India Beats UK and US on Mobile Data Price (bbc.com) 70
A study into the amount people pay for mobile data has found that the UK has some of the most expensive prices in Europe. From a report: The research, from price comparison site Cable.co.uk, found that one gigabyte (GB) of data cost $0.26 in India but $6.66 in the UK. The US had one of the most expensive rates -- with an average cost of $12.37 for the same amount of data. The results were "disappointing" said Cable's telecoms analyst Dan Howdle. "Despite a healthy UK marketplace, our study has uncovered that EU nations such as Finland, Poland, Denmark, Italy, Austria and France pay a fraction of what we pay in the UK for similar data usage. It will be interesting to see how our position is affected post-Brexit," he said. The study compared mobile data pricing in 230 countries around the world. The UK ranked 136th in the list. The global average was $8.53 for 1GB.
Canada? (Score:3)
Don't check the price here... latest news :
Providers such as Virgin, Lucky, Fido, Chatr, Public Mobile and Koodo have committed to offering plans that will range from $15 for 250 MB to $30 for 1GB on a prepaid and postpaid basis. The plans are to be widely available by April 2019.
Fake news (Score:1)
I get 500MB per month on each device from FreedomPop and I pay NOTHING. Sure, 500MB isn't much, but I bought 5 devices for about $50 each and have been enjoying 5*500MB = 2.5GB/mo for free for the past couple years now.
I suppose if you claim I paid for the data when I bought the 5 devices, I've paid the equivalent of $4.17/GB, which is still higher than India. On the other hand, TFA didn't say boo about how much those devices cost in India...
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In India, device & data are not linked. You buy device separately and data separately most of the time. Most of the users are on pre-paid plans. Whenever their plan expires, they recharge.
Starting cost for smart phones is around $50. You can get very decent devices for about $100. When you consider most people use it for Facebook, Whatsapp, YouTube, and basic games, the performance is more than sufficient.
Data plans are available for as low as 7 cents per day with a 1.5GB daily allowance. Yes, it is 1
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This comes directly from the government website, how can it be fake news? Canada is not the USA, man...
https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/phone/m... [crtc.gc.ca]
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I'm on Fizz and I get 10gb with unlimited everything nationwide for $44. They also have gifting (I can gift any amount of data to any other Fizz user) and carryover so I currently have 17.7GB available for this month. Since the carryover data is used first after 2 or 3 months you'll essentially have double your actual plan data available.
Had a similar plan with Telus, who I was with since the Clearnet days, @ $60 (without carryover or gifting) and called up to see if they had any kind of retention deal and
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We get absolutely pilliaged by the users of our public resource - the wireless spectrum - and it's unclear why, as a nation, tolerate it. :(
You "tolerate" it for the same damn reason everyone else does; you have no choice because you're not in control.
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- and it's unclear why, as a nation, tolerate it. :(
As long as Justin Trudeau gets his cut from the Canadian telecoms . . . everything's just fine as it is.
Re:Amazing that people won't shop around. (Score:4, Informative)
I'm still on the T-Mobile "Walmart" plan, $30 for 5GB. That's $6/month/GB on a major carrier without trying very hard.
T-Mobile has a family plan that is "unlimited" (deprioritized at 50GB) for $40/month per line. Even if we call that 50GB a cap, that's only $0.80 per GB. And that includes Netflix, phone, and texts. Not seeing the point here.
Products and services in low-income, (Score:3)
low cost markets tend to be cheaper than those in the generally more expensive places.
Film at 11.
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Hardly.
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That really explains why Monaco is so much cheaper, nor the other 15 countries in western Europe.
Prices reflect what the market will bear, and if multiple providers aren't competing with each other to lower the prices, you have to question why not.
It could just be that bureaucracy is so bad that it costs a lot more to provision masts, or that the bidding process for spectrum rights was so flawed that it's encumbered them with debt mountains. I haven't a clue.
Re: Products and services in low-income, (Score:2)
I know this is uncouth even doubting you, but you did read the article, right?
"Denmark, Monaco and Italy all offer packages below $2."
Re: Products and services in low-income, (Score:2)
It's far from good research, and they didn't release enough of the data, but the summary spreadsheet is at least partially helpful. Still, they're not assessing which plans are used, just which ones are available.
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Bear in mind the UK Government auctioned off licences for the parts of the spectrum used by mobile signals, so that's an additional cost that must be borne.
Then consider that I'm paying £16/month for unlimited data. I'm not sure I could get it much cheaper anywhere else in Europe.
