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Comment by IfOnlyYouKnew | Hacker News Reader

It's far cheaper than the US. I get 6MB/s downloads for 15€/month. For mobile, there's a chart making the rounds on Twitter, and it seems to me Germany is very much in line with other countries. Of course it's more expensive than it is in poorer countries in eastern Europe, as everything is.

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For mobile I have unlimited 4G LTE for $55 dollars a month, including talk/text/etc. The 'real' cap is 60GB were they 'review your account for violations of terms and services'.

Just did a speed test and it's 31Mbps download and 4Mbps upload, but it varies wildly by location. But it's consistently fast enough that I can share out over Wifi from my cell phone so I can do my work and while my girlfriend watches youtube videos when we are travelling or the internet is down.

For home internet.. once it got faster then my wifi I stopped really caring a whole lot. 176Mbps on my last test.

If you are travelling in the USA as long as you stick to the interstate system you pretty much get mobile data the entire way. IF you drift onto smaller highways then that is when things get very spotty outside of metropolitan areas.

Verizon tends to have the best coverage in the mid-west. If I was travelling a lot in the boonies I would get a second data-only account on Verizon's network just to increase my chances of always having internet.

Although nowadays that is less and less necessary as every hotel and most restaurants have wifi. Just look for a Mcdonalds and you can get internet most of the time.

> If you are travelling in the USA as long as you stick to the interstate system you pretty much get mobile data the entire way. IF you drift onto smaller highways then that is when things get very spotty outside of metropolitan areas.

This really depends on who you are using. When traveling between NorCal and SoCal, Sprint is basically garbage and Tmobile works decently for most of the trip.

I've experienced them all and across all various parts of the country. If you want to know what phone plan to get, just ask a trucker.

So, what phone plan should I get?

Stretches of road in Utah would like to have a word with you. Specifically I-70.

> Of course it's more expensive than it is in poorer countries in eastern Europe, as everything is.

We might be poorer but our telco operators pay market prices for equipment. Wages and land lease is also quite expensive. Financial cost is higher with rates and currency risk vs euro.

In Poland telco market had been skillfully and actively managed by regulator forcing constant investments in infrastructure and encouraging competition.

I pay 75€ per year for 1TB of mobile plan (calls ans SMS included).

https://biuroprasowe.orange.pl/blog/az-1-tb-danych-nielimito...

My parents broadband had been recently upgraded from 30Mbps to 150Mbps without any cost increase and without even asking for it. It is just the operator (UPC) trying to fend off competition (Orange, Netia). Cost is circa 10€ per month.

https://www.upc.pl/internet/kup-internet/

You can easily get 1Gbs in mayor cities.

Around the place where I live there is a lot of housing developments. Operators are racing to build the infrastructure and sign the clients even before the houses are finished.

I don't think the US is the country to compare against in this case.

Despite all the griping on the internet, USA is consistently top 10 in broadband speed rankings, and costs are not that different from other countries.

https://www.speedtest.net/global-index

For a while in Germany I was paying 30€/month for 10Mbps. Meanwhile other EU countries gave you 1Gbps for ~10€/month. Germany is definitely at the lower end of internet infrastructure.

This is probably the only thing I feel great about in the Indian communication domain! I pay <$2 a month for about 1.5GB 4G every DAY! Speeds generally vary from crap to 11 Mbps

> I pay <$2 a month for about 1.5GB 4G every DAY! Speeds generally vary from crap to 11 Mbps

Of course. But, you have to take into account the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) to get the true picture. According to OECD data, Germany's PPP is 0.76 while India's is 18.128 (2019). On an average, there's a factor of 23.85 until prices reach a parity between them. Therefore, just because you pay ~ 2$ a month doesn't make it cheap for India.

https://data.oecd.org/conversion/purchasing-power-parities-p...

Well, this difference exists between many EU countries and Germany as well, so I don't even think that's necessarily an apt comparison without some extra data.

(I'm referring to the comment which your comment was in response to, which I know you didn't post.)

> Meanwhile other EU countries gave you 1Gbps for ~10€/month. Germany is definitely at the lower end of internet infrastructure.

This sounds like eastern europe pricing, western tends to be quite a bit higher. We're talking 20+ for DSL or "slow" fiber (100M or so), GB you won't get below 30+ or even 40~50 depending on the country.

Is the 6MB/s or 6Mbps? Is that the average or minimum guaranteed?

Can you ever really have a minimum guaranteed speed when often times the limiting factor is the remote's ability to upload?

I guess atleast the speedtest numbers are high.

At 6 MB/s, you won't hit that limit yet, with most services.

From what I've seen, compared to France, the UK and Austria, which aren't poorer countries, Germany still has comparatively expensive plans with less volume.

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