The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020) - vanilla-almond https://www.cable.co.uk/mobiles/worldwide-data-pricing/ <comment><AUTHOR> Not all Internet experiences are equal though. 1 GB of internet in Pakistan ($0.69) ≠ 1 GB of internet in Canada ($12.55). I would gladly trade my Pakistani internet plan for my Canadian internet plan.

Last month, when I was in Pakistan, my experience was:

\+ highly censored to the point where even services like Cloudflare's edge- node's within the country were being MiTM-ed by the censors [0];

\+ I couldn't use "any mode of communication such as VPN by means of which communication becomes hidden or encrypted is a violation of PTA regulations" in the words of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authoruty (PTA) —Pakistan's FCC-equivalent. I asked them if TLS/SSL was included but they never tweeted back; and

\+ I didn't have access to services like Paypal, and when a service hadn't rolled out "globally", it wasn't available to me.

Oh, and while I had "unlimited" internet, I was subject to my carrier's "Fair Use Policy" which had an unspecified maximum download limit after which your internet would be cut off. This was reported by a lot of people during the initial work-from-home boost during the pandemic when home-data-usage spiked.

Now that I'm in Canada, my internet is nearly unrestricted.

Edit: previous said my ISP restricted IRC. Just rechecked, it no longer does.

[0]: [https://twitter.com/amingilani/status/1283448960666009601](https://twitter.com/amingilani/status/1283448960666009601)

<comment><USER2> Yes, but you are clearly cherrypicking data.

1Gb of internet in Australia ($0.68) is fantastic value compared to 1Gb of internet in Canada ($12.55). Australia's mobile data network is competitive on quality, and is amongst the fastest in the world.

<comment><USER3> > Australia's mobile data network is competitive on quality, and is amongst > the fastest in the world.

Really? That hasn't been my experience — and granted I've never lived in Australia or spent much time out of Sydney but I was there for 10 days in February and even though I paid for 4G Plus or whatever Optus calls LTE, speeds weren't even comparable to what I can get in the US and were truly behind what I got in Seoul (where I was right after I was in Sydney). The only research I've seen that indicates Australia is amongst the fastest comes from research that is based on maximum speeds, not average speeds.

I can appreciate that Australia has robust cellular networks (assuming the user doesn't live somewhere where they are forced to use satellite), in part because home internet speeds are so poor, but I wouldn't put it in even the top 10 of parts of the world I've visited for internet speeds.

<comment><USER4> > whatever Optus calls LTE

Optus is terrible. It's worth paying a slight premium for Telstra 4G. I'm on a 45gb cell phone plan for AUD$60 and it works everywhere, even in tunnels or remote areas, with speeds that shame my Fibre To The Building connection (though not in latency). My work laptop uses Optus and regularly loses connection despite being in an inner city suburb and close to a cell tower.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If I understand the methodology correctly this study seems to penalize unlimited plans quite a lot. In the linked methodology pdf they specify that the price for 1 GB of data for unlimited plans is calculated by dividing by the average data usage per user but limited plans are divided by the limit.

For example in Finland almost all plans are unlimited and users regularly use a lot of mobile data. Average monthly use is 34 GB and median 6 GB [0]. The cheapest mobile plan I can find is 9.90€/month for unlimited data at 1 Mbit/s [1]. Dividing it by 6 GB median data use gives $1.95 for 1 GB which is close to the their reported minimum price of $1.75. However if this plan was instead marketed with 100 GB monthly cap they would have divided it by 100 GB instead giving a much cheaper price.

[0] [https://blog.telegeography.com/finns-lead-the-way-in- mobile-...](https://blog.telegeography.com/finns-lead-the-way-in-mobile-data- usage) [1] [https://elisa.fi/kauppa/puhelinliittymat](https://elisa.fi/kauppa/puhelinliittymat)

<comment><USER6> We also have "unlimited" plans in Spain, however at +40€ typically, and under "fair use" use clauses.

<comment><USER7> The question is always what fair use is. Phone contracts with unlimited data set the fair use clause in Austria to 1.5TB a month and have no such limitation for data only sim cards (home use).

On the other hand unlimited in Germany often means ISDN speeds after 50GB.

<comment><USER8> I live in Switzerland and we have quite a lot of unlimited plans without speed limit after a certain amount of data. Also the price in relation to income is not that high. If I compare it to Germany, where you can get no real unlimited plan and very often have a bad signal even in cities, and also in relationship to the income there, Germany seems to earn a place much lower on the list. So this comparison seems a bit odd, and should be divided into prepaid plans with limited data packages and unlimited plans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Israeli here, pay 7$ for 200GB of data (well I pay 14$ for 400GB and use one as home internet backup because it is cheap).

It used to be quite expensive here at around $100/mo for 10GB but the government broke up the monopoly and forced competition into the market by making existing players share infrastructure. We went up from main 3 providers to around 10 and prices dropped sharply.

My government screws up quite a lot in my opinion but credit is due and that reform was quite successful.

<comment><USER10> In Israel the caller pays for a mobile call, while in other countries the owner of the mobile pays.

This one change alone is enough to explain quite a bit of the disparity in prices.

I'm actually surprised the source article makes no mention of this.

<comment><USER11> I do not understand this. Does that mean in israel the callee pays (as well, or completely) and in other countries (only) the caller?

Or does it mean you share mobile phones and in other countries the owner of the mobile phone pays while in Israel the callers somehow identify on the phone?

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure I understand what the GP is trying to say (especially since the article focuses on mobile Internet, rather than calls).

Just to clarify: only the caller pays for outbound calls in Israel. The receiver never pays for receiving a call. This is also true to all EU countries as far as I'm aware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One of the things that frustrates me about apps/web is that most people have no idea what individual apps/sites are "costing" them. Without additional tools and watching Cellular Data settings like a hawk, stupid things can _slurp up_ your data plan.

Entire books could be sent to people in a sane format but a 3-line web page wrapped in garbage takes dozens of megabytes? An app that does "very little" is consuming 100 MB in no time?

Worse, no one seems to want to "pay" for apps anymore (demanding everything be free) but then they blow $10 on data because their "free" app is routinely shoving unnecessary amounts of data to their device.

We need some _hard_ limits on data; if I give your app 100 K, you shouldn't be able to use any more. Furthermore, the default data limits should be very low (with big scary dialogs appearing when apps request more) to discourage lazy designs that offload their true costs onto unsuspecting consumers.

<comment><USER14> At $35 per gigabyte, visiting a badly written website could cost $0.5 just for opening a home page.

And it's not like people don't have FOSS tools to optimize images, or read for free on how to make browser load smaller or different format (like webp) of images on smaller screen devices.

Often times developers just don't care because it doesn't cost them anything.

So disabling all images in the browser is a must if one doesn't want to pay for grabage stock photos, and experience suffers on all websites as a result. I don't really consider sending all browsing data to Google by using their image optimization proxy as an alternative.

<comment><USER15> Or you could limit the size of media elements [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site- switches#no-...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site-switches#no- large-media-elements)

<comment><USER14> That probably only works if the remote sends the content-length header, right? Or will it also terminate requests that simply keep loading past the 50kiB or whatever mark?

Anyway, looks like a reason to use Firefox on mobile. :)

<comment><USER15> > That probably only works if the remote sends the content-length header, > right?

Correct: "If the media elements do not have Content-Length header present, then this switch will fail to block the said media elements by size."

Source: [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site- switches#no-...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site-switches#no- large-media-elements)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The Great Reversal -How America Gave Up on Free Markets by Thomas Philippon [https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674237544](https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674237544)

The Economist: [https://www.economist.com/finance-and- economics/2019/12/12/a...](https://www.economist.com/finance-and- economics/2019/12/12/are-anti-competitive-firms-killing-american-innovation)

Article by Philippon: [https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/europe- not...](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/europe-not-america- home-free-market/600859/)

"Chapter 8 How European Markets Became Free" Is funny story how EU accidentally tricked itself into creating competitive markets for products and services.

EU governments have tradition of protecting their own economies and shaping their industrial policy as they have done in the past. Distrust between countries led to the only working solution: independent regulators and fair markets. Ruhr Authority in 1949 was already independent from from the control of any European country but it took several decades for Europe to create broad, independent, and powerful regulators.

And the results are clear: EU has state aid rules for example, the US does not. In the US corporations have incentive to shop around for subsidies, pitting one state against another and leading to inefficient outcomes.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've been amazed at the effects of this every time I've visited India. With data so cheap, social media use is prolific - people share videos and stream all day long - and public WiFi is far less commonplace since essentially /everybody/ owns phones with almost unlimited data plans.

