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Comment by jcattle | Hacker News Reader

Where are you and how much do you pay?

Cheapest plan here in Romania is 75 GB for 2 euro/month, then the speed is limited to 1 Mbps.

Speed isn’t great, but that’s about 25% of “full speed” use over the course of a month, 600k seconds. Considering sleep is about 30% of a month as well, and assuming you’re not on a phone all day while working, it might be hard to hit that cap. Speed isn’t great, to reiterate. The cost is 30x cheaper than what I pay, and my speed, at my house, is 10mbps. No cap, but I use like 5gb/month.

Or am I way off and you hit the cap every month?

I believe parent meant that 1 mbps is the speed AFTER you hit 75 GB per month.

Oh wow, that's an insane deal.

Yes, that what I meant. The 75 GB are unlimited, "best effort". When the 75 GB are consumed, speed is limited to 1 Mbps with no other limit or cost.

More datapoints in USD (Chile) from checking various companies:

150GB-200GB ~15 USD

400GB-450GB ~19-20 USD

Unlimited (without throttling) ~21-27 USD

This is the price after the new client ~20% discount expires (generally 6 months). The unlimited and higher tier usually include stuff like Amazon Prime Videos subscriptions, local IPTV or roaming gigs. All plans obviously include calls and texting.

Data point: I'm in the US on an old pre-paid plan that gets me 5GB per month at fast speed, dropping down to unlimited "2G" speed after that cap is hit, which I've done only twice in the past 12 years. $30 per month, and I always "bring my own device" (ie, I only buy unlocked phones, not through the carrier). I haven't shopped around for a while.

You should shop around! Some of the MVNOs are offering unlimited fast data at a similar price these days, and something similar to what you have now for cheaper.

I second this! I switched to mint recently. They are offering unlimited data including hotspot for $15/mo for up to a year if you prepay. I think then it goes to their standard rate which is $30/mo for unlimited, or $15/mo for 5gb.

Not sponsored or anything, just a happy customer.

Yeah I'm on Verizon (via their Visible MVNO) and its ~$23/mo for unlimited data. Zero complaints on coverage or speeds.

Visible here, as well. I've been paying $25.00 per month, flat (no extra fees/taxes) for years.

It's perhaps worth noting for others that there are 3 different tiers of service with Visible, ranging from $25 to $45 -- although all 3 are "unlimited."

(I can't tell the difference between them, myself, with my phone in my use.)

MVNO's for life. Weird how they haven't cannibalize their providers yet with such pricing.

They are often owned by the providers themselves.

Yeah, I feel like the major providers must be coasting on people who just dont bother looking into it and ares till on the same $100 plan they've been on forever (this was me until recently) and people who really want new flagship phones all the time but can't afford them outright, so they finance with a postpaid plan.

I'm in WA - I pay $20/mo for 15GB on Mint Mobile. I used to do $15/mo for 5GB but kept sometimes bumping into it (tethering and stuff) so I just bit the bullet and upgraded.

USA, paying $15/month for the cheapest T-Mobile plan. I only use a few hundred MB per month typically.

I got Connect by T-Mobile a few years ago when it was $10/mo prepaid ($11.03 with tax), and I am grandfathered in. It has a hard cap of 1GB/mo, then nothing. Then I got Hello Helium with a physical SIM on my exercise phone (out in the rain, at the gym) and it is completely free with ... wait for it ... 3GB/mo of data. Go figure. The Hello Helium app used to require location permission on at all times, but they eliminated that.

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