palm (pre-HP) gave away Pre's to Oprah audience members. Some of them rang-up $20-30k USD in roaming charges.
Israel cellular reform (Score:3)
The first was limiting the call completion costs. The big providers could set any price they wanted when other provider's subscribers were calling. This meant that the bigger the provider, the higher the cost they placed, causing small providers to be automatically more expensive than big ones.
The reform capped the call completion costs. Very soon after that providers started eliminating structured prices. The consumer pays the same amount, whether you call someone on the local operator, a different operator or a land line.
The second step was numbers migration. The government forced the cell operators to allow migrating customers to take their phone number with them. Over the past ten years I've changed operators at least 5 times, while still retaining the same cell phone number throughout.
The third step was to encourage small operators, and force the big ops to support MVNOs, and limit the pricing.
This step is actually a mixed bag in terms of how successful it was.The first small providers is called "Golan Telecom", offered a flat rate plan. You pay 100NIS per month, no matter how long you are on the phone. The plan also covers international calls and international roaming. You can spend as much as a month and a half out of every year abroad, and that is all you'll pay. That price was about a third of what all other operators would charge you at the time, and their plans had minutes limitations.
That was soon followed by other MVNO providers. Today I'm paying less than 30 NIS/month on my plan.
The reason I'm saying this was a mixed bag is that it did not, in fact, result in new operators popping up. Aside from Golan, who launched with a mix of their own network and MVNO, all other small providers were MVNO only.
And then Golan started rolling back its own network deployment. Today they are fully MVNO.
Still, with MVNOs having their own numbers, and the ability to migrate their entire network between the big providers, prices, so far, have not gone up for quite some time.
Another thing that happened, but I'm not sure whether that was government triggered or just a byproduct of everything else, is that operator locked phones are gone from the landscape.
USA. AT&T prepaid. $25/16GB (Score:2)
I could probably do better if I shopped around but I'm lazy and don't ever use a single gig in a month so I effectively have 32 gigs available with rollover if I want to do uh something with that. Not sure what but it's there. I wonder how many libraries of congress that is.
Mexico is better! (Score:1)
I left California for Mexico in 2015.
I pay 200 pesos a month for cell service, which is $11.50/mo.That gets me 3GB of data, unlimited calls/texts (to the USA and Canada and Mexico) and unlimited social media.
I was probably paying $100-$120usd/mo in California in 2015.
That's what lack of regulation gets you (Score:2)
You know what the EU does that the US doesn't?
Regulate -- at least not to the same extent
In the EU there's compulsory roaming, so providers don't need to build redundant coverage where its not economical to do so.
They also only let providers charge other carriers for roaming on a cost-plus profit basis. The carrier still makes a profit, just not as much as the US where the rates are entirely up to the companies (so most just decline to allow it).
It's like the US was prior to the national carriers coalescin
Expensive? Cheap? (Score:1)
The Greaterest Country in the world! (Score:2)
Everything is bigger/better/larger than everywhere else.
So this article is just stating the obvious. =/
That makes sense though... (Score:1)
Israel subsidizes the cost with just mining everyone's data and selling that. Plus that cushy not-quite-illegal business they're VERY into, you know the one...enabling human rights abusers willing to pay them a couple of bucks? Totally above board and would never be used to track down political opponents to murder them or anything, that would be wrong!
Mmmmmmhmm. I also have an asteroid to sell you on the cheap.