India still has a long way to go in terms of social equality, poverty and breaking up the caste system, but providing fast, cheap Internet for all is undoubtedly a great first step.

<comment><USER18> Sorry, But I have seen the opposite effect of cheap internet there. People spend lot of time in spread hatred, fake news and animosity using internet service.

I have seen this first hand with so many of my educated friends and relatives who were reasonable folks before internet boom and now they come across caricature of dimwit person. With so much information available on internet they still chose to pick lowest quality sources.

<comment><USER19> This might be true (it appears we have similar people in the western world). However, I think you're being downvoted because it seems you're advocating less internet access in the hopes of more equality.

It brings up an interesting question, though: Assuming for the moment that internet access actually increases hatred - is more hate towards a group a good tradeoff for empowering them by giving them internet access as well?

<comment><USER18> You are right. I could have worded differently to not imply that less internet is better. Point is that better internet connectivity lead to better social outcomes at large is wishful thinking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm Italian and I pay ~9 euros per month for 130 GB of uncapped 4G mobile Internet, so I can't really complain about it. Some new offers I've seen are as low as 6.99 for 100 GB + infinite calls. A few days ago I told this to a friend of mine who lives in the UK and he was shocked because he pays a lot more for like 2GB a month.

I guess healthy competition can really be good for consumers when it works as it is supposed to.

<comment><USER21> Meanwhile, Greece with its telecom cartel is a few spots from last, with such good company as Turkmenistan, the Virgin Islands and, for some reason, Canada.

I might as well get a SIM shipped to me from Italy every three months or so, it'll be lots cheaper.

<comment><USER22> What's more funny to the Greek mobile internet comedy (or maybe drama for us greeks) is that before 1 year, after the elections, the new prime minister asked nicely the telecom operators to offer cheaper mobile internet. The operators agreed of course.

The result? There were some mocking offers in the form of double GB for the same price right after the meeting (ie instead of 10 euros/1 gb you'd get 10 euros/2 gb). After 1 year nothing more. The telecom operators think that we are in the 2000 where mobile internet is something that only company executives need...

I think the time has come for the government to stop asking nicely for cheap mobile internet and force the operators to align with the rest of Europe.

<comment><USER23> What's the possibility of buying a cheap data SIM-card in Bulgaria (or somewhere else) and using the EU-roaming laws to get cheap data in Greece?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This data is worthless and likely very skewed by the use of mean prices instead of the median, while not displaying the standard deviation.

Take France, for instance. 42 plans. 0.11 for the cheapest. 108 for the most expensive. How the hell are they finding 0.81 average, BTW? Same with South Korea.

Also, in my experience, the bigger the plan, the less expensive it is, so they should have sorted "per 1 GB/month plan" or controlled for that issue somehow.

<comment><USER25> > How the hell are they finding 0.81 average

Probably by using median as you suggested? Because it's impossible for mean to be less than 2.68.

<comment><USER26> Which is not reality, if there were 1$, 100$ and 200$ you wouldn't say the avg person would pay 100.

<comment><USER27> Thats not what they said. If it was the average, the sum of all plans (42 @ 0.81) would be 34.02 which is less than the most expensive plan at 108.

<comment><USER26> Avg would be 100.3, but médian would be 100.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Taiwanese here, I think Taiwan's data is inaccurate. Our mobile carriers have a "unlimited" plan, which you can actually use unlimited data. The price of the plan varies a lot, but my unlimited plan only costs 499TWD/m(16.9USD/m), and I use nearly 50GB per mounth. But I'd like to mention there is no such as unlimited texts here, only unlimited data. I think this is why SNS is preferred over SMS and iMessage.

<comment><USER29> Hmm, that's interesting. Why is there no unlimited texting?

<comment><USER20> Here in Italy lots of plans actually stopped offering unlimited SMS because nobody uses them anymore. I think I must have sent less than 10 SMS in the last 5 years or so.

<comment><USER30> SMS is the backup if all of the data using messengers fail. They generally don't.

In Romania everyone is on Whatsapp. It has basically replaced text messages.

Actually, any widespread messaging app is better than the original text messages. And don't even get me started on MMS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This study is great, as it points out huge disparities that are more than often not justified.

People have mentioned it and sometimes opening to competition have made huge changes on the market. Take France for example, people used to pay around $10/GB not so long ago. A new player came on the market and yes, didn't have the same quality of service at first, but clearly cut the price and now a GB is 10x cheaper. Better, they now provide unlimited data for ~20$/month (!!). As some have also mentioned, unlimited is something clearly missing as it can make the price/GB completely meaningless in some cases. I currently live in Georgia and at the moment there are plans for ~1.5$/week for truly unlimited data - speed is also great with ~50-100mbps and I live in a metropolitan, dense area.

A last point is roaming. This is where I believe most unfairness lies with big profits and ridiculous disparities. Some carries will charge $100+/GB for roaming. Sometimes could even be $1000+(!!!) if you didn't think of buying a plan. But in the other hand, using my French simcard (the one with unlimited data for $20) I can get 25GB in most countries in the world (that include all Europe, USA, Canada, China, Australia, etc.) And that's sometimes cheaper than local plans. Sometimes even better as it gives me the ability to switch between networks when coverage is low.

I know from friends who have been working in the industry that, prior the shake in France, carriers used to sit back and relax while making tremendous profits. There has been cases of illegal agreements between the 3 "competitors"/actors. Having a new actor and real competitor breaking the prices didn't slow down network quality and growth, btw.

Why not letting carriers from other countries propose roaming plans to people worldwide, regardless of your country of residence? That would become interesting...

<comment><USER32> When that new operator started (Free Mobile), it had had already revolutionized fixed internet.

Then the operators went to the state to cry there and say thousands of people will lose their work. They cried, cried, saw that they would not get anything so they came back home and lowered their prices to align with Free Mobile.

There were no massive layoffs.

This is one of there rare cases where the French slowness to change was different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> How do they measure unlimited plans? I've never had to pay attention to traffic metering since in Finland virtually all operators offer unlimited data.

I seem to use about 100GB a month at worst which would put the price at around 30 cents per GB on my rather overspecced 150Mb/s 4g plan.

<comment><USER34> I don't know, it seems stuff like this are outliers. My country has the same - 1GBps/5G plan and when in middle of nowhere (like in vacation with kids at their grandparents in the country side), missing a broadband connection we all use hotspot from mobile, with easily using 50GB/day at least. And for 5 euro/month subscription that gives like 5 / (30 x 50) => 0.(3) cents per GB.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm in Denmark. I have "3" as a phone provider and have essentially an unlimited plan for 30usd, with free roaming in most of the world. My home internet is served as an IOT plan with a "300MB" plan that in practice the network owned by the old national provider don't cap, so I hit 1TB on 4G with a monthly fee of ~4.7USD. I know many people who does the same. The US really seem like in need of some good old competition.

<comment><USER36> Could a random person show up in Denmark and buy this plan? That sounds amazing

<comment><USER37> I don't know about Denmark in particular, but in other EU countries they stipulate you have to spend the majority of time/data in the "home" country or the expensive roaming fees apply.

Not idea whether they actually check/apply this though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I am wondering how did they get their data especially for Switzerland. Here most of the plans have unlimited GB, so getting the price of a single one is quite tricky.

Also, looking at the price for the most expensive one (~50USD) makes me think: did they maybe just took the price of an unlimited plan and used that as price for a GB?

Lastly, average in this analysis does not really make sense to me. Especially as some very expensive plans can skew it to very large values.

<comment><USER39> > I am wondering how did they get their data especially for Switzerland. Here > most of the plans have unlimited GB, so getting the price of a single one is > quite tricky.

Not sure where you get that impression, but I don't think it is true at all. The following are the standard CH mobile plans by the largest providers in Switzerland.

Swisscom: 3×unlimited, 3×limited

Salt: 3×unlimited, 2×limited

Sunrise: 1×unlimited, 2×limited

In total they have 7 unlimited and 7 limited plans. The unlimited are mostly very expensive. Also note that the article mentioned they measured 14 plans in total which exactly matches the total number of plans above. But that of course might be a coincidence. Most plans of smaller providers are also limited in my experience.

<comment><USER38> Thanks for the observation.

Still I do not understand how would they have extrapolated price per GB when considering an unlimited plan. Can that be that they just took the price of the unlimited plan and assumed that's the price of 1GB? That would not be wrong, but a bit deceiving to say the least. Otherwise I would not know how the max price is ~50USD. Swisscom gives me ~15CHF per 1GB, and that is usually seen as the most expensive company.

<comment><USER39> They attached a description of their methodology in the "Resources" section.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I believe the data should add the comparison using purchase power parity. The price in USD being higher in the US than in Brazil doesn't mean that the internet is more expensive in the US

<comment><USER41> That doesn't make any sense, PPP is used to come up with "real" exchange rates based on price differentials. If you used PPP as the exchange, all countries would have the exact same price per GB.

For example, if a GB is $1 in America and 2 euros in Germany, then we would use a 1:2 ratio for converting the price. So Germany's PPP price would now be $1 in dollars as well. As you can see, this isn't very helpful.

PPP's fundamental assumption is the law of one price, so it's no surprise that all the prices would be the same using it.

<comment><USER42> Something is cheap or expensive in each country based on what % of the salary of a person living in those countries a good or service costs. Converting to USD and assuming that it looks cheap to an american is silly.

<comment><USER41> Sure, that's a fair point, but that has nothing to do with PPP. PPP is about exchange rates, not about goods.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This is a little off-tangent but as a newly repatriated Dane, can another Dane explain to me how we manage to both have a mega-monopoly telco in TDC and yet have such good prices on internet and phone plans?

The only ISPs available to me at my home here are all wholly owned subsidiaries of TDC: none of the others want to touch my address. That sounds like exactly the "any color you want so long as its black" choice I so enjoyed in the US.

How does Denmark do this? What is the special sauce?

<comment><USER44> Fierce competition, really. Many mobile companies competing - some even loss leaders, who are then bought up by one of the giants for their customers. And switching providers is pretty easy, so people shop around. This has driven down prices.

For internet, the widespread introduction of fiber has really made a huge impact. My father, who lives in a rural area, has 1000GB internet at 40 EUR per month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Kyrgyzstan is in top 3 cheapest. I've been there hiking last year and was mind blown. We've bought a local SIM card + several GB of data for ~1USD. Then we went hiking and in a village which is hiking base, in the "middle of nowhere", at 3000m altitude, we had 20 Mbps LTE connection.

</comment><comment><USER46> I worked on a project for a major telco who regularly struggled with customer bill shock. Business travellers would go abroad, run up bills without knowing it (literally tens of thousands of pounds) and then complain that the provider never warned them or set a cap. Often the provider would have to eat the cost (it wasn't massive markup, these were just the underlying trunk costs). We spent a long time building alerting and monitoring tools, which would even lock out your 3G dongle if you'd spent too much.

Unfortunately for us (but fortunately for customers) the EU introduced legislation to cap this spend and things have been pretty good since then in those parts of the world. I'm hoping UK customers don't go back to the old days post Brexit. I do some business in Egypt and it was my first experience in a decade of actually having to worry about it and wasn't prepared at all.

<comment><USER47> For this reason I'm with a telco that just locks me out when I reach my cap. The only thing I can do at that point is purchase an add-on package (which is good for the rest of the month) and then the internet is turned back on. When outside the EU, it locks me out by default unless I purchase an international data package.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I don't understand, why is it that it costs less than $1 in countries in Asia for a GB of mobile data but costs ~$15 for the same in the United States?

Can someone with knowledge of the industry please explain the reasons for this discrepancy to me?

<comment><USER49> Cellular service clearly can be delivered more cheaply in poor countries. Telenor for example is Noweigian (very wealthy country) but offers service at lower prices in Myanmar.

One reason is labor costs. Imagine how much it costs to build and maintain one tower in Norway with its high standard of living for everyone vs in Myanmar where people will work for much less, and with lower safety standards.

And obviously providers will charge more if they can, less if they have to.

<comment><USER50> Can you point to a source that says labour costs are the reason for high Telco prices? The ongoing maintainence of a tower seems like it would be fractional to operational cost.

<comment><USER49> Of course towers are a fraction of operating expenses. It was just an example of one piece of the puzzle. All labor costs in Myanmar are far lower, from marketing to lawyers to retail store staff.

And as I said, there are other reasons such as consumer surplus (rich people can pay more, so they do).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> When leaving Australia in 2005, it had one of the worst value mobile/internet plans, was pleasantly surprised returning after 15 years to find it now offers some of the best value.

Currently on a Woolworths no-contract pre-paid mobile, A$150 for 12 months for 84GB Data / unlimited mobile/SMS [1].

Works out as USD $8.95 /mo for 7GB / unlimited calls/SMS

[1] [https://mobile.woolworths.com.au/Shop/Plans/Woolworths- Phone...](https://mobile.woolworths.com.au/Shop/Plans/Woolworths-Phone- Plans/c/postpaid?default=starterpackplans)

<comment><USER52> We've come a long way from $20,000 per GB (the rate on Telstra prepaid circa 2011, as I discovered when I put my SIM into my first smartphone).

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> This is an amazing visualization and clearly shows what I found while traveling through Asia. Would love to see this mixed with average salary per country, which I expect will show an inverse correlation.

<comment><USER54> Even European countries are generally cheaper then US when it comes to mobile internet. E.g. France is 10 times cheaper on average. While France minimum hourly wage is $11.83 and US minimum hourly wage is between $7.25 to $14.00 (depending on state). It seems that US is a bit expensive regardless of the salary. Mobile companies are very competitive in Europe, and European regulations put fuel on the fire by making the number portability mandatory very early. Reducing the friction to change mobile operator while keeping the same number and with minimum to no downtime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I'd wonder how they're accounting for 'unlimited' plans. In Ireland, for instance, about a third of people would be using Three, and most of their plans are 'unlimited' (in practice, there are limits after which they'll throttle you, I believe, but they're high).

<comment><USER56> Not only that, but at peak times in rural areas where people use mobile broadband as their main connection, Three internet slows to a crawl. I suspect it's the backhaul from the mobile mast but I'm not sure.

That's what's always missing from these tests, reliability. It's more important than data cap and speeds.

<comment><USER55> > I suspect it's the backhaul from the mobile mast but I'm not sure.

It might be in some cases, but in most cases that backhaul will be a very scalable fibre line. It's probably more down to limited spectrum. Three attracts heavy users, because their pricing is designed around them, so they have the most loaded network, and they can't just manufacture new spectrum (they can add new towers up to a point, but there's a lot of cost to that). 5G should help, somewhat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I drove around Africa from mid 2016 to mid 2019[1]. I bought a SIM in most of the 35 countries I went to, uploaded YT vids, hi-res photos and just video chatted family. Overall the 3G connectivity was impressively fast, and almost always a fraction of the price of Canada or the US.

Overall, I was extremely impressed.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waQGUz0Z97Y&list=PLNiCe5roBX...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waQGUz0Z97Y&list=PLNiCe5roBX1gG0CUhHCsad_hv2qZbGzXc)

<comment><USER58> Woah that's quite an adventure!

How come you stopped in Egypt and didn't go back to Morocco?

Tunisia is a great country to visit.

<comment><USER57> It was always my dream to complete the loop, but the situation just didn't allow it.

It is impossible to get a visa for Libya, and with the ongoing civil war the safety situation is B.A.D. Even if I got a visa, the Egyptian military wouldn't let me get anywhere NEAR the border. They're extremely protective of tourists and won't let them go anywhere "dangerous". They also wouldn't let me drive the Sinai over to Isreal.

Also, the border from Algeria into Morocco has been closed for years, and nobody could tell me what would happen if I showed up and tried to cross.

So, unfortunately Egypt was the end of the line on that one!

<comment><USER59> Have you watched Motonomad? I guess Adam Riemann was lucky with the timing being allowed into Sinai.

<comment><USER57> A motorbike is usually OK on the Sinai.

Funny enough, for the Sinai they don't care about _me_ being kidnapped, they care about my Jeep being kidnapped and used by ISIS against them. So a good vehicle like my Jeep is not allowed across the Sinai, but they don't care too much (or at least you can talk your way through) on a motorbike.

<comment><USER59> Interesting!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Canada #209 out of 228 I'm not surprised, CRTC is useless, mobile / internet is still crazy expensive in 2020.

<comment><USER61> Weird how Harper and Trudeau both promised to address it and we got nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> American living in Indonesia here.

I never bother to purchase actual "minutes" on my local SIM. Instead I just buy pure data plans and run everything through there. I usually just load up ~14GB for $7 which lasts 30 days - it could be even cheaper if I bought more in bulk, but I never need it. Almost all of my communication is done over WhatsApp, and when I need to call an actual number I use Google Voice / Hangouts which which is over data and has very cheap minutes.

In comparison, whenever I visit the US I pop in my T-Mobile SIM and buy a prepaid plan from them for a month. I think it's usually ~$50-70/mo.

A lot of my family is on Google Fi and said I should switch over since it's "So easy for my international travels" but it just makes zero sense. If I pop over to another country it's very simple to just buy a local SIM at the airport and I'm good to go.

</comment><comment><USER63> I'm in India and I pay $8 for 84 days and get 2.5GB/day for those 84 days.

<comment><USER64> Just to add, while technically it's 4G, it's hard to rely on that and most of the time the speed I get is less than 2-3mbps and the connection is really unstable(lived in multiple places all across India). It was much better when jio was just launched due to less users. But now it has become race to the bottom and there is no way to get a good 4G connection in India.

<comment><USER65> At least where I live (or honestly wherever I've been in South India) Jio has been mostly reliable enough for me to even work remotely with zoom calls and ssh/slack. So YMMV is the real conclusion.

<comment><USER66> I second this. My Jio connection is fast enough for me to VPN in and work, combined with Zoom calls. It's always 20-30Mbps whenever I test it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> From what we can see in many of the comments, the research is deeply flawed. E.g. In Roumania with 6e you get over 50gb. Actually Digi(RDS), telco has 4$ subsription with 100gb lte plus additional 50gb 3G (total 150gb)/month. As for the speed, Bucharest was found the best internet connection in the world for games (a research released few days back). Thanks to the EU roaming law, some people realized that it's so good that you can use it anywhere in Europe long term (years, without going back to Romania). Subscribe in ro with the smallest plan 4$/month, and enjoy 1.7e/Gb anywhere in Europe, as long as you want!!! This is only for Digi (not organge/vodafone/tmobile). ONLY Digi allows you to stay long term in roaming (years). Here are full prices(use google translate): "Tarifele de roaming, cu TVA inclus, care se aplica de la primul min/MB/SMS utilizat sunt: apeluri locale si catre tari UE/SEE 0.0183 Euro/min; catre alte tari 1.4875 Euro/min si 0.0060 Euro/SMS trimis. Apeluri primite 0.0094 Euro/min si 0 Euro/SMS primit. Trafic date 0.0017 Euro/Mbyte. Apeluri gratuite in UE/SEE: 112 (Urgenta) si +40314007777 (info tarife). Multumim, echipa DIGI." So, if you are anywhere in Europe with higher than 1.7e/gb, make a Digi subscription and you all set.

</comment><comment><USER68> Yeah, this isn't right. I pay (New Zealand) a hundred and something a month for 100GB 4G or 5G if you can get it.

<comment><USER69> Sounds a bit high? Vodafone NZ offers 300 GB of 4G broadband for $73 at the moment.

<comment><USER68> That's just broadband though. My phone is my sole internet connection these days. We live in the future.

<comment><USER69> My phone has also been my sole internet connection for the last 12 years.

What I don't get is they are selling wireless broadband at the price I mention above, but if you buy what is essentially the same product as part of a phone plan instead (i.e. they've simply packaged it differently), you pay something along the lines of 10x or 20x the price per GB.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> It's useless. Some countries has strict data cap. The first 1 GB may be cheap and bandwidth is good, but you can't keep using it with the advertised bandwidth even for 1 hour. The data cap can be reached less than 30 minutes and you are stuck with low bandwidth for a month.

I really don't like the business model of mobile network. They shall be banned to advertise a few hundred of Mbps. What's good at 100+ Mbps when transfer mere 9 GB within 3 days window results bandwidth restriction of 1 Mbps. It's a fraud.

</comment><comment><USER71> Bulgaria here. I don't know if the comparison is even relevant as we don't have normal mobile data plans anymore. Most of the plans are providing 5-10 GB of data to all networks and websites and some GBs to specific websites like social media and popular ones. So for example I can have a data plan with 20 GB but after the first 10 GB I have fast internet just for facebook and whatsapp. The rest of the internet is almost not accessible as it takes ages to load.

</comment><comment><USER67> From what we can see in many of the comments, the research is deeply flawed. E.g. In Roumania with 6e you get over 50gb. Actually Digi(RDS), telco has 4$ subsription with 100gb lte plus additional 50gb 3G (total 150gb)/month. As for the speed, Bucharest was found the best internet connection in the world for games (a research released few days back). Thanks to the EU roaming law, some people realized that it's so good that you can use it anywhere in Europe long term (years, without going back to Romania). Subscribe in ro with the smallest plan 4$/month, and enjoy 1.7e/Gb anywhere in Europe, as long as you want!!! This is only for Digi (not organge/vodafone/tmobile). ONLY Digi allows you to stay long term in roaming (years). Here are full prices(use google translate): "Tarifele de roaming, cu TVA inclus, care se aplica de la primul min/MB/SMS utilizat sunt: apeluri locale si catre tari UE/SEE 0.0183 Euro/min; catre alte tari 1.4875 Euro/min si 0.0060 Euro/SMS trimis. Apeluri primite 0.0094 Euro/min si 0 Euro/SMS primit. Trafic date 0.0017 Euro/Mbyte. Apeluri gratuite in UE/SEE: 112 (Urgenta) si +40314007777 (info tarife). Multumim, echipa DIGI."

So, if you are anywhere in Europe with higher than 1.7e/gb, make a Digi subscription and you all set.

</comment><comment><USER72> >> In Mexico you'll pay an average of $4.77 for 1GB of data, making the biggest country in Central America also the second-most expensive on average when it comes to buying mobile data

I am a reasonably educated person within the United States. I may be wrong, but I believe that I've always been taught that Mexico was within the North American Continent.

Honest question, Am I incorrect about Mexico being in North America? and If so, Am I also incorrect about what I believe i was taught (its happened before)?

<comment><USER73> Continent models are very arbitrary and vary based on where you are, what language you're speaking, etc.

Fun fact, in Mexico (and most of Latin America), North America is simply a subregion of the real continent "America" that includes North, Central, and South as one.

Prior to WWI or II, the US used that definition (The Americas) as well IIRC.

<comment><USER74> I think most Americans do implicitly treat it as one continent because if you talk about Central America you kind of have to, otherwise Central America would be part of North America and that's just weird.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> The cost of 1GB doesn't seem to take into account the entrance to having a line in the first place. I might not pay more than 1€ a GB but I still have to pay 10€ to be on the network and I can't only buy 1GB, I have to buy 2, 10 or 50 or 100. The "base plan" is where the ISPs get you. That plus data is just the modern day rents for tech companies. It doesn't really make sense to compare data prices when the telecoms are charging varying entrance rates.

</comment><comment><USER76> I'm waiting for a long-running job while reading this and noticed that it says "228 countries". Supposedly there are about ~200 countries. [https://www.worldometers.info/geography/how-many- countries-a...](https://www.worldometers.info/geography/how-many-countries- are-there-in-the-world/) says there are 195. Anyway, these are the ones if anyone is curious about this like me. The few I looked up on Wikipedia showed that they are indeed not a country (not that it matters for this survey..):

American Samoa

Anguilla

Aruba

Bermuda

British Indian Ocean Territory

Cape Verde

Caribbean Netherlands

Cayman Islands

Cocos (Keeling) Islands

Curaçao

Falkland Islands

Faroe Islands

French Guiana

French Polynesia

Gibraltar

Greenland

Guadeloupe

Guam

Guernsey

Hong Kong

Isle of Man

Jersey

Macau

Macedonia

Martinique

Mayotte

Montserrat

New Caledonia

Palestine, State of

Réunion

Saint Barthélemy (St. Barts)

Saint Helena

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

Saint-Martin (France)

Sint Maarten

Svalbard and Jan Mayen

São Tomé and Príncipe

Taiwan

Tokelau

Turks and Caicos Islands

Virgin Islands (British)

Virgin Islands (U.S.)

Western Sahara

Åland Islands

</comment><comment><USER77> UK and $13 for 30gb 4g on a rolling monthly contract but there are a lot of more expensive plans out there and people don't switch as often as they could.

</comment><comment><USER78> I don't think the stats are that relevant, at least for romania.

For example I pay 6 eur/month for a prepaid sim that has something like 2k minutes and sms, and 6 gb of traffic. The thing is that my carrier (Orange) always offers an extra 50gb of traffic for free. Afaik, most carriers have a deal like this.

The quality is decent, they have 4G coverage almost everywhere, maybe except in the mountain areas, but that's to be expected.

</comment><comment><USER79> I live in Poland. I have, personally, no less than three plans.

1 for my mobile phone where I have something like 15GB of data for equivalent of 20USD (that including unlimited calls).

1 for my laptop, where there is a limit of 100GB for equivalent of 10USD

1 for my emergency mobile Internet which is unlimited monthly transfer but limited bandwidth to 20Mbit/s (I have tested, I have not yet reached a limit after uploading/downloading hundreds of GBs in one month I had to move to my parents in law), for equivalent of 10USD per month. This came with a LTE to WiFi router. I use it as emergency (I work from home, I need it in case my 1Gbit broadband fails) and I take it on trips with family so we have good quality unlimited Internet wherever we are.

It seems silly to me that you can have basically free broadband and so expensive mobile in a western country with technically advanced infrastructure. I could understand operators wanting to recoup their initial investments but in the long run mobile should be cheaper to transfer than broadband (there less physical infrastructure having to be laid and maintained).

</comment><comment><USER80> One thing that is essay to miss if you glance at the map, is just how much cheaper mobile data plans are in Denmark than in Norway.

I recently learned about this when a friend of mine pointed it out to me while we were talking about the pricing of the mobile data plans here in Norway.

Here is a Danish website comparing providers in Denmark: [https://telepristjek.dk/data-billige-priser/](https://telepristjek.dk/data- billige-priser/)

Here is a Norwegian website comparing providers in Norway: [https://www.tek.no/mobilt-bredbaand/](https://www.tek.no/mobilt-bredbaand/)

You'll be able to read the tables even if you don't speak Danish nor Norwegian, since the tables show contain the word "GB" for gigabytes of data, and the price which is in DKK and NOK respectively.

In addition to those tables mentioned, some currency exchange rates are useful to make sense of the data if you live in another country:

100 NOK 🇳🇴 ~= 70 DKK 🇩🇰

100 DKK 🇩🇰 ~= 143 NOK 🇳🇴

100 NOK 🇳🇴 ~= 9.42 EUR 🇪🇺

100 DKK 🇩🇰 ~= 13.43 EUR 🇪🇺

100 NOK 🇳🇴 ~= 11.10 USD 🇺🇸

100 DKK 🇩🇰 ~= 15.84 USD 🇺🇸

</comment><comment><USER81> I can confirm, internet in Ukraine (top 5) is super cheap, most people don't even realize how inexpensive it is comparing to other countries. Mobile traffic is so cheap that it gets very inconvenient to keep your internet habits when you are in other countries.

Italy seems like a great country to spend more time in, thank you for report!

</comment><comment><USER82> It's an interesting statistic. But it can paint a warped picture. For example, it ranks Switzerland at #191 which probaby is correct. Othe other hand, since 7 years, I have a contract with 2 SIMs for 39CHF/m on which I'm well in the 3-digits GB/m. Hence, 1GB can also just cost cents.

</comment><comment><USER83> How do they take in account unlimited plans in some countries for which 1GB costs becomes actually incalculable?

</comment><comment><USER15> If you were looking for a mobile deal, then I think you would go for the cheapest one, so I have created the interactive map again using the data for the lowest price per US$

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQzJcAT0HcgB...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQzJcAT0HcgBIUmoSUFa6R1TdqmM4AXBVmcEB2SU1j04S6HzaqA8XxK2Vpm1ynVYxOyLXC_n0z8Vufa/pubchart?oid=747437768&format=interactive)

I've removed those countries that are over $5/GB/month such as Greenland because it caused the whole map to be green due to how the data is skewed and the limitations of the geo chart in Google maps.

</comment><comment><USER84> I live on Finland and I've got unlimited everything for 16,9€/month. This includes calls, sms and 200mbps LTE data. There is no data caps (not even throttling, since that would be against the law) and I've had months with 400+gb data transferred, no issues.

<comment><USER85> Yep, the price published for Finland feels really weird. The operators are nowadays selling even even unlimited data prepaids for 20-30 euros or 1 eur per day. This of course makes gigabyte price comparison a bit hard as it depends how much you download.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> Related discussion from 43 days ago on an article that used this as its source data: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23795147](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23795147)

</comment><comment><USER87> In South Korea, where avg price is $10.94/GB and min price is $0.43/GB, mobile data plans are so much segregated that the goverment had to push cheaper MVNOs to the wider public. For technologically aware people it's more like $2--3/GB and telcos tend to exploit who are technologically less aware.

Given this and that telcos are universally known to be not super customer friendly, average price seems a pretty limited metric and distribution analysis should be required. Unfortunately their raw data has no actual data points for each plan...

</comment><comment><USER88> Why is the American market so expensive for data? Is there some kind of market manipulation going on? I'd naively expect free market ideals to put America near the bottom of the price range for a commodity.

</comment><comment><USER89> What amazes me the most with my telco is that they charge $60 for a regular plan which includes 4GB of data, SMS and phone calls, but if I want to buy 1GB extra, it's $30-40 bucks. For a single 1GB of download.

<comment><USER90> Makes sense, because it's modeled on your willingness to pay rather than cost. They probably did the market research and figured that people who use more than 4GB of data per month probably depend on it to earn a living, and therefore can charge more. Yet another reason why everyone should get a dual sim phone, which breaks this sort of market segmentation.

<comment><USER91> > _people who use more than 4GB of data per month probably depend on it to > earn a living, and therefore can charge more_

Just like a hospital who charges $500 for a band-aid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> I have all sorts of international roaming perks, but if you actually want that high speed in any other country you still need to buy a sim card in that country.

Fix that, and then we can talk about comparative 1GB costs.

</comment><comment><USER93> The price should be calculated for ~10GB, or better yet 50 or even 100GB, as the prices tend to be lower the more GB you pay for, which becomes really noticeable with "unlimited" packages.

Some countries/networks have true unlimited 4G, some give you a set amount of GB at full speed, after which it drops to something barely usable (128-1024 Kbps).

I could use ~1TB/month on 4G on Three UK for ~40 Euros. That's unbeatable in Europe to my knowledge.

Never got higher than ~300 GB/month though - even at that price per GB only some Eastern European networks become competitive.

</comment><comment><USER94> Funny story about my vodafone.es SIM card I bought last year. I used it for about 3 months while traveling in Europe and Turkey. I bought 8 GB for around 10 EUR, and didn't use nearly that much. I renewed that plan the following month, but due to some glitch in Vodafone's system, the same 10 EUR bought me 16 GB for the upcoming month. I renewed the following month, and my 10 EUR again bought me 32 GB! I hope I can reactivate that SIM when I go back to Europe, the monthly alotment should be up in the PBs by now.

</comment><comment><USER95> I wonder how they factor unlimited plans into this?

In Chile, the mobile internet is quite cheap (and usually plenty fast, LTE is widespread and download speeds > 10 Mbps are common) per GB but unlimited plans are also common.

E.g., I pay something like $1.50 a week for unlimited internet and calls, and since I can use 60 GB a month easy, that works out to ~10 cents a GB, considerably cheaper than what the chart shows for Chile. It's also about 100x cheaper than the $10/GB ballpark I paid in Canada. Yeah, one hundred times cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER96> I've met a few people in california that have a mexico cell phone plan and claim to pay less despite it being international than they would if they got an american plan. I haven't tried it myself though.

I'm on an expansive "family plan" with 6 people I know instead right now. These are the same companies that charged more for calling across town with a "local toll rate" than across the country merely 20 years ago, they'll invent whatever they can to justify a fee

</comment><comment><USER97> The things about the cheap mobile data plans in Israel is, that you sell you a 50 GB/month or 200 GB/month even if you absolutely don't need it. You can't (?) get a 2 GB/month plan.

So it's the price that stays fixed and the amount of data that goes up.

I'm usually quite critical of the state where I live (Israel) - oppression, social inequality, racism corruption in government... but at least we have decent mobile plans for 10 USD/month. That's something I guess.

</comment><comment><USER98> I am in the US. I pay $80 a month for TWO phones. My plan provides unlimited calls, texts, and shared 2GB of 4G data. When my data runs out, my data speeds go to 100kb/s.

<comment><USER99> You need to look at prepaid options. All major carriers have those. They are not bad if you like in or around a metropolitan area.

TMobile -> Metro PCS

Verizon -> Visible

ATT -> Cricket

</comment></comment><comment><USER100> 1 GB may show some statistics but it doesn't reflect the reality. Most of the time I find many other things matter like latancy, throughput,qos. I am currently on 45 mbps but still when i download it starts from 1 mbps and takes like 2 minute to reach 45 mbps meaning do matter especially browsing. However I must say during my intership at India the internet was very good. Its like 10$ and you are done for 1 month with free calls .

</comment><comment><USER101> In India BSNL Fibernet has stepped up their game. Even rural towns and villages (not all but the list is growing) now have access to 100Mbps internet for ~10 USD

<comment><USER102> $10 per month is too costly for many, we are happy with 30 GB per month 4G data which costs around $2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER103> The data is not adjusted for purchasing power. $1 goes much longer in South East Asia (India, Pakistan, etc.) than it does in North American, for example.

</comment><comment><USER104> Not sure about South Korea, for instance, being at 202nd place for affordability there when unlimited plans for even pre-paid tourist SIMs are a thing.

<comment><USER105> As I said in my post (which seems to be being downvoted despite telling the truth). The webpage is very naive and is not really telling the truth about mobile contracts.

The wallet cost of mobile data is lower than the inflated prices shown on the website.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> I am curious how this study differentiates between different regions. I have been to many parts of the US, and my experiences have differed wildly enough that I'd say that the differences might be as much as the global highest/lowest quality in terms of bandwidth. Not in terms of censorship (I've experienced that first hand in completely unrelated circumstances).

</comment><comment><USER106> Finland at 87, Australia at 16. Hilarious.

I came to Finland from Australia and asked what the limit was. 40Mb/s I was told (quite some years ago).

No, per month.

They didn't understand the question. There are no limits. 40Mb/s, times the number of seconds in a month.

Quick check: Optus is 10AUD per GB extra on all the plans. They don't mention the speed, of course.

This is a bad piece of research.

</comment><comment><USER107> The numbers for Norway makes no sense at all. Cheapest is supposedly $0.62, but you can get 1GB for less than $0.0046, if you pay for unlimited usage and coverage is good so you can average 200 Mbps.

And the average is much too low for 1GB if this was supposed to not include transfer as part of a larger package.

Either way, the numbers makes absolutely no sense.

</comment><comment><USER108> Russian Siberia here ;) Mobile LTE 50Gb data + 300 minutes coutrywide calls is just $3/month. Proxies and VPNs work ok.

</comment><comment><USER109> Germany is usually notoriously expensive. I'm surprised to see it on-par with the US here.

Also what does cheapest mean? For germany I'd want to see 8eur for 3gb. That's the budget default here set by Aldi (including phone/text flat, I guess 7eur without that), Lidl allays following them after 1-2 weeks.

</comment><comment><USER110> The cost for a 1 gb plan is insane in india. I paid about $3.30 for a 2gb plan for a month.

By 2gb .. I mean it was 2gb of data per day. Granted the coverage wasn't great and the network was way overloaded.

[https://www.jio.com/en-in/4g-plans](https://www.jio.com/en-in/4g-plans)

</comment><comment><USER111> Not sure if this will be a perfect comparison since some providers provide unlimited data for a fixed price with high caps (i.e. 1000gb of fair usage). I pay 32 British pounds a month for unlimited 4G with a fair usage cap of 1,000GB so that comes to $0.03 per GB....

</comment><comment><USER112> I don't know if "cable.co.uk" reads HN, but there is a mistake in the article: "Estonia is the cheapest of the three with 1GB costing an average of $1.27 and sits in 53rd place in the world, while in Estonia 1GB costs $1.85 on average"

One of those Estonias should likely be Lithuania

</comment><comment><USER113> I think the comparisons could also use some normalization with respect to per capita income (mean, mode, median?). 1 USD in the US doesn't mean the same thing as 1 USD in China.

From the consumers' perspective, it's about affordability, not absolute cost.

</comment><comment><USER114> Should also take into account cost of living. I believe Internet cost much more in poor countries.

<comment><USER115> I'm surprised to have to come to the second page for this, was expecting this top or second comment to link to a table where these prices are compensated for purchasing power.

The cost of the labor to keep these networks running should obviously factor into the price as you can't take data from Indonesia and use it elsewhere (you can manufacture things in Indonesia and ship them here, so for goods it might make sense to compare global prices; not so for data plans). The best way to do that is probably purchasing power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER116> I bought a bag of chips in India (near Delhi) yesterday that had an Airtel coupon code for 2gb of free mobile data. The chips cost 20 rupees, or about $.25. Not bad at all! (the codes didn't work but I thought it was a great giveaway concept)

<comment><USER117> Is it a giveaway if the codes didn't work?

</comment></comment><comment><USER118> In South Africa data is really expensive, and we don't have a lot of disposable income. There isn't really an excuse for it since Kenya has way cheaper internet. We've just allowed our service providers to get away with extortionate pricing.

</comment><comment> Maha-pudma I'm paying £9 for 30GB but that also includes unlimited minutes and texts. So I'm pretty near the lowest in my country, UK. My only question is, who in their right mind is paying the highest?! I mean £52… WFT.

</comment><comment><USER119> Apart from internet experience (speed, coverage, etc.) this should also be corrected for the purchasing power parity as paying 12USD in Canada is very different from paying that in e.g. India.

</comment><comment><USER120> Awesome site.

Most expensive in the UK $64? That's insane. Would be interesting to see where the sources of these prices were. I downloaded the spreadsheet but it just tells you the numbers, not the providers.

</comment><comment><USER121> This is great. But additional and important context is speed. Knowing coverage would be a plus as well.

Slow with mediocre coverage might be inexpensive but that waiting (and swearing?) comes with a cost.

<comment><USER122> In Canada, it's the opposite. Due to high prices, the speeds are very fast.

But this can also mean that a single poor decision can leave you data less (or rationing) for the rest of the month. Most plans just lock you up until you pay more, rather than continue throttled.

Then you have software obviously written by people with zero consideration for data costs. NPR One app thinks it's a great idea to pre-stream hundreds of MB of content. Thanks NPR. Zoom doesn't have any low-bandwidth modes. While iOS lets you enforce a 'low-data mode' when tethering to metered connections, OS X doesn't. Thanks OS X for downloading that update while I was on a train. I was doing my best to ration what I had left by using Lynx for fuck's sake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER123> In Shanghai I pay $11 per month for 16GB mobile data plus a 50M broadband at home. I pay a bit more than that for the cloud VMs on which I install VPN services.

</comment><comment><USER124> This seems inaccurate.

I live in Finland and I have unlimited mobile data.

That is quite common.

</comment><comment><USER125> I pay $25 including taxes and fees for two unlimited lines on Sprint in the US, thanks to $15 Kickstart two years ago and the recent free line for life promotion.

</comment><comment><USER126> 1 GB of 24/7 access to unrestricted internet is different than 1 GB of always down or censored internet.

They should consider that in the next "study".

</comment><comment><USER127> I'm doing my part in the US by not paying for a single byte of mobile data. They will have to bring the price down for me to consider it.

<comment><USER122> Yah, I'm paying ~CAD$35 for 4gb of data (incl. voice/SMS), and while I could upgrade to 10gb for $50, I'm holding out for a 90%+ reduction in prices.

<comment><USER61> Where? What carrier? That's $15 cheaper than anything I'm aware of.

<comment><USER122> Fido has 9gb for that price. Retentions can usually work better deals.

Wind has 20gb for $50, but it's Wind :)

I always investigate here: [https://forums.redflagdeals.com/ongoing-deal- discussion-f129...](https://forums.redflagdeals.com/ongoing-deal- discussion-f129/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER128> It would be interesting to see the numbers relative to purchasing power parity.

For an ordinary Indian person 0.07 usd might still be relatively expensive

<comment><USER129> Thats 5.25 Indian Rupee, even Beggars would earn more than that in a day. Hourly minimum wage is 30cents, which as sad as it is, is still 4x the cost of 1GB data. I would argue cost of smartphones as a bigger deterrent. While in most countries an okay smartphone would cost 20x the cost of a GB of data, in India its roughly 50x

</comment></comment><comment><USER105> Trouble is that webpage is largely a meaningless waste of time. Anybody who has done business with the mobile operators can tell you that.

It doesn't take into account the different types of contracts (e.g. are we talking about personal or business contracts, pay as you go or contract etc. etc. etc. etc.).

Nor does it take into account the infinite and ever changing commercial promotions the operators run.

If the chart on that website was to be believed, the data on my mobile contract should be costing me 15x more per GB than it actually does !

Load of codswallop.

</comment><comment><USER130> The map isn't that useful without showing what type of data it is. 1GB data is very different over 2G, 3G and 4G.

</comment><comment><USER131> I've used 2.93 TB of data in 7 months on my £30/month unlimited 5G plan. So £0.07 (USD $0.09) per GB, I guess?

</comment><comment><USER132> The ones with Huawei devices are generally cheaper. Especially India Jio

<comment><USER133> smasung built Jio's network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER134> I'd like to see this compared with a coverage map as well.

</comment><comment><USER135> Mexico is part of North America, not Central America.

</comment><comment><USER136> Superficial looks suggests that price is inversely proportional to area size where infrastructure is needed and population density willing to pay for it.</comment>


Most Published Research Findings Are False (2005) - <AUTHOR> https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124 <comment><USER2> I read this a few years ago. It such an important topic. Billions of dollars have been spent doing research in fields like nutrition and psychology with very little ROI.</comment>


Eisvogel: A clean pandoc LaTeX template with a focus on computer science - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Wandmalfarbe/pandoc-latex-template <comment><USER2> Very interesting not only for professors but also for students as myself. I had a similar workflow for my assignments using Markdown and pandoc but this template is better in so many ways that I may change my workflow.

For those that want to try this without the manual and painful installation process I found that pandocker[1] supports this template.

[1] [https://github.com/dalibo/pandocker](https://github.com/dalibo/pandocker)

</comment><comment><USER3> While I really like the colours (reminds me of Nord[0]), wouldn't it be better to use a serif font? Most researchers I know still read research papers on actual paper, where serif fonts seem to be preferred.

[0]: [https://github.com/arcticicestudio/nord](https://github.com/arcticicestudio/nord)

<comment><USER4> I'd agree on the use of serif, but not on the majority of researchers reading research papers on actual paper. Even on screen (and esp. on a good e-reader), I'm still more used to reading serif fonts in research papers.

<comment><USER5> If it's under eight pages I print it out so that it's easier on my eyes.

<comment><USER6> I bought a cheap Brother black-and-white two-sided laser printer in college, along with a high-capacity toner cartridge. Use a high-quality stapler to put 3 staples along the left margin. I have printed many thousands of pages of articles. I can't recommend this highly enough.

<comment><USER4> I finally got my hands on some decent e-ink readers (the HD Kobos, when they still had a micro sdcard slot), and it's pretty pleasant to read papers (particularly in natural/external light) using KOreader[0], without having to deal with physically printing them out.

[0] [https://koreader.rocks/](https://koreader.rocks/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd like to do my notes in markdown, but as a maths/cs student there's a lot of structure in the data (proofs, lemmas, intermezzos, sidenotes) that would be lost should I go down (eheh) the markdown route. I've been using Pollen [1] (you can think of it as LaTeX for web programmable in Racket and without cool typesetting, so yeah, not like LaTeX at all), but I wouldn't mind something more elegant and readable in plain text.

How do you (would you, did you) take your notes in college?

[1] [http://pollenpub.com](http://pollenpub.com)

<comment><USER8> My notes in college followed this route. I would take notes during lecture with pen on paper - less distracting, less likely to go wrong, lighter, and battery life was not a concern. (Today, I would likely take notes with a stylus on a tablet.)

When I sat down to revise my notes, part of that revision was to type them up in Emacs with org-mode, using embedded LaTeX for any notation that was not natively supported in org-mode. I would frequently already have typed notes from my readings, and I could integrate the lecture notes with these. I would render to PDF and print these out for further study away from the computer.

Part of the reason for this is that I found having access to the Internet and my collection of computer games was distracting when I was trying to study. Being able to print out the notes, share them with friends, study without having to haul around a laptop, find power, or navigate with a keyboard in the silent study floor of the library was important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> looks nice, will try it out

For my usecase, I started from default pandoc+xelatex output and customized step by step searching on stackoverflow/tex.stackexchange for things like font, page size, link color, styling inline code, chapter breaks, bullet styling, pdf properties, etc [1]

[1] [https://learnbyexample.github.io/tutorial/ebook- generation/c...](https://learnbyexample.github.io/tutorial/ebook- generation/customizing-pandoc/)

</comment><comment><USER10> looks good, but the licence is a strange pick for a template... as i understand the wording, you'll have to add the licence even if you make a PDF.

> _Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without > modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:_

> _[...]_

> _Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice,_

</comment><comment><USER11> Nice, but how well does it deal with corner cases, e.g. listings that run over multiple pages, or lines that are too long?

<comment><USER12> It's all there, waiting at the tips of your fingers, just try it out?

<comment><USER13> Prediction: OP won't try it out because it's unlikely the template will solve his issues and playing around with new things is generally a waste of time. So if you (tlamponi) have some interest in promoting this template, then answering the question would be helpful! Everyone reading this submission is already aware that they could find things out by trying the template out, but it is not as easy and straight-forward as you make it out to be.

<comment><USER12> > OP won't try it out because it's unlikely the template will solve his issues

His general issues in life? maybe not. But honestly, that's a bit of a big thing to ask from a pandoc template. So OP asked for it, implying that he's interested in such things, but generally has issues with long lines in such templates. So interest is there, it may even correlate with the fact that he has a setup with most of the tools needed installed.

> playing around with new things is generally a waste of time

What? I'm thankfully that a lot people do not think this way, else we'd be still in the stone age.

> So if you (tlamponi) have some interest in promoting this template

no interest whatsoever, not related to it in anyway. But I have an interest that people try easy things out, instead of speculating on negative or positive possibilities of said things, which, in fact, is a waste of time.

> but it is not as easy and straight-forward as you make it out to be.

# package-manager install git pandoc

# cd $(mktemp -d)

# git clone [https://github.com/Wandmalfarbe/pandoc-latex- template.git](https://github.com/Wandmalfarbe/pandoc-latex-template.git)

# cd pandoc-latex-template/examples

# echo "Example for waste of time: 'Prediction: OP won't try it out because it's unlikely the template will solve his issues and playing around with new things is generally a waste of time. So if you (tlamponi) have some interest in promoting this template, then answering the question would be helpful! Everyone reading this submission is already aware that they could find things out by trying the template out, but it is not as easy and straight-forward as you make it out to be.'" >> basic-example/basic-example.md

# sh build-examples.sh

# okular basic-example/basic-example.pdf

Ah yes, very very hard. Sorry for trying to convince someone to work out answers they're interested in their self, such a useless thing to do in life.

Anyway, it seems that it _does_ cope well with long lines, be it in a common text paragraph, but also in a code block, here it breaks those lines, intends the overflowing one - together with the fact that there are line numbers everything is clear and easy to read. Single thing, if I copy those broken up code lines, they do not get copied as a single line, this is a bit of a bummer to me, but may not be an issue for others..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Tangentially (looking at the example), have people created Lorem Ipsum generators for code?

</comment><comment><USER14> I've been using this for internal work documents for quite a while, and I've been very happy with the workflow, and the look of the docs has been well received.

</comment><comment><USER15> Beautiful!</comment>


Avatar Is Like The iPhone Of Movies - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/19/avatar-is-like-the-iphone-of-movies/ <comment><USER2> _"... An entire generation of teenagers are now going to have a lifelong crush on a huge blue woman with a tail named Neytiri ..."_

I went and saw Avatar yesterday and was blown away.

It was as good as when I first saw Star Wars the first time it was shown after wagging school and catching a train into the city. It was way better than the first Star Trek feature film first hit the cinema - those close-ups of the Enterprise still make me cringe. It was as good as Alien and Alien II which followed. I was trying to think why. Here's some of the reasons.

While most films shy away from the complexity of situations, this one didn't. I get the feeling Cameron had some unfinished business. A story not told, an alternate Aliens. The similarities are pretty striking. The film is about colonisation of a planet, with ruthless company yes-men backed up by Colonial Marines (or PMC's in this case). It even has Ripley. This time though we see colonisation and exploitation from the eyes of the conquered. We see what is lost. We see the consequences.

This isn't a re-make of Aliens two where the Colonial Marines blast away Ripley's bad-guys. Instead we are shown the complexity of a culture clashes, the conqueror and conquered. We see the relationship between locals and their environment, man made corporations and hired muscle and most importantly the consequences of War. It could be South America when Cortez arrived looking for gold, it could in the jungles of Sumatra now with timber ~ [http://www.worldwildlife.org/what/wherewework/borneo/people....](http://www.worldwildlife.org/what/wherewework/borneo/people.html) The film is also is about as anti-mainstream as you'll probably get in popular culture.

Ask yourself what was the last time you saw a film that painted a beautiful picture of an environment and culture then see it destroyed in grisly detail before you... this is no ordinary Hollywood action flic. Sure the good guys win and the company men get packing. There are weak points in the film. I noticed even William Gibson was a bit shocked ( _my measure of what good writing is_ ) ~ <http://twitter.com/GreatDismal/status/6810783279> at name given to the exploited mineral _"unobtanium"_ ~ <http://twitter.com/GreatDismal/status/6810951397> being mined.

The strength of the film is that it mirrors enough of our own world right now and that and the richness of the characters and ideas in my mind makes up for any of the technical shortfalls.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Avatar, like Titanic, is one of those movies you'll want to see over and > over.

Wait, what? Am I the only one that thought Titanic was 2 hours of my life that I regret wasting?

Of all the stories to be told about that fateful night, it was a travesty that the film was dedicated to the story of two horny teenagers hooking up. Bleh.

<comment><USER4> Don't worry, Avatar and Titanic are nothing alike. Titanic is a big-budget chick flick, Avatar is a pure action/adventure movie without much sappiness

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I saw the title, I thought the comparison was going to be that it was beautiful and polished, but the storyline/features weren't too amazing.

</comment><comment><USER6> What I find amazing is the amount of people who have no knowledge of Avatar. This movie is an event among events.

And even the author says he only started reading about it a week ago, which I find amazing. Not at all like the iPhone in this regard.

\----

Downvoters: So, what exactly did I say that merits downvotes?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate Avatar?

<comment><USER7> 5\. Saw it in 3D on a non-IMAX screen. I know enough to know that I'm supposed to be impressed by the CGI in the skin/eyes of the Na'vi and other creatures. And given that I'm supposed to know that, they (generally) succeeded. The 3D wasn't really any different than any other Real 3D movie, and I really didn't see any difference in the quality of the CGI landscapes versus LoTR or even Jurassic Park (which were just arial shots). The story, of course, is Dances with Wolves in Space.

I wish I went to Up in the Air instead.

As to the ZOMG: Glengarry Glen Ross could have been filmed in the 1930s, but it's one of the best films in my lifetime. To say that Avatar changes movies forever is insane.

<comment><USER8> Really? GGG as best film of a lifetime? The acting is spectacular, but I don't really feel like there is much of a story. Just a showcase for good acting. Felt like broadway on film.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Tech bloggers discussing art with marketing speak is the embarrassment of technology.

</comment><comment><USER10> Hyperbole is like the bread and butter of journalists.

<comment><USER11> Hyperbole is the iPhone of (trash) journalists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm disappointed that Jar Jar Binks isn't in Avatar. That's the one thing that would make it worth seeing.

</comment><comment><USER13> I haven't seen the movie yet but I saw the trailer a while ago and I just rewatched it then and from a pure CGI point of view it looks pretty meh. Like comparable to the first Final Fantasy movie perhaps but not much better. The first time I saw the trailer (at least two months ago, maybe an early cut?) I actually commented on how bad the CGI was before realising it was Avatar. Added to this story just sounds like an old retold story as Arrington highlights. I'm sure the film is actually really clever and the little I know of Cameron has led me to think he is a passionate and down-to-Earth guy so I'm sure it's good but I'm really not getting that impression so far. In fact, this has to be the most marketed film ever (I see adverts everywhere even online and in the App-Store as well as tie-ins with multiple TV shows (Entourage, South Park come to mind)) and this kind of marketing always makes me instinctively wonder why it's so heavily marketed. I've avoided learning too much about TC/Arrington because it seems there's often controversy but is this the kind of site where sponsored reviews ever appear?

<comment><USER14> So you haven't seen the movie and you don't know much about Cameron, Arrington or his site, and of those four things the one you are most interested in learning more about is TechCrunch?

<comment><USER13> No, I asked why this movie has been so heavily promoted, and if it's possible the Arrington/TC review was bought as it seemed a glowing endorsement of a film that I have not heard great things about elsewhere and which does not have great trailers. Clearly from the downvotes people think I was attacking TC et all, but as I've said I'm just asking as I have no idea why this review seemed so contrary to what I've found elsewhere to date.</comment></comment></comment>


$78,000 Legal Bill for Unsuccessfully Suing Over Sale of $1.25 Used CD - <AUTHOR> http://ultimateclassicrock.com/andy-scott-of-sweet-faces-78000-legal-bill-over-1-25-used-cd-sale/

<comment><USER2> What's the first sale doctrine like outside of the US? It seems like the seller was right about this one.</comment>


10 to 160 in 5 minutes - <AUTHOR> http://blog.vox.io/post/3502791904/10to160

<comment><USER2> Yes, many (myself included) routinely see such traffic spikes via HN.

Congrats and keep up the good work. :-)</comment>


Google Glasses Make Their Questionable Debut at (New York Fashion Week) - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/thecut/2012/09/google-glasses-make-questionable-debut-at-dvf.html <comment><USER2> >Well, she looks silly, we thought to ourselves.

Can someone please look through that slideshow and explain to me how anyone could single out Google Glass as "silly" with a straight face? I mean, look at these earrings:

[http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/fashion/shows/2013/spring/new- yo...](http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/fashion/shows/2013/spring/new- york/rtw/diane-von-furstenberg/collection-full-length/12.o.jpg/a_4.5x.jpg)

 _Look at them._

<comment><USER3> Is that the Assassin's Creed logo?

<comment><USER4> That's exactly what I thought, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm always amazed with the... what is even a good word for the tone of this article? "Rich people scratching each other's backs" and "an iphone you can wear on your face."

Dismissive? Contemptuous? Irritated? Something.

Anyways, its always weird to see tech covered by non-tech outlets. It seems like the result is often worded like this.

<comment><USER6> I would say that this is the fashion industry's equivalent of Engadget's old tone: snarky, playful and opinionated.

I was actually pleasantly surprised by how mild the article was, which I would say is actually a pretty good sign for Google Glass.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I won't berate a fashion column for not going 'I wonder what they were' and then _actually researching_ and finding out that yes, they will be sold to the public and so on.

However, it's interesting that they've been essentially branded as seriously uncool before they've even launched. I wonder if this will lead to someone at Google trying to make them more stylish, or whether they'll hope the target market isn't fussed on fashion and style and it'll spread enough for them to not care.

<comment><AUTHOR> The start up community tends to operate in a bubble. Wearing something that makes you stand out as 'uncool' and a target for theft is enough to deter people from a product. Take the white ipod ear buds, they were 'cool' enough that most people would were them, however bluetooth handsfree headsets only took off with specific demographics.

<comment><USER8> In other words put the hardware in hipster glasses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _[T]hey're called Google Glasses, [...] they're an iPhone you can wear on your face._

If I were Sergey Brin, I would be throwing a chair through the wall!

<comment><USER10> Just wait for the moment when laptops will be called iPads with keyboards and radios will be iPods for streaming without internet. Oh and Google self- driving car is just Siri on wheels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I will be waiting for the DC licensed 'Spider Jerusalem™' model.

</comment><comment><USER12> Because they never wear weird things at fashion shows, right?

</comment><comment><USER13> I am surprised that Google tries to promote them on catwalk instead of nerdy conferences, maybe they think it needs a bit of glamour.

<comment><USER14> Perhaps they learned from Apple. The iPod was seen as inferior in terms of features-for-price and the iTunes Eco system most likely did not help it among the hacker-set. So I think its appeal to the fashionable elite crowd played a large part in Apple's mainstream success to date

<comment><USER15> Maybe I'm not remembering correctly but wasn't the iPod the first MP3 player to combine a disk harddrive with flash memory? Thereby allowing it to store gigs of music when the rest were touting 64 - 128 MBs of storage?

Seems like a pretty big deal to me.

<comment><USER16> No. The early iPods used a hard drive, the later ones used flash for storage. The iPod was not the first device to provide a hard disk for large storage; look up the Personal Jukebox and the Creative NOMAD.

(I know it came post-iPod, but I loved my Creative NOMAD Zen Xtra. 60 GB drive and it would play all day on a charge, no trouble (wish my Android phone could pull that off))

<comment><USER17> Apple added the 16MB flash buffer which was less common.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> That's smart of Google. And refreshing to read a non-techie write about the Glasses. To be successful in a mass market you will have to appeal to these people, something the iPhone obviously did. This collaboration will give Google valuable data on what non-techies think about Glasses and will help them refine the concept and marketing. Plus it will give them some great marketing material with top models wearing their product. The film will help them experiment with what on earth you do with all of these video streams. Can't wait to see what they'll make of it.

</comment><comment><USER19> Maybe this question has already been answered, but are Google Glasses designed to be compatible with individuals whom wear prescription glasses? At a first glance, it looks like they currently aren't.

<comment><USER20> From what I understand, there will be a separate product designed for this purpose.

See: [https://plus.google.com/110625673290805573805/posts/Nmc8LuwF...](https://plus.google.com/110625673290805573805/posts/Nmc8LuwFw5M)

<comment><USER21> Here's another (mock-up?) photo of Google Glass attached to regular glasses, this time from Google I/O: <http://imgur.com/q4tDX>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Google Glasses are the next hands free Bluetooth headset. Constantly blinking on someone's ear. It's annoying and will be culturally unacceptable to most people. The same reason why Bluetooth headsets haven't really caught on all that well in public. It's annoying and unnecessary to be connected to that extreme. That's why they'll fail.

</comment><comment><USER23> What's old is new again. This is similar set of wearable fashion shows held about a decade ago by Charmed: [http://www.jarrellpair.com/wearable- technology-fashion-shows...](http://www.jarrellpair.com/wearable-technology- fashion-shows/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Glass, people. Stop calling them Glasses. There is only one. NYM and NYT both got it wrong-- NYT even misheadlined the article that had the right content.</comment>