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Comment by torben-friis | Hacker News Reader

I've got unlimited mobile data for a great price in spain as well. Honestly, I hope the us catches up at some point because software still doesn't even consider it an option - I have to actively fight all my settings so I can get updates, backups, streaming at high quality and the like because the OS considers they should always be done on wifi.

Sometimes, the situation has been so absurd that I've had to use the share Network function with a friend's phone to fool my phone into believing I'm on wifi so I could download an update.

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Just a decade ago, SMS messages in the US cost 10 to 25 cents per SMS. You also got charged for spam SMS. Prices were completely disjointed from the reality of underlying costs (zero for the telcos). My college CS professor gave senate testimony on this: https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/keshav_testim...

(side rant: in the following ten years, the tech giants sweeped in, competed, provided a better service, with better cross-platform support, for zero dollar immediate cost to the end customer -- gained a massive following (think whatsapp), and are now vilified for their "monopoly" and the "harm" it has caused.)

>You also got charged for spam SMS

Wait what? They charge you for receiving text messages or am I not reading that right? Do they also charge you to receive phone calls haha?

Yes. In the US, cellular calls are charged by air time so you pay for incoming calls as well. I think all plans are unlimited these days though.

there are still 'per minute' plans. I still have one for a family member's "emergency" phone.

My plan has unlimited text, but only 100 minutes of talk (which is almost always plenty).

My Mom is still on a strict per minute plan, with a stored value plan though. I think she gets free incoming text, but has to pay for calls or texts she sends.

Checkout Mint Mobile: $15/month if you prepay for a year otherwise $20. You get unlimited talk and texts, 4GB data. https://www.mintmobile.com/

Good if you're single but if you have family something like Cricket's Unlimited Basic gets you unlimited (22GB before throttling) data and talk/text for $25/line for four lines is better.

As an aside, as a single person I feel the discounts that come with family plans to be weirdly discriminatory. I go with prepaid TMobile (10gb for $40) because it’s much cheaper than a regular(?) plan with only 1 line. But to hook my Apple Watch up to cellular, I need the regular plan ($75 for one line + $10 for Apple Watch) as prepaid tech is years behind and second tier (most MVNOs included). That means that the only way I can use an Apple Watch on cellular as a single person is by paying $45 more per month. Complaining about an Apple Watch is a first world problem, but I think the pricing system is unfair.

I really wonder whether young members of the family consume more or less data, or what other reason could be used to justify family-discounting.. but it’s probably like a parent comment said: there’s no correlation between costs to the carrier and price the consumer pays; the single/family split exists to create the maximum profit off both groups by penalizing single people and convincing families to add all younger members to the plan (even those that might not need it). IMO carriers should give an age discount for under 18, not a per-line reduction the more members are in your plan.

I've had every single Apple Watch since the original one and never had the need to get cellular for it. What's the use case for when you got a watch on you but no phone near it (but still NEED to be reachable somehow)?

Running. Phones are massive these days and impractical to take running. Still need to be reachable for any number of reasons (or call if there's an emergency).

People who want to run without water or any kind of fanny pack. I bought an Apple Watch and got a cellular plan for it and quickly realized there was absolutely no reason I really needed it.

(It's also true that I long predate cell phones--and also am often in places that don't have cell phone coverage--so I really don't have the mindset that I always have to be reachable right now.)

I got the cellular version to make tech detoxing easier. I find I can think more creatively when I leave my phone at home when going on walks. With a watch with cellular I could see myself regularly going weekends without my phone.

What I’m doing in the meantime is popping my sim from my smartphone into an old Nokia.

They say "Family" but that's for marketing. If you have friends you trust to pay you, they don't actually check social security numbers or anything.

Cricket wants as many subscribers as possible, so they give discounts to groups of four.

Yes. Just to clear things up this was a big surprise to me as a european the first times I visited the US.

I'm not surprised, that really does boggle the mind.

We do the same thing with internet in the US. E.g., if someone sends me an email, I'm the one that has to pay my email provider for handling it, and I'm the one that has to pay and bandwidth costs to download it from my email provider to my computer.

