I’m sure it has something to do with the competition, the density of the population and the impact of that on infrastructure, and the government financial support for communication infrastructure rollout. Probably more complex than that, but at €15 a month it’s nowhere near the top of a list of expenses to cut right now.
Probably worth noting that, if you set up your home Freebox right, you can access secure WiFi on other Freeboxes that do the same anywhere else in France. If 4G is sketchy for some reason and I am anywhere near a decent sized apartment building, I can usually hook into someone’s home WiFi for a few minutes to grab the podcast etc. Very handy.
1) Vodafone : I pay around INR 588 (~USD 8) for an unlimited calling plan with 200 GB data per month, unused data is credited to next month. Speed varies around 4 Mbps - 32 Mbps, throttles some websites such as BBC/ NYTimes and torrents (no idea why). Streaming services work flawlessly.
2) JIO : I paid around INR 599 (~USD 8) for 84 days with unlimited calling + 168 GB high speed data (downgrades to 64Kbps post exhaustion). Speed varies around 3 Mbps - 24 Mbps. Also throttles some websites as per Department of Telecom (DOT) guidance.
I manage my servers, download abandonware games (which were cool in circa 2000s), code and use streaming services - so far so good. Other providers provide similar offerings as well. The only challenge so far has been to keep my cellphones constantly charged.
Edit : added country details.
I have a Jio connection. Torrents work at same data speeds as other downloads. But the torrent websites are banned using DPI. So easy hacks like https upgrade don't work. Hopefully wide adoption of encrypted SNI will hinder their capability to ban websites.
I currently use giffgaff, who offer "goodybags" [1] which are essentially sim-only deals that last a month for comparable or cheaper prices than contract phones.
When the lockdown was announced I dropped from £12/mo to £0/mo. I have roughly £8 credit on my phone and haven't used it.
[1] https://www.giffgaff.com/sim-only-plans
[2] most phones are cheaper to own this way, even factoring in all sorts of risk. The exceptions are phones specifically targetted to make the most of the loan setup; from experience the top of the line iPhones have always been cheaper on contract.
Can't beat this. I'm a keyworker so am still using my data same as my partner.
1. Actual competition between providers, rather than implicit collusion.
2. Much higher population density across most of the country.
3. Interestingly, lack of rule of law, which means the whole subscribe-to-a-cell-phone-package that is actually out of your budget but the only option available doesn't work here. People will just run away with the phone. A vast majority of people buy a phone separately and pay upfront for it, and choose a connection provider of their choice. And jump providers whenever they see someone with a better price.
The also offer fiber Internet if you are lucky enough to live in one of the handful of cities where they offer it.
1 line = $6, 1-100 minutes = $3, 1-100 texts = $3, 101-500MB = $10.
Total, with that low usage, is $22/mo with Ting.
Compare against some cheap MVNO like Mint Mobile where you can get unlimited talk and text, 3GB 4G for $20/mo prepaid for 6 months, or $15/mo prepaid for 1 year. Which is very similar to T-Mobile Connect (their new prepaid thing). I don't know if "T-Mobile Connect" is technically a separate entity that's a MVNO running on T-Mobile's network, or whether it's a genuine 1st class service on T-Mobile's network. Even if T-Mobile Connect is a MVNO, I would probably choose it if I were reevaluating plans today, except... the last time I used T-Mobile's website it was horrible, and Mint's is very simple and clean.
Google Fi would be more, but if you go over 100 minutes or 100 texts, the Ting price goes up, while the Fi price is unchanged. More than some cheap MVNO, but Google Fi has some special features that might make that worthwhile for some people.
$15/month (incl 2GB): https://prepaid.t-mobile.com/prepaid-plans/connect Not as cheap as some barebones MNVOs but seems attractive and by a reliable-enough carrier.
Personally, I have my parents on the Google Fi $20/month plan ($15 for 2nd line) which charges $10 per GB of data, so at this time they're not using almost any data. It's cheap enough to be not worth it to switch right now.
Despite being a longtime Tmobile customer they issued me a new number. Mild inconvenience.
It's cheap enough that I don't mind paying for it while indoors.
I would've switched to Prepay actually, as here you get even better deals with Prepay, but I've got a older and easy to remember phone number that I don't want to lose. And technically I could recover a Prepay number in case I lost the SIM, but with no contract in place I would depend on the benevolence of the operator.
Customer service is different with all the MVNO's we've used. They don't have sophisticated billing systems or the hated phone trees. Ting had the best customer service but also didn't have great coverage and when you go over data for your plan it was a little expensive.
Our current provider (Visible on Verizon network) doesn't even have a phone number to call, just text or social media for support. If you get 4 people together you can have "unlimited" data for $25/mo in US. On previous MVNO our usage never approached the level where "unlimited" became slower.
Do they identify the numbers as voip?
Ting are a true MVNO; the phone numbers are mobile numbers, thought I understand where you’re coming from and I am also very annoyed by some companies rejecting “fake VoIP” numbers.
(For those who will come along after me and say that VoIP numbers are easier to get and carrier numbers have some kind of identity checking: I can get a hundred numbers that validate as “mobile” in the name of George Crabtree for a handful of dollars in under a week. Scammers can also do these schemes so all you’re doing is pissing off proper customers.)
(I also got a really great deal on an iPhone SE for signing up for $149. 6 months you have to keep the plan and then you can unlock the phone. If you're looking to upgrade your phone, try to swing that too!)
I used to use the unlimited data $65 a month plan then I downgraded since being quarentined
I've been paying between 20 and 30/mo for it.
That said I live in India. I already pay for fiber gigabit connection at home, so spending extra on mobile is not worth it for me.
That said, most of job is done on email/WhatsApp and I rarely need to call anyone.
And if need comes, I'll just recharge my mobile through internet and get it going within 5 minutes.
I plug a 4G USB dongle into a WiFi router. This gets me to about 4 or 5Mbps if the weather is good and I put the router on the roof. sighs
However, it's worth noting that at least from what I can tell it doesn't include Canada/Mexico coverage, as well as the limited free data in most other countries, that most of their other plans include. That has often proved beneficial to my family (who travels internationally with some regularity), especially as buying a SIM card in most countries is increasingly difficult.
EDIT: Then I looked at my data usage and I averaged 13 GB of data the last 3 months each month, looks like I should just stay with Magenta.
If the wife makes tea, it fries my wifi connection.