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belltaco

>Looking at India, it has a GDP per Capita that's 1/8 of the US

Okay, then lets multiply Indian prices by 8.

Someone up the thread quoted this:

>For 6 dollars 50 cents, you get 1.5 GB/day for 91 days.

Where in the US can I get 1.5GB/day for 91 days for $52 ?

Before someone talks about congestion, this is India, with 1.3 Billion people and "third world" infrastructure. If that kind of bandwidth can be provided to that many folks where people are routinely using it to watch TV channels (see Jio TV), why can't we do it here? I think congestion and data caps are just excuses to wring more money.

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Not to be contrary, but that is almost exactly what I pay to T-Mobile (in the US) for unlimited data. I also have great coverage in rural parts of the country.

Strictly multiplying by 8 isn't really a good comparison, as the cost of supporting such a network in India isn't going to cost 1/8th as much as the US. I'm sure there's a lot of room for the US cellular carriers to be more efficient.

You pay $18/month for unlimited?

There is a pre-paid T-Mobile MVNO called Mint who will give you 3 to 12GB/month LTE for $15 to $25/month, with unlimited at slower speeds when you go over your limit. To get those prices, you buy in bulk, prepaying 12 months at a time. If you need to buy extra LTE capacity in one month, they charge $20 for 3GB increments.

In reality though, I think many US users here probably get the majority of their bandwidth over WiFi and do not really use that much LTE data. But, if I wanted to replace my $70/month cable Internet with just a Mint subscription, i.e. the $25/month plus 2x $20 refills, that would buy 18 GB/month of LTE.

Absolutely not. Thanks for pointing that out. I definitely misread the grandparent's post to be monthly (which means I'm paying 3x). I think ~$2.16/month is so cheap that it didn't register as possible.

I do, however, have truly unlimited, which means I can tether without hesitation. T-Mobile does have unlimited plans at $35/line a month for 55 or older, but that is still twice the $18/month price.

As the sibling post states, there are competitive plans like Mint, or FreedomPop, which offer extremely cheap plans, but nowhere near 1.5GiB of data a day. So I guess we are much further away than I thought we were.

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