Isn't that how it works elsewhere?

If so, what is mind boggling about the US using the same system for other communications networks besides the internet?

Not really the same, you pay your ISP the same regardless of how much (or even if) you use email.

In most of the world, the caller used to pay (or maybe still pays in some places?) extra for calling a mobile number. This is easy to arrange and clear to the caller since mobile numbers are in a separate area code range. As I understand, in the US mobile numbers use the same area codes as fixed numbers, so this isn't possible. Receiving a call on a fixed number in the US is still free, I suppose?

Where I live I pay one bill, and that gives me unlimited bandwidth on my home fibre connection, mine and my wife's mobiles, and unlimited minutes and text messages. I've used the same free email provider for 20 years!

>what is mind boggling

What's your phone number? I'll txt you every 10 minutes for a month. And you'll pay for it. Like it or not. Mind boggling.

Correct, before 2011ish, you were charged for SENT and RECEIVIED messages. They often had "plans" where you would get 100sms/month or 250 sms/month, or a-la-carte. If you got an SMS spam, that counted to your allotment. SMS was so expensive compared to GChat/YahooMessenger/ICQ/etc that I didnt use it. But then you were on the "a-la-carte" plan of 10 or 25cents per message depending on your provider. Godforbid you sent an international SMS, those were 50cents a message and MMS (SMS with image) was 5o to 75 cents per message. My provider had no apparent way to not have the service, so you were essentially bullied into paying a-la-carte or bullied into a plan.

Friends would get angry at each other for sending a message, or breaking a sentence into two messages.

Again, I think it is INSANE that half the US legislature is trying to fault WhatsApp (100% no dollar cost) for being a "monopoly" given the situation that was fixed. https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/competition_in_dig...

The major problem with WhatsApp are that they joined forces with Zuckerberg.

Low sms pricing was on its way anyway since the cost of one byte sms was like 10 000 fold to ip data.

Yes that is how it used to work for sms. My first cell I had to convince people to not text me because I didn't pay the extra ~$35 a month for texting, which I think got you 500 monthly texts. Friends that didn't know or when it was "an emergency" would send a few texts and cost me extra couple bucks a month.

For calls you used to get a pleasure with a set amount of minutes, such as 200, 500, and 1000 per month. Most carriers let you "roll over" unused minutes and typically anything after 9pm didn't count. Though I remember cingular offering 7pm as the unlimited time if you paid an extra fee (don't remember the cost).

Slowly larger plans, then unlimited became more normal. I can of remember it becoming more cost effective the same time more people were getting internet through cable or dsl, instead of dial up. So 2002-2005ish?

> Though I remember cingular offering 7pm as the unlimited time if you paid an extra fee

I also seem to remember that if you started a call at (for example) 6:59pm, and it lasted an hour, all 60 minutes were "premium" minutes, not 1 "premium" and 59 "free/unlimited".

That just sounds like lazy programming becoming a feature for the chief revenue officer ;)

Call call = new Call(timestamp);

String hour = call.getHour();

if (hour < 19 hour && hour > 6) call.setRate("Premium"); //military time

If you started a call at 5:59 AM (or whenever it was) would the entire call be discounted?

somehow I doubt it. I don't remember, but I strongly doubt it.

this would have been 'revenue maximization', much like banks that will order your check deposits and outgoings to maximize any fees for bounced checks. Process the outgoings first, so if there's any fees to be had, you can rake 'em in.

LOL that would be like AOL in the 90s when people would log on and not log off...because it was so busy and because there was unlimited use pricing.

There was also the trick where "nights and weekends" minutes would start later and later. Initially they were so you werent doing long business calls on them. "Free Night" minutes would start at 5:30pm, then crept to 6pm then to 6:30pm and eventually to 7pm

Yes, even now you'll still see a notice in many places if they ask you to opt-in to receiving their text messages, notifying you that you may be charged for them. I guess some plans may still have limits.

And yep, they charged for calls you received too: You might get 500 minutes of talk time under a given plan, and incoming calls counted against that. I think my first cell phone plan in 2001 was about $50/month for 400 minutes, no texting because I couldn't afford a phone that supported it or the added cost in the plan.

