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Comment by docdeek | Hacker News Reader

Posts like this remind me of the differences between cell phone data markets relative to your country. I pay €15.99 a month for my cell plan (discounted from €19.99 because the same providor does my home internet/cable TV/home phone bundle) [0]. That gets me 100GB of data, unlimited texting, free calls and texts to much of the world, and the same deal should I roam in many countries, including those closest to home where I am most likely to travel pre- and post-COVID19.

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.

[0]:http://mobile.free.fr

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Well, I had to leave for my hometown (post COVID19 lockdown in India) which is a Tier 2 city where I don't any copper/ fiber connectivity in my area apart from government backed BSNL which is a pain to get. To compensate, I have 2 provider plans which I shuffle for doing my work.

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.

India has strict net neutrality. ISPs cannot throttle some services and allow others. If you are talking about banning websites(torrent, porn) then that's a different issue. That is enforced due to a court order.

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 pay around 5$ for unlimited 4G, calls & texts within the country and a few hundred (can't recall how many) international minutes. I also only pay around 15$ for 1 Gigabit internet, cable TV and a house phone. I have to agree - the difference in prices around the world seems crazy when related to this aspect.

Wow, that’s a little less than a third of what I’m paying for gigabit internet. The variance between countries is huge. I wonder what it would work out adjusted to average income or something for an apples to apples comparison.

It depends I guess, here the average income is 656 euros. Internet and phone services are especially cheap, food and others not that huge of a difference in my opinion (depends where you shop tho). I live in Romania if you wanna research further.

Free also give Pages Perso: a subdomain for a personal website where you can FTP files e.g. http://peterburk.free.fr.

Their seedbox gets a fair bit of use around our apartment, too.

If you pay 15.99, you actually get _unlimited_ 4G data instead of 100GB. It's been life saving during the lockdown, being somewhere with very slow wifi...

I think when I first signed up it was 20GB, then upgraded to 50GB, and now it is 100Gb or, indeed, unlimited. Frankly I never get close to that, anyway, so it’s always left me thinking what I would have to do to get to that sort of data download. If I tethered more outside of WiFi perhaps I would hit it, but I live in a bigger city so WiFi is usually no problem.

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.

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