[HN Gopher] The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb...
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The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)
Author : vanilla-almond
Score : 61 points
Date : 2020-08-22 21:52 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cable.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cable.co.uk)
| notRobot wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Demand and supply. Clearing prices are higher in the US for a
| variety of reasons.
| Yetanfou wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Rent. American businesses love extracting rent.
| jeppesen-io wrote:
| ALL businesses do
| jzwinck wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| And cost of land and permitting
| [deleted]
| skylanh wrote:
| 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_mob
| ile_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 wrote:
| They make you pay what they can.
| rsynnott wrote:
| 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.
| polack wrote:
| 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.
| grecy wrote:
| 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=PLNiCe5roBX...
| pier25 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Have you watched Motonomad? I guess Adam Riemann was lucky
| with the timing being allowed into Sinai.
| quink wrote:
| 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.
| kochthesecond wrote:
| I remember getting this in south korea and in japan,
| remembering it was moderately priced. Not expensive, not dirt
| cheap.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| 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.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| Related discussion from 43 days ago on an article that used this
| as its source data: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23795147
| gtirloni wrote:
| 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_ wrote:
| What horrible carrier is that? Even in the US which has high
| cellular data costs it's usually $10/GB
| gruez wrote:
| 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.
| franciscop wrote:
| 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.
| izzydata wrote:
| 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.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| 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.
| rsynnott wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| They're not. They're deluded if they think anybody in Western
| Europe is paying $3.13 per GB in 2020. ;-)
| qalmakka wrote:
| 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 good for consumers when it
| works right.
| RantyDave wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| chatman wrote:
| I'm in India and I pay $8 for 84 days and get 2.5GB/day for those
| 84 days.
| bchip wrote:
| 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.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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...
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(page generated 2020-08-22 23:00 UTC)