Yes you used to pay for incoming calls as well. Now most plans are unlimited.

I guess the rationale was that there is no difference in the numbering plan in North America between cell phones and land lines. Calls to a cell phone cost more but the caller has no way to tell they’re calling one. So the caller pays the same to call a cell or a landline and the callee pays to receive the call too so that overall carriers get more money for completing allegedly more expensive cell minutes.

That's not true, there were definitely blocks of numbers which were and were not allocated to cell providers. Anyone implementing a "prefer landlines, fail over to cell" system was able to do so. Ask me how I know...

> Do they also charge you to receive phone calls haha?

Yes, that's how ridiculous the US and Canada systems are

The key word there is "competed".

Everyone is aware that it's not some benevolence of one company over another but actual market operation that brings down the prices. That's why Apple's ability to impose restrictions and take a 30% cut of unrelated transactions is concerning: there's no market for competing Apple stores.

(There have been telcos that tried to ban VOIP, but not in the West)

Decade ago I used 20GB monthly on 3G SIM. It was on plan mandated by Irish goverment to bring internet into rural areas. Sometimes you need regulations to break monopoly.

Fair, but what do you think of the discussion above. I lived thru all that. The discussion shows how bad things were. Then competition came in with amazing products. Now were' vilifying the competition for being too good.

I sort of remember somebody calculating back then that the total cost per byte of SMS messages exceeded the cost of the sending data through NASA's deep space network.

Yes! I hate the fact that iPhones don't update or backup over mobile. My unlimited mobile data is 300mbps compared to my fixed 100mbps. Why, oh why has Apple not allowed me the option of using my mobile data how I want to?

I've got my mom and grandpa on same mobile plans without any fixed connectivity and the only time their iPhones backup is when I visit and hotspot them. It's crazy!

That's because Apple cooperated with the cell carriers to help them reduce the data usage from iPhones so that the carriers would push iPhones to consumers.

Fwiw, this was a relatively minor point of cooperation compared to the concessions Apple has extracted from carriers.

Phones are smart enough to know that shared networks are mobile behind the scenes and treat them as metered data too. You have to go into the wifi settings to disable that feature and force it as unmetered (how that works and whether you can even do it depends on the phone vendor...)

It is possible to detect but it’s not necessarily detected by most OS features or most apps.

I'm curious, how does a phone know the WiFi is metered?

I believe this is what the comment is referencing: https://android.stackexchange.com/a/220981

There's also the Microsoft probe/beacon extension that exists.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/mo...

I don't know what iOS is doing, as they still didn't have proper data metering and limiting the last time I checked.

I have been thinking for many years, why doesn't Apple works with Carrier on this.

OS Update ( and may be App Update ) Download should happen during Midnight when everyone is asleep ( when the network is quiet ) and those Data should be exempt from their Data Allowance.

There are increasing amount of people with no WiFI or Wired Internet connection at home. ( Mostly because how convenient Mobile Phone and Network has become ), but they still need OS update. Software and Apps still take the view many features requires a WiFi.

5G will massively improve Network Capacity, but at the current rate of things it still take at least 4 years for most of the iPhone users to be 5G Ready. Which means we wont see any of these WiFi by default changes in the foreseeable future.

The reason is hopefully https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality. Otherwise you soon get a network with all the big player’s services being „free“. This makes competition with them even more difficult.

I remember being really annoyed that there was like a 20 or 50 MB limit for app downloads on the iPhone 3GS when I got it. I had unlimited 3G data, I didn't care how big the application was, just let me download it.

> I hope the us catches up at some point because software still doesn't even consider it an option - I have to actively fight all my settings so I can get updates, backups, streaming at high quality and the like because the OS considers they should always be done on wifi.

Interesting, because until recently I had the reverse problem. I had to fight everything on my phone (and occasionally, my system) to stop doing updates and backups over mobile connections, because those were always limited in Poland. I'm not sure if anyone truly does offer an unlimited plan here (other than bullshit "unlimited, but we'll throttle you down for the rest of the month after a gigabyte or three"). Bottomline: it's not just US. I think most of the world doesn't have ubiquitous unlimited mobile data.

