GON
$175 Site Donor 2026
My two cents- coverage, quality of the data (speed), lack of competition, barriers to entry, and restraint of trade is why U.S. citizens pay the second highest mobile data rates in the world:
Cost of mobile data per country
- Thread starter GON
- Start date
It would be nice to compare which technology the data is delivered. Aren't places like India still like 3g? Seems to be exceptions on the list though. No competition biggest driver. T-Mobile is now similar to the other big tel co's lately. Always interesting to see how countries stack up.
GON
$175 Site Donor 2026
A first class seat on a commercial airline between Los Angeles and London is likely seven thousand dollars (not business class-first) give or take.
A travel consolidator can likely get you that same seat for under four thousand dollars, if unsold space is available. But when doing a price study only the advertised price to the public is used for statistics, not excess capacity pricing that is deep discounted.
I suspect if the big three cellular companies in the U.S. no longer have excess capacity, the the third party cellphone consolidators will begin to disappear.
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The airplane analogy is a good one-- there are complicated shenanigans to get the most money out of every flight, with cheap and expensive seats combined.
They know how to get $50+ per month for "premium" cell service that gets throttled less, with higher priority, for the post-paid contract buyers while also supporting the "steerage" prepaid MVNO users. Probably with just enough inconvenience to persuade them to upgrade.
I'll add this to health care, pharma, and college educations of things we pay too much for.
On the plus side, gas and over-processed food that kills you is cheap.
On the plus side, gas and over-processed food that kills you is cheap.
The Swiss and USA have a very high average salary. A comparison of % cost of data by country would be more meaningful.
How so? We can afford to pay more, so we should pay more?
Germany, Sweden, Belgium are not exactly the 3rd world, yet they pay 1/4 of what we do?
That is, aggravatingly, part of it but so also do we have to pay the engineers and network techs on the ground building all those towers and keeping them running. The US also has more land to cover.
But as we see there's only so much RF spectrum and once it's bought and paid for, the cell companies need to make that money back. Said spectrum was auctioned by the FCC in the us, so us taxpayers, in theory, got that money returned.
Since I'm on my own wifi a lot, or my brother's or my kids', I can see my cell data being a bit expensive per gig, I have unlimited but ask me if I even use 2-3Gig per month because not streaming video or doing much data when driving about etc
True, but an engineer from Germany, Sweden or Belgium is not paid 1/4 the cost of here, nor is a tower 1/4 the cost.
The majority of the actual telecom equipment is made in Asia, so that portion is irrelevant.
I am sure there are cost differences in providing the service, but its not 4X.
Look at the costs in Poland and the UK. Its 10X.
I only use BITOG on iPhone . I don’t own a tablet or computer for my personal use. My wife and kids have MacBook Air which I do use wife’s on occasion.
I’ve been thinking about when my iPad dies that I might not replace it—all I do on it is surf the web (and bitog). Phone is not much better, but I might as well kiss my career goodbye if I gave that up.
I will occasionally look something up while in a store, see if it is a good deal. But I turned off work email and when I’m not at my laptop then I’m not available.
Quit your job and surf BITOG. Wish I thought of that!
I use this website to check costs. https://prepaid-data-sim-card.fandom.com/wiki/Prepaid_SIM_with_data
It's not always up to date, BUT I can go on the providers' websites to see costs, etc.
I also use this website to check on coverage. Note the site's map starts in the middle of the Atlantic, so just scroll. Use the menu to find the country and the provider. https://www.cellmapper.net/
We were in the UK last September and used EE sims-very inexpensive.
It's not always up to date, BUT I can go on the providers' websites to see costs, etc.
I also use this website to check on coverage. Note the site's map starts in the middle of the Atlantic, so just scroll. Use the menu to find the country and the provider. https://www.cellmapper.net/
We were in the UK last September and used EE sims-very inexpensive.
The reason the Americans pay the most is because they are among the highest wage earners in the world
It’s also why we pay the most for automobiles or any other product
It’s also why we pay the most for automobiles or any other product
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Cost in dollars means little as paychecks in countries with lower costs are also much lower in dollars.
It probably has to do more with the fact that corporations can donate to political candidates in order to receive preferential treatment over their competitors; they’re not going to shaft their shareholders in order to come up with the donation, so the only other place to get it is by increasing their prices.
Hopefully the Trump Admin will find a way to bring a suit and get Citizens United overturned…