Cheap cellular data list is out: And US doesn't make top 200 The UK has climbed the rankings for cost per 1GB of mobile data, according to a report from Cable.co.uk, and has reached the dizzying heights of 59th place. While at first glance the placing doesn't seem that much to celebrate, the $0.79 per gigabyte is a considerable improvement from 12 months ago, where the UK ranked 78th at …
well, before the Brexit, the cost of roaming for UK, in the EU would have been nil.
Well the price of your normal data plan, as there's no data roaming fee in the EU.
Since Brexit... it's up to how much the $TELCO wants to lighten your purse.
The queues at Dover are entirely down to French customs at Dover being, well, French. GB has an equivalent at each channel port on the other side of La Manche. But you won't find our officials doing what the French excel at, petty, mean, nit picking.
How can they compare packages that are, in effect, "infinite data" and for which, in theory, the per GB price is approaching zero?
My phone tells me I'm using about 10GB /mth mobile data. Many young people just don't have or use WiFi and just go with mobile data all the time , so might be using 50-100 GB/mth or even more.
I'm surprised so many advanced countries are at the bottom of the list and I think taking into account the above, the real situation is many users have cheaper mobile data than the study shows.
> I'm surprised so many advanced countries are at the bottom of the list and I think taking into account the above, the real situation is many users have cheaper mobile data than the study shows.
That is because they don't appear to take purchasing power into account. So Senegal, for example, might be very cheap but it's still a week's wages in local terms.
It seems strange to me to calculate the average cost for the plans in a country.
Power users like you which will use the biggest part of mobile data are quite unlikely to have a plan that is at or above the average price.
Comparing by the lowest price per GB you can get in the country would be more sensible (and can be done if you download their .xls data file).
"How can they compare packages that are, in effect, "infinite data" and for which, in theory, the per GB price is approaching zero?"
I haven't read their report yet, but I'd probably see if those packages eventually throttle speeds or give the provider the right to do so. That's been used in some countries and puts a flexible cap on some plans. Since they were focused on the median, they could have considered those that were really unlimited as infinitely cheap and pulled the median downward, but not to the extent that it made the median zero.
I'm also suspicious, Switzerland is at 216, I have unlimited at a pretty reasonable price I thought, but I checked one of their limited plans as maybe that's how they might calculate it?
So the report says 1GB is 7.25 CHF (local currency)
But my provider (Salt) does a plan including 50gb for 24.95 a month, 24.95 / 50 = 0.49 CHF/gb
Checking a PAYG plan, they offer unlimited at 1.99 a day, so they don't even charge per gb
If prices are compared in dollars and, as has been the case for the last year, the dollar has strengthened signigiciantlly and the Euro has fallen faster than Sterling, then most countries will seem cheaper than the US than last year. As such the prices should be weighted to reflect this or expressed using some form of PPP (purchasing power parity).
In addition, consumer price inflation does not affect all areas of the economy equally. Energy, transport and food have got more expensive but these are not the main drivers of cost for mobile networks: power is important but quite a few base stations are self-contained, not least because this reduces the cost of a mains connection.
Like for like? The cost per GB also ignores whether you can acutally use what you pay for: having the capacity in the network both where you need lots of it (stations, football stadiums, etc.) and covering large areas (mountains, fens, etc.) are key determinants of costs. But these are primarily capital and not operational expenditures and as such less subject to fluctuation. The other main determinants are state support, especially for rural areas, and competition, with many studies suggesting that at least four providers are required for a truely competitive market.
Prices for services will go up as wages go up but, at the same time, capacity will probably continue to grow faster. This is why cost per GB is so much lower now than, say 20 years ago.
If prices are compared in dollars and, as has been the case for the last year, the dollar has strengthened signigiciantlly and the Euro has fallen faster than Sterling, then most countries will seem cheaper than the US than last year.And yet, the US is in 202nd place. Damn, I wanna move.
Well, apart from the fact that the US telco market is not competitive and has been expensive for years, that is because of the exchange rate. The Economist has for years used the price of a Big Mac to demonstrate the effect of PPP. Currently, the pound is around 14% undervalued and the Euro 7.5%. NB the pound is also undervalued compared with the Euro…
"And yet, the US is in 202nd place."
That's what the exchange rate would imply, if that was an important factor. If the US plan cost $100 and the UK plan cost £70 last year, the report that year would have rated them as costing the same. If neither price changed, the US plan would still cost $100, but the UK plan would now cost $84.35. The UK's price would have decreased (using straight currency conversions), and therefore they'd look cheaper.
While this is true, it's not the largest factor behind the US having terrible prices. If they're just using exchange rates, it's not really helping the US's prices either.
at least four providers are required for a truely competitive market
One of the interesting aspects of the UK market is the extent to which operators are effectively competing against themselves through MVNOs - either through genuine third parties or via low-cost subsidiaries (giffgaff/SMARTY/VOXI...). It's as much about market segmentation as it is about competition.
Whereas median pricing might make some sense to a network operator (in the end it's a measure of its income), it's not in itself of interest to the consumer in search of the cheapest deal - but its falling does imply that consumers are more keenly interested in price and less afraid of SIM-swapping and number portability.
Yes, lots of countries have MVNOs and I agree it's largely segmentation. In Germany, the telcos are still very much more expensive for data than SIM only deals. But, in general, prices have hardly moved the last 5 to 10 years. The only thing that continues to change is the number of people going SIM only and not relying on a contract when changing the phone.
Switched to giffgaff about 6yrs ago due to cost with other providers constantly rising... I pay £10 a month for unlimited calls & texts, and at the time about 2 or 3GB of data.
The calls/txts remain the same, but the data is up to around 15GB now... Not a huge amount I know... But I rarely use more than 1GB a month because I'm always connected to my wifi (work from home) and I never use public wifi because of privacy concerns and the insipid data harvesting all of them do.
Everything goes through my VPN too.
I have never once, used up all of my data in that entire time. Came close once when I was away for a week and used some data for netflix streaming because the bedroom I was sleeping in was too far from the router and was disconnecting wifi as I was watching some movie/show before sleep.
Ranking according to the average price seems pretty meaningless when the range of deals (for the UK) start at $0.12/GB and go up to $61.52
Unless there are special circumstances (such as pitifully low caps on the cheapest deals, or latency measured in days rather than milliseconds) wouldn't a better comparison be to take the cheapest cost/GB as a measure of ... whatever it is this survey is trying to prove.
Or at least, weight the deals according to how many punters cough for each of the ones surveyed.
(I can see that one of the most sought after pieces of marketing information would be the customer lists of the highest cost deals. Presumably those people can be persuaded to pay completely over the odds for other things, too)
I pay 15€ for unlimited usage - but 0.00€/GB is not identified as possible, although it would gravitate towards that with the use I make of it - as a mobile hotspot for everything (including TV) and everyone in the household while away in our country cottage, we could easily top 50GB per day! (alright, not really 0.00/Gb, but I didn't see 0.01€/GB either)
The $90 B is capitalized and becomes equity on which a return has to be made or debt which must be amortized and on which interest must be paid.
So the spectrum license fees are in effect a hidden tax which raises prices to the cellular users.
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So if you are an EE customer, your price goes up by I think RPI, yep, RPI, so 2023 is going to be EYE WATERING. Even if you have an out of contract device.
And BTW, O2 have no roaming charges for the EU. Unfortunately only Vodafone, O2 and EE have the ability [willingness] to support an e-SIM, so you are out of luck if you have an Apple Watch.
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