Cheap cellular data list is out: And US doesn't make top 200
- Reference: 1658831822
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/07/26/mobile_data_survey/
- Source link:
While at first glance [1]the placing doesn't seem that much to celebrate, the $0.79 per gigabyte is a considerable improvement from 12 months ago, where the UK ranked 78th at $1.48 per gigabyte.
It is also an intriguing finding considering inflationary pressures elsewhere in the British economy.
[2]
Noting the improvement in the results of the UK, Dan Howdle, consumer telecoms analyst at Cable.co.uk, said: "Contrary to what one might expect as the costs of living continues to rise, the average package cost has fallen, from USD 23.28 to USD 17.58."
[3]T-Mobile US figuring out international roaming on 5G
[4]Teeth marks yield clue to widespread internet outage in Canada
[5]Wireless kit hit by supply chain woes in Q1, China lockdowns blamed
[6]BT to sell private 5G networks powered by Ericsson kit
[7]5G masts will be strapped to lampposts and traffic lights – once multimillion project figures out who owns them
58 plans were assessed for the UK and the average was calculated as the median of package prices / data limits, according to the methodology used [8]in the report [PDF] .
The figure puts the UK comfortably ahead of the US, whose subscribers spend an average of $5.62 per gigabyte (leaving the country languishing in 202nd place out of the 233 countries ranked.)
[9]
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However, before Brits get too smug, that $0.79 puts the UK neck and neck with Belarus and a long way behind Italy, the top ranked West European country at $0.12 per gigabyte and a second placed ranking overall. France was 7th, with $0.23 per gigabyte.
Topping the table was Israel, at only $0.04 per gigabyte (out of 20 plans surveyed) while the bottom was Saint Helena with an eyewatering cost of $41.06 per gigabyte, sparing the blushes of the Falkland Islands, which averaged a cost of $38.45 over the four plans surveyed by researchers.
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As for the range in worldwide rankings, Howdle noted that the cheapest countries for data tended to be either ones with excellent data infrastructure, meaning providers can offer large amounts of data thus bringing down the price per gigabyte, or those with iffier infrastructure and so heavily reliant on mobile data, "and the economy dictates that prices must be low, as that's what people can afford."
"At the more expensive end of the list," he went on, "we have countries where often the infrastructure isn't great but also where consumption is very small. People are often buying data packages of just a tens of megabytes at a time, making a gigabyte a relatively large and therefore expensive amount of data to buy."
[12]
Double-click for the full list (table via [13]Cable)
And for those countries around the middle of the pricing rankings? Howdle said that many had decent infrastructure and competitive mobile markets, "and while their prices aren't among the cheapest in the world, they wouldn't necessarily be considered expensive by its consumers."
The prices gathered were for SIM-only mobile plans, and only consumer SIM packages were included. It also included plans that featured calls and texts as well as those that were "pure data." It did not, however, look at the cost of roaming data when travelling abroad. ®
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[1] https://www.cable.co.uk/mobiles/worldwide-data-pricing/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YuAPoLpe8a9722bdY9935AAAAIk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/11/tmobile_5g_roaming/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/15/beaver_internet_outage_canada/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/13/wireless_kit_hit_by_supply/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/31/bt_offers_private_5g_networks/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/09/5g_mobile_masts_lampposts/
[8] https://www.cable.co.uk/mobiles/worldwide-data-pricing/2022/methodology_global_mobile_data_pricing_study_2022.pdf
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YuAPoLpe8a9722bdY9935AAAAIk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YuAPoLpe8a9722bdY9935AAAAIk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YuAPoLpe8a9722bdY9935AAAAIk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://regmedia.co.uk/2022/07/26/mobile_data_prices_worldwide.jpg
[13] https://www.cable.co.uk/mobiles/worldwide-data-pricing/
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: It did not, however, look at the cost of roaming data when travelling abroad.
well, before the Brexit, the cost of roaming for UK, in the EU would have been nil.
Well the price of your normal data plan, as there's no data roaming fee in the EU.
Since Brexit... it's up to how much the $TELCO wants to lighten your purse.
How??
How can they compare packages that are, in effect, "infinite data" and for which, in theory, the per GB price is approaching zero?
My phone tells me I'm using about 10GB /mth mobile data. Many young people just don't have or use WiFi and just go with mobile data all the time , so might be using 50-100 GB/mth or even more.
I'm surprised so many advanced countries are at the bottom of the list and I think taking into account the above, the real situation is many users have cheaper mobile data than the study shows.
Re: How??
I am curious as well. Very rarely do i see articles mention the methodology involved in these studies, they only cite studies.
Re: How??
The article provides a link to the study, as they often do. If you really were curious you'd click that link and read the report which will surely tell you the methodology.
Re: How??
> I'm surprised so many advanced countries are at the bottom of the list and I think taking into account the above, the real situation is many users have cheaper mobile data than the study shows.
That is because they don't appear to take purchasing power into account. So Senegal, for example, might be very cheap but it's still a week's wages in local terms.
Re: How??
Yes how do you count it when there is no cap to how much data you are allowed to use, download.
Re: How??
It seems strange to me to calculate the average cost for the plans in a country.
Power users like you which will use the biggest part of mobile data are quite unlikely to have a plan that is at or above the average price.
Comparing by the lowest price per GB you can get in the country would be more sensible (and can be done if you download their .xls data file).
Re: How??
10GB /mth mobile data if you are running a 64-bit phone would be only 2.5GB/mth back in the days of 16-bit processing.
Poor basis for comparison.
If prices are compared in dollars and, as has been the case for the last year, the dollar has strengthened signigiciantlly and the Euro has fallen faster than Sