US has the Most Expensive Mobile Data Plans in the World

AlphaAtlas

AlphaAtlas

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According to a report by the Finnish research firm Rewheel, the United States has a higher "mean gigabyte price" for mobile broadband than any other country on Earth. Only Canada come's close to the US's position, while most other industrialized countries apparently offer far cheaper prices. In addition, the report highlights that United States appears to be a competitive market, with four major mobile network operators, but price scattergrams more closely resemble an uncompetitive market. Thanks to Motherboard for spotting the report.

In October 2018 the US became the most expensive country among the 41 EU28 and OECD countries. In April 2018 it was the 3rd most expensive ahead of Cyprus and Canada.
 
MacLeod said:
We probably also have the best and most extensive networks in the world too. You gotta work pretty hard to find a spot that doesn't have cell service these days. That's part of what you're paying for.
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Depends. Bad service all up and down Alaska. It's getting better though.
 
Not surprised. It should be better though - but when you look at the size of what needs to be covered in relation to other countries (when a good chunk of the States are larger than most countries) with population centers all over the place... well, it's not cheap.
 
vegeta535 said:
Honestly there is no reason other then greed that we still don't have true unlimited data now for a decent price.
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But you wanting unlimited data for cheap is not greed right? I love you kids with your total lack of self awareness. Same people who push these agenda studies are the same ones that bend over backwards to justify insanely high European petroleum prices per liter as "just how it should be".
 
MacLeod said:
We probably also have the best and most extensive networks in the world too. You gotta work pretty hard to find a spot that doesn't have cell service these days. That's part of what you're paying for.
Click to expand...
Yet for a vast majority of people they don't need it, so you're basically paying high prices so Joe Blow who lives in the Appalachian mountains can get a call. Hurray!

That said, if it's not absolutely critical you have "unlimited" data MVNOs are where you should go for cell phone plans, $12/month per 1gig shared, meaning 2 phones that use less than 1gig a month only costs $12, 3 phones that use less than 1gig a month $12. Ironically all the bullshit taxes and fees that are tacked on cost more than $12, but there's no way around those. The thing is the "big guys" AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, etc advertise so damn hard most people don't even know MVNOs are an option (MetroPCS and Cricket are probably the two biggest ones around here, and they really aren't that cheap either), and as a result they "happily" pay $40-70 a month PER LINE.
 
PaulP said:
If you look at areal coverage, the US has everybody else beat. For such a large country, there is amazingly good coverage.
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The problem is that the charts aren't accurate IMO. I know of several locations around my area alone that are listed as LTE covered but when you try to actually use data on your device the towers are so over-subscribed (have no idea if that is the right term) that you can't even load the [H] forum page let alone something like Facebook and Youtube is flat out dead. Here's a good example, the Providence area in Mount Juliet TN just east of Nashville using AT&T. Had a similar experience with Verizon when I lived in Houston, TX and the maps said I had full LTE coverage but could barely get a single bar standing outside and dropped calls constantly.

The maps that make US coverage look so great are false advertising at best and down right lies in my experience.
 

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farscapesg1 said:
The maps that make US coverage look so great are false advertising at best and down right lies in my experience.
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Always wondered how those coverage maps were made, I mean my in-laws live out on a farm in the sticks, but the coverage map for Verizon (I think) shows that it should get decent 4g coverage, like not just on the edge either. The area they live in is a farm, so it's flat in all directions for literally miles, and there aren't a whole lot of buildings either to block signal, yet 4g? They can't get so much as a phone call. Hell even the guy at the Verizon store is like "yeah you're not going to get any signal out there"... yet there has to be some truth to those coverage maps, even as misrepresented as they are... like at one moment a blip of 4g signal got through once so therefore it's "good", or they drive around with a truck with a 20 foot tall antenna to receive signal? Or something.
 
Hatriot said:
But you wanting unlimited data for cheap is not greed right?
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Nope it isn’t greed to want affordable unlimited data given that the internet is in fact not finite. Bandwidth is finite, and we get what we pay for but applying data caps is just asinine.

But yes, go ahead and act as though it’s just “entitled kids” as opposed to people with an actual functioning brain.
 
We let these government protected oligopolies run the show. What else was going to happen?

With a lot of things in America we are now worst of both worlds between kingdom run or market competition run.

Corporation's must face unrestrained competition or the local peoples kingdom should run it as a service.

Think of it as arbys vs your power and gas company. Either extreme would be better then this clusterF hybrid. Healthcare and tech are in same boat. Government protected oligopolies.

Personally I'd rather it be done at as low level of government as possible. Some counties need it as a service some cities need open competition.

One size fits all will never work well.
 
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vegeta535 said:
Honestly there is no reason other then greed that we still don't have true unlimited data now for a decent price.
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For wireline I would agree. Wireless for a footprint as wide as the US and with how many users there are, there needs to be some kind of tier plan for data as the network just cant handle it yet. Not to mention the constant reinvestment for LTE/5G and whatever the future holds. As I work in this industry, I can tell you rolling out cell towers and the constant research for getting better signal to customers is increasingly more expensive due to regulation and supplier cost.

Wireline can bury everything and have a much more stable traffic pattern. One big football game or city event can F up cell service balance and require mobile trucks to be sent out to shore up the infrastructure. Remember, cell towers have to go on government or private sector property. That requires a lot of paperwork and permissions. Wireline buries in already established infrastructure and are done.
 
PaulP said:
If you look at areal coverage, the US has everybody else beat. For such a large country, there is amazingly good coverage.
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yep. I think size of network it's obvious we are good. Speed/stability/cost is what I would argue goes into what would be considered Best. From what I hear it's constantly fast and amazing over there, but it could be a very much grass is greener point of view. Something I've sadly learned long ago is when you are consistently at the front like the USA is...people find the oddest things to note that the US isn't one of the best at without taking into consideration our size, population, etc.

Like mentioned above, Korean is the size of Indiana. It's really easy to understand why we might not be as fast as it would be a lot easier for Korea to implement upgrades compared to us.
 
farscapesg1 said:
The problem is that the charts aren't accurate IMO. I know of several locations around my area alone that are listed as LTE covered but when you try to actually use data on your device the towers are so over-subscribed (have no idea if that is the right term) that you can't even load the [H] forum page let alone something like Facebook and Youtube is flat out dead. Here's a good example, the Providence area in Mount Juliet TN just east of Nashville using AT&T. Had a similar experience with Verizon when I lived in Houston, TX and the maps said I had full LTE coverage but could barely get a single bar standing outside and dropped calls constantly.

The maps that make US coverage look so great are false advertising at best and down right lies in my experience.
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This is very true in Tallahassee Florida
 
Sounds like you have never been to east TN. There used to be a Sprint store here that could not get service in the store, you had to go a ways out in the parking lot.....how do you sell phones????? damn good salesman.
 
Hum maybe normalise those costs with average income and so on, then the results and analysis would be more relevant.
I mean, i can have similar prices to those in the US but my income can be some 5x-10x lower for the same job.
 
This article is wrong atleast for Israel , says 30euro for 100gb , its more like half that 15euro for 100gb.
In general i noticed U.S prices for internet and broadband in general are very expensive.
 
Templar_X said:
Hum maybe normalise those costs with average income and so on, then the results and analysis would be more relevant.
I mean, i can have similar prices to those in the US but my income can be some 5x-10x lower for the same job.
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Excellent point.
 
Well, part of me says, there's a vast square mileage issue here as well as number of cells to deal with, in addition to the number of phones on the network at once. A small European country with a relatively small population is no comparison to the thousands of square miles and total population of the USA. All that coupled with the vast amounts of equipment to handle it.

Then again, another part of me says with all that population and user levels, the costs of such equipment is more than covered. So the price of said usage is merely what people are willing to pay for it. If people pay $100 a month, then they will charge $100 a month. Supply and demand. Move to other carriers with lower prices, and the larger carriers would have reason to lower their prices to compete.

Somehow I think it's a bit of both.
 
A. We're spread out over a much larger area than the rest of these countries, with lower population density. That makes it much more expensive to maintain coverage for wireless networks like these.
B. This country is usually the first to adopt new systems like this, meaning that they're at the beginning of the production cycle. This makes it much more expensive to implement.

Companies have to recover such costs, or they'll not be able to continue operating. It's a simple economic mechanism. They also have to get some profit or they can't get anyone to invest in them to allow them to expand services and give what the people want.

Do some take more profit than they deserve? Absolutely, but they can't do too much or they would lose business to competitors. If you think you're being charged too much and your wireless company is taking more profit than they deserve, switch providers. I did. I've been through them all, from Sprint to AT&T to Verizon to T-mobile, leaving them all because they were charging more than they should have for services, and I just started with Google's service a year ago because they were much cheaper. I absolutely hate it when someone stays with AT&T for years, and then complains that they're a corrupt company and doing these things because the government lets them. It's not true. It's exactly customers like that that are letting them get away with it. If you don't like a company, don't do business with them. Duh.

Using government to change things is asinine. It merely causes this sort of thing to happen more. The laws get passed, government positions get power, and then someone who has only interest in their own power pursues the position. They then turn around and use that power to hand over that power to someone else who supports them. Every single government power gets abused after a fairly short time, turning everything the opposite of what the people originally intend. To fix this: stop allowing the government to continue taking our power away from us.
 
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MacLeod said:
We probably also have the best and most extensive networks in the world too. You gotta work pretty hard to find a spot that doesn't have cell service these days. That's part of what you're paying for.
Click to expand...

I was about to tell you you were wrong, but then I sat down and thought about it.

It's not 2008 anymore. The networks really have come a long way in the last 10 years.

10 years ago I would have said our service was crap compared to the rest of the world, and that paradigm is almost burned into my head at this point, but honestly, lately it's been pretty damned good.

I was in Brazil 3 years ago, and that definitely wasn't the case there.

I think a combination of high labor costs and the need to expand the networks to the more sparsely populated areas drives the cost in the U.S.
 
