What Does 1GB of Mobile Data Cost in Every Country?

How is this calculated? Because Finland is completely saturated in unlimited data plans and if you don't care for speed, you can get a relatively cheap plan.

Elisa (39% market share): unlimited 1 Mbps data for 9.90 euro a month (29.90 euro a month for 150 Mbps).

Telia (31% market share): unlimited 0.256 Mbps data for 7.90 euro a month (29.90 euro a month for 150 Mbps).

DNA (29% market share): unlimited 1 Mbps data for 12.90 euro a month (29.90 euro a month for 150 Mbps).

Moi (part of DNA these days, don't know if it's counted in their 29% or not): unlimited 100 Mbps for 18 euro a month (23 euro a month for 300 Mbps).

I think Moi might be the only operator that actually sells fixed data plans (6 euro a month for 4 GB at 100 Mbps). Everyone else just sells unlimited plans at varying levels of speed with the entry-level plans basically handicapped to basically email syncing only.

Also, apparently the average monthly data usage for a mobile plan in Finland is 34.3 GB (https://blog.telegeography.com/finns-lead-the-way-in-mobile-...). Probably not going to be hitting that at 0.256 Mbps.

Canadian here: I don't know a single person that doesn't absolutely hate the mafia organization that is Rogers. Just letting y'all know

In Sudan (where I live in), numbers are a little bit different.

I'm currently using Sudani, the cost of 1 GB is 20 SDG. To USD that roughly equals ($0.14, with rate $1 = 140 SDG). The numbers are the same for MTN, or slightly less since i recall it was 15 SDG.

In office we are using an unlimited Wimax plan [1], and that costs us like 1800SDG / month ($12). For 4G unlimited plan, that is like twice the cost at roughly $28.

Edit adding wimax wikipedia link [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMAX

I think this study needs more information to be really helpful. The bandwidth is really important to understand what you are paying for. 1GB of data is not worth much if it takes 5 minutes to load a webpage. In my experience this is a serious problem in some countries. A lot of modern web services have a ton of code bloat that renders them useless in environments where bandwidth is constrained, though they work fine in high infrastructure environments.

I experienced this when I traveled to India, from Singapore. I paid about $7 USD for a whole month and I got about 1.5 GB of data everyday.

In Singapore, I paid $15 for 1GB a month. Beat that. It almost felt like daylight robbery when I returned.

We've heard it said ad nauseam that the reason wireless bandwidth is expensive and datacapped is because there's limited spectrum. How does that explain places like India, with 3.5x the population of the USA but 88x cheaper wireless bandwidth?

After all, the same amount of radio wavelength is available in any part of the world.

In a country (the US) where more and more people have unlimited data plans, what does it even mean to evaluate the cost of "1GB"? My T-Mobile plan gives me unlimited mobile data almost everywhere I go in the world for long periods of time and is in practice quite fast. How does that compare to a service plan that only covers me inside one country? What about in a country as tiny as Israel?

Freemobile in France also has (had?) complex rules covering what kind of connection gets you what kind of data (3G vs 4G connections had different data caps) and the French extended notion of "country". What are the equivalent of DOM/TOM for mobile operators in non-colonial powers?

This seems to be grossly miscalculated--at least for Canada (too).

They collected details of 60 plans[1], which is their max. The cheapest they found was $2.5/GB, the most expensive being $140/GB (both of these are incredible). They use the median of those sampled[2], but there's no weight given to the plans.. the terrible data plan (100MB for $14) has the same weight as a popular plan (2GB for $40).

There seems to be no concession for other features (roaming, minutes, long distance, voicemail, caller ID, text) nor device subsidies (many operators still include $0-200 flagship devices on Canadian plans) which doesn't exactly level the playing field worldwide (every country has different strategies).

So grain of salt required - I pay half their "average". Is North America expensive? Yes! Do I want 11GB/$? Also yes! (Although India's low price could be a side effect of the Reliance Industries investment fever[3])

[1] https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/assets.cable.co.uk/mobile... [2] https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/assets.cable.co.uk/mobile... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliance_Industries#Major_subs...