But it‘s not just about unlimited data. I wasnt able to download a podcast bigger than 200MB during vacation, because it requires you to have a wifi connection. It just doesnt let you.

Don't buy an iPhone if you want to be able to make these kinds of decisions for yourself...?

I’m not throwing shade but I’m genuinely curious what the infrastructure cost per user is when comparing Europe and US and Canada. Surely it might be part of the problem.

The US does have higher labor costs than most of Europe, but lax regulation of special access service (backhaul) is probably more of a factor.

huh? What's your source?

Probably more down to limited competition in the US, honestly. Comparing costs across Western Europe, it’s hard to make the case that it’s an infrastructure cost problem; Germany (dense) is more expensive than Ireland (non-dense) which is more expensive than the UK (dense) which is more expensive than Finland (very non-dense).

Thanks. Yeah that does sound plausible. Canada suffers from anticompetition too.

Well there are multiple factor involve, so population density isn't always of the main concern. The main cost of infrastructure is actually the rent, of any land / property cost required for the Cell. In Countries where Mobile Network already owns the land for these Cell Site / Tower that were paid and amortised during the 2G / 3G / 4G era. They are now essentially free. In Cities, that depends on rent and property pricing, unless you have government mandate or directly involved like in China. It is also dependent on the fear level of radiation in the culture / nation. People will protest to get rid of Cell Site in their own area ( While at the same time demand their Mobile Phone to have perfect reception ). Which also drives up the cost of finding and setting up Cell Sites. ( Or they are willing to put up with the risk of radiation if you pay them more ).

Do you consider the cost of frequency bands a part of infrastructure costs, or is that separate?

https://www.dw.com/en/fnord/a-49168657 was the top hit just now when I searched for 5G auctions. I've no idea how much telcos pay in other countries, but the top six hits for my search were all about Germany, which at least doesn't suggest that Finland is raking in record sums from its auctions.

It's probably not a big factor. If we look at last time round, Ireland, a country of 5 million people, got 450 million in the LTE spectrum auction. Germany, a country of 83 million people, got 5.1 billion. So per capita the Irish spectrum was almost twice as expensive as the German spectrum, and yet mobile data is generally cheaper in Ireland (despite lower density, generally higher labour costs, and other factors that would lead you to expect it would be more expensive in Ireland if cost of data was actually determined by input costs).

When it comes to it, 6.5bn _sounds_ like a lot, but it's only 78 euro per capita, and that's buying the telcos permanent assets which will be useful for decades to come.

Maybe it used to be? I don't know, but not anymore. Mint Mobile will get you unlimited talk/text and 3GB data for $15/month, no extra fees. They're an MVNO using T-Mobile's network. If T-Mobile can make money wholesaling their network to Mint, and Mint can make money selling plans at that price, there's no reason for a "normal" plan to run $70 before taxes and fees. Even Mint's unlimited plan is only $30, less than half of what TMobile has.

Typically the catch with MVNOs (and prepaid products under the main brand) is that they don't roam; you get only one operator's towers. In urban areas this is not a big deal but if you like road trips it can matter.

The over way around is also annoying: what if you have a limited connection but you are on WiFi? Say, you share from another phone using hotspot feature.

Some tools allow to control this, but others will update the shit out of your mobile plan as soon as it can see wifi.

On the other hand I mostly like how roaming was solved in Android phones I had. It allowed me to choose which apps can use it and constantly monitored current usage of each.

That's odd, I feel like I'm always fighting my phone to make it stop using data. It's really my top complaint about smartphone apps.

That's how the apps make their money.

Which is a problem, because honest people make money in exchange for providing a valuable service - not by stealing your resources from you to steal your data from you, and make money off giving that to malicious third parties.

How much does it cost you and what's the average speed?

I just made one of those online speed tests and it came up at ~45mb/s. Not sure if that's representative, but the important answer is that it's good enough that I never feel it's a bottleneck.

As for price, I've got 3 mobile lines with infinite data plus my home wifi at 600mbps and the whole thing costs 100€/month.

Which service do you use?

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