That_Sound_Guy said:
For wireline I would agree. Wireless for a footprint as wide as the US and with how many users there are, there needs to be some kind of tier plan for data as the network just cant handle it yet. Not to mention the constant reinvestment for LTE/5G and whatever the future holds. As I work in this industry, I can tell you rolling out cell towers and the constant research for getting better signal to customers is increasingly more expensive due to regulation and supplier cost.

Wireline can bury everything and have a much more stable traffic pattern. One big football game or city event can F up cell service balance and require mobile trucks to be sent out to shore up the infrastructure. Remember, cell towers have to go on government or private sector property. That requires a lot of paperwork and permissions. Wireline buries in already established infrastructure and are done.
Click to expand...
Then why are they trying to force caps on landline down our throats now? We have the tech now to do it. They don't want too cause why should they? So they can pay out billions to roll the tech out for us to have better/cheaper service? It is pure greed.
 
Verge said:
Korea is the size indiana... no crap their network will be cheaper to build.
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Alot of people dont take this into consideration when they try to compare the US to other countries. It's easy to do things easier/cheaper when everyone is crammed into a tiny space.
 
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Looking at this I'm starting to wonder if it is time to switch carriers again.

When I switched to Google Project Fi, the price was great compared to the other plans out there.

At $20 per line + $10 per gigabyte, fully prorated (f I use 582MB, I pay $5.82). I loved having a $30 phone bill every month, which was a great deal.

I know the per GB price was a little higher than available elsewhere, but it still made sense as I don't use much data. I'm usually at home, at work or somewhere else I have wifi, or I am driving, and not using much data, so even while I am a relatively heavy phone user, I rarely use much more than a gig per month.

I wonder if there are better deals now, that still have decent coverage. I'm not willing to switch to Boost or Metro or one of those ghetto MVNO's though.
 
Special.K said:
Alot of people dont take this into consideration when they try to compare the US to other countries. It's easy to do things easier/cheaper when everyone is crammed into a tiny space.
Click to expand...

Even in the U.S ~85% of people live in urban areas.

It's the country bumpkins who are ruining everything for the rest of us :p If we could just ignore cell coverage in flyover country, the prices would be much more reasonable for the rest of us :p
 
sfsuphysics said:
Yet for a vast majority of people they don't need it, so you're basically paying high prices so Joe Blow who lives in the Appalachian mountains can get a call. Hurray!

That said, if it's not absolutely critical you have "unlimited" data MVNOs are where you should go for cell phone plans, $12/month per 1gig shared, meaning 2 phones that use less than 1gig a month only costs $12, 3 phones that use less than 1gig a month $12. Ironically all the bullshit taxes and fees that are tacked on cost more than $12, but there's no way around those. The thing is the "big guys" AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, etc advertise so damn hard most people don't even know MVNOs are an option (MetroPCS and Cricket are probably the two biggest ones around here, and they really aren't that cheap either), and as a result they "happily" pay $40-70 a month PER LINE.
Click to expand...

Most of the prepaid options include taxes and fees in the monthly prices. Most of the MVNOs don't have money to advertise; all the ones that advertise end up owned by their carrier (ex: Virgin Mobile and Boost got bought by Spring; Metro is owned by T-Mobile; Cricket is owned by ATT). A lot of the major carrier's direct prepaid plans are decent enough these days; with a quota of 'high speed' data and then slower data after that. So many people are still worried about overages that they get a ginormous plan; if you get a plan with slow data after the cap, it's not a big deal most of the time. (Some people _do_ need/use high speed all the time though, they can pay for it if they want)
 
I can give one datapoint in confirmation--I just got back from a business trip to Australia. To get coverage there, I paid $10AUD (about $7.20 USD) for a SIM card and unlimited talk/text + 1GB data with one of the 3 big telco's there.
sfsuphysics said:
That said, if it's not absolutely critical you have "unlimited" data MVNOs are where you should go for cell phone plans, $12/month per 1gig shared, meaning 2 phones that use less than 1gig a month only costs $12, 3 phones that use less than 1gig a month $12. Ironically all the bullshit taxes and fees that are tacked on cost more than $12, but there's no way around those. The thing is the "big guys" AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, etc advertise so damn hard most people don't even know MVNOs are an option (MetroPCS and Cricket are probably the two biggest ones around here, and they really aren't that cheap either), and as a result they "happily" pay $40-70 a month PER LINE.
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What MVNO are you talking about that's that cheap?
 
freeloader1969 said:
I pay $40 CDN for 2GB of data. You mean to tell me Americans pay more? Who knew...
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The means are offset by al the recent 10gb plans with really shit coverage here.

I can get 10gb for 40$ that only works in major cities. The drive from Toronto to Barrie, on freedom mobile, would be hell.

I had a cell from all major carriers for a day and did some testing, returned the worst ones with my 3 day/ 90 min/ 10mb cooling off clause.
 
Arcygenical said:
The means are offset by al the recent 10gb plans with really shit coverage here.

I can get 10gb for 40$ that only works in major cities. The drive from Toronto to Barrie, on freedom mobile, would be hell.

I had a cell from all major carriers for a day and did some testing, returned the worst ones with my 3 day/ 90 min/ 10mb cooling off clause.
Click to expand...

Last I was in Canada years ago I remember just about everything being Rogers. Has that improved/changed since?
 
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