Cost of 3G data in the US among highest in the world.
wired.com
wired.com
I was going to buy a smartphone but then decided against it because I figured out that the cost of the plan alone would set me back $40-$60 whereas I pay 25 dollars for approx 1.5 months on my prepaid plan.
Do you get prepaid data?
Having to pay to receive SMSes, on the other hand, is hard to justify.
Just remember that complex systems emerge as often as they're created upfront, and you'll feel better about it all.
What a difference two years make. I picked up my iPhone 4 this morning - 32 GB, for $40 less than the same model in the US. (3 year plan, unfortunately, but eligible for full upgrades in < 2 years) The data plans provide 6 GB/month for $30, with tethering included free and a $10-20 option to share the quota with a 3G iPad.
What changed between 2008 and today is that the iPhone is now available from all three major Canadian telcos, whereas Americans are still stuck with AT&T.
My hypothesis for the low prices in Germany? Fierce competition.
In many European countries, the 3G data plan one has in combination with a mobile voice subscription is a lot cheaper per gigabyte.
For instance: in The Netherlands, the cheapest iPhone plan includes 150 nationwide minutes for outgoing calls (all incoming calls are free), sending 150 text messages (receiving messages is free), and unlimited 3G data at 2 Mbit/s --- for only Euro 30 ($40).
Then again, it might have more to do with taxation and government subsidies, as is the case with the huge difference in the pricing of gasoline worldwide. In The Netherlands, you can expect to pay $7.52 for a gallon of gasoline, while in Venezuela it costs only $0.19.
The European nations, Japan, etc. are all much smaller and more densely populated, so the cost of covering the countries with towers is lower per person.
If you're really just going to use your phone in Queens, NY (and other fairly populated areas), you can go with a discount carrier like Boost Mobile, but you'll curse your frugality when you do actually stray from cities because their coverage map looks like this: http://www.boostmobile.com/coverage/ instead of this: http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/CoverageLocatorController...
Also, as I said in another comment, that graphic makes the difference in cost look way bigger than it is.
31$/mo. for iPhone4 + 13$/mo. (dur. 2 yrs) for unrestricted 3G data until 1 Gb transferred, after which the speed is capped to 64 kbit/s.
or
26$/mo. (dur. 2 yrs) for HTC Desire including unlimited 3G data with unrestricted speed, free phone calls within the same carrier (covers over 1/2 of all Finns) and 2400 min of free calls/mo. to other domestic carriers.
translates to
44$/mo. for iPhone4 with crappier plan vs. 26$/mo. for HTC Desire with fully loaded plan. The difference is gigantic, but iPhone still sells like hot cakes.
Text messages cost 0,13$ apiece (single unit price for the most expensive carrier, median is lower)
iPad is not available atm.
I pay additional 16 bucks to get 500 MB (!!!) data for my plan...that's pretty high although we're a small country
So it doesn't surprise me that Switzerland has higher rates -- there are less customers per square mile, and I can imagine it being a bit harder to put up a cell tower on a mountain slope than in a meadow.
For example, Drei in Austria is $1.31/GB. Great! Let's replace AT&T's plan for $2.62! ... Oh, that's only if we get a 15GB plan for $19.59? That's a little better, but way less better than the graph makes it appear.
I was once at a sales presentation where someone borrowed my GSM modem and used it for less than an hour. He was just trying to load a web portal. Bill came up to $600. My carrier called me in the afternoon to make sure that was me.
Typically a VOIP stream is between 2400 and 9600 baud, or 300 to 1200 bytes per second. At E0.25 cts per MB for instance that would make their voice tariffs look ridiculous and people would switch en-masse to VOIP.
They can't really win this one, either people will not use their data networks and they end up in front of the anti-competitive agencies (OPTA etc) or they lose a pile of money on their voice side.
Sucks to be them.
It is a fear I find to be mistaken. Even though a bit is a bit any way it is transferred, things like latency, jitter, guaranteed throughput, those are things that do make a difference to applications.
If I was a telcom company, I would start to write android applications that besides providing VOIP and streaming video, etc, also would set up these connections to use a QoS level that the subscriber would have as extra charge add-ons to their account. QoS might require lots of technology on the server side that isn't there yet.
If I was an evil telecom company, I might even introduce jitter on non QoS and make VoIP completely crappy quality. Making people that pick this route sound like real cheapskates. Aren't you glad I am not a telecom company?