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It is better for the state to care for infrastructure, this includes cable-based internet and mobile as well. The state could offer to companies the red for a price to cover the cost. Only then we see lower prices. We have to observe our representatives more closely and think about this problem when the next election arrives. At the moment we are governed by people who like to privatize everything - because the balance looks better if you sell off now and people pay later - after the four years a representa
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low cost markets tend to be cheaper than those in the generally more expensive places.
Film at 11.
I'd say that is the case for India... But not the trend. Plenty of developing countries like the Philippines, Colombia and United States that have significantly higher charges for data than developed countries. OTOH developed countries are not necessarily expensive, here in the UK I can get unlimited calls, texts and 1.5 GB of data for £6 per month and that is far from the cheapest plan I know of (I chose a more reliable provider over a cheap plans). You can easily get 30 GB for £20 and I've see
less money (Score:2)
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They pay less for netflix and all that too but they also have dengue fever, hepatitis, tuberculosis, malaria and shit in the streets so, swings and roundabouts eh.
Find your comment about poverty quite offensive. What that has to do with genuine innovations in market pricing?
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Who did this research? (Score:2)
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I pay a penny per megabyte, and in a busy month I hit ~150Mbytes, even if I include a bit of tethering. I have wifi at home, on the bus, at several places on my walk to work, and almost everywhere in the city. I don't make a measurable number of calls/texts, and pay no fees on top of that.
I can live with less than £20 a year for a mobile service.
You really need to unpick this research though, as £44 for 1GB would be quite a challenge to hit. If you can go contract free and pay £10 for 1
Re: Ridiculous prices all around (Score:2)
Actually, no. I'm online for reasons of being contactable, so I can share my realtime location with people, and so that I can access the Internet when I need to. That 5Mbytes a day 100% satisfies that requirement.
I have no great need to watch Netflix on my walk to work.
major details missing (Score:1)
The article seems to completely ignore why India is so cheap. It was essentially a price war between siblings with rival companies. They pretty much put out of business or bankrupt most other companies in the process. Even Vodafone gave up.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/04/tech/rcom-ambani-bankruptcy-court/index.html
Not what I pay for data in the UK (Score:1)
In UK, on Virgin Mobile,
1 GB = £7 pcm
5 GB = £9 pcm
12 GB = £12 pcm
45 GB = £18 pcm
So, depending on how much data you use, the price varies between £7/GB and £0.40/GB (between $9.40 and $0.64 USD)
These also include 2500 or 5000 or unlimited minutes and texts.
So the headline seems somewhat misleading ...
What appalling methodology (Score:4, Informative)
A country might have multiple providers offering ultra-cheap packages. These are going to offer rubbish value for money, but hardly anyone actually uses the, except a handful of people who use their phones for emergencies only.
Pretty much nobody in the UK is paying a fiver per gigabyte. It takes no time at all to find packages offering 4GB for £11 a month from Three.co.uk. But the people who use most data are the ones on the higher data plans,
Unless you can find the amount of data used, and the total amount paid, your statistics are worthless.
Bollocks research is bollocks. (Score:1)
Who [vodafone.co.uk] did [giffgaff.com] this [three.co.uk] research? [ee.co.uk]
Did they just pick the worst deal and assume everyone is dumb enough to go with EE?
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The map lists worst deals ($56.87 in the UK), which I assume was something like an obscure 100MB/month plan for £4.50 or something.
And seriously slashdot - this is a tech site! I should not have to type "£" when unicode is a thing!
Pretty much all countries do (Score:2)
$22 for 20GB incl 10GB roaming (Score:4, Informative)
(Denmark) I believe I pay around 150DKK ($22 USD?) for 20 gigabytes of data, unlimited talk,sms,mms. :)
That goes for international as well, but only 10GB of data and have to touch homebase after a month or something like that, I suppose it to avoid it being sold and use 100% people outside the country. It means that when I travel to the US, I can use the phone like when I am home. It has been very useful.
Italy: 0,20 €/GB (Score:2)
Re: Italy: 0,20 €/GB (Score:1)
It's expensive in the USA for several reasons (Score:2)
Surprised ... not (Score:2)
1) It's expensive to mount an antenna in the UK - you need permissions, regulatory oversight, rent to land/building owner, cost of the crew to install and maintain it. You can't put any old crap up on any wall.
2) Spectrum licences cost the companies cosmic bucketloads of money
3) First world economy = first world prices