Not proud to be a Canadian whenever I see data presented like this about our telecom industry.

Watching the telecom oligopoly respond to any efforts to make the market more competitive is a masterclass in gaslighting, corporate doublespeak. Quite disgusting how we continue to allow them to get away with it and fail to hold politicians accountable for not fixing this problem.

The godawful presentation doesn't bode well for the accuracy. I'm well aware that's a fallacy, but this is just so atrocious it's either deliberate sabotage or someone is trying too bloody hard to get some message through. This looks like a classic example of Tufte's "lie factor".

Wow, there is room for a 10x cost reduction in the US.

There is no way in Norway you can get a 1GB plan for $5.28. The mobile networks have been constantly abolishing cheapest data plans instead offering more data for higher price.

But this doesn’t mean that you can buy 1GB of mobile data for that price.

For Australia, it quotes an amount equivalent to 1AUD. (All subsequent prices I quote will be in AUD.)

If you want to buy only 1GB, you’ll almost invariably find it costs you $10; under some schemes it might be $15, and $8.80 is probably the cheapest around at present.

As you get more data, it rapidly drops to the vicinity of $2/GB.

But broadly speaking, you’ll only be able to get down to $1/GB once you’re buying more than about 35GB/month on the Optus network, or more than about 50GB/month on the Telstra network.

And sure, it does continue to drop beyond that point; if you’re wanting something like 100–150GB of data, it can get down to 50–70¢ (Optus/Telstra) per GB, though you may have to shop around to find that. And there are definitely outliers, mostly in specials (e.g. I can currently find 28¢/GB, becoming 38¢/GB after six months, so long as you want 100GB), but I think the figures I quote are representative of the general trend.

So yeah, this does feel as though it matches the data from the original source according to their methodology, but it certainly doesn’t tell the full story, and I feel that as presented it’s more than a little misleading, specifically because internet access and supply patterns vary so much by region. Access, because different parts of the world use the internet in different ways. And supply, because in some places mobile data will typically be augmenting other internet access routes (e.g. home internet supplies 100GB/month, so you only want 1GB/month of mobile data) while in others that infrastructure doesn’t exist, and everything is going through mobile data (so perhaps you’d like a whole 100GB on your mobile plan). Also, any semblance of unlimited access (which you get in some parts of the world, though not Australia for mobile data) really throw a spanner in the works.

My conclusion is that these numbers aren’t all comparable. It’s comparing apples and oranges: quite different so that you have no proper grounds of comparison, but both are fruit, so you can still kinda compare them. I like red apples. I don’t like oranges. I do like orange juice.

For Australian mobile data cost research: https://www.finder.com.au/mobile-plans/compare-sim-only?plan...

> This might seem counterintuitive, but most mobile networks rely on a fixed-line connection. As a result, countries with existing infrastructure are able to offer mobile plans with more data, at a cheaper price. This is the case for India and Italy. Countries with minimal or no infrastructure rely on more costly connection alternatives like satellites, and the cost typically gets passed down to the consumer.

If the above is accurate, that bodes well for starlink.

It'd be more useful for making comparisons to include a table or chart adjusted by the average income of the working class of each country.

Bad data viz alert: Why use area to encode mobile data cost when you're also using the vertical axis for the same purpose?

A simple sorted bar chart would suffice and be more readable, in my opinion.

France is 3-4x cheaper than reported (0.25 EUR/Gb for Bouygues for instance)

Plus illimited calls, sms, mms. Beyond 30 Gbps you are illimited, but with a lower speed (not sure which, probably EDGE)

Yay Canada...

What is the x-axis?

This seems to be grossly miscalculated--at least for Italy.

No idea how these prices are calculated, but when I was still in Italy, I paid $15/mo. and only had 2GB. In contrast, here in Poland I pay $6/mo. and I get 20GB.

Also, I've never seen an infographic as confusing as this one.

Extremely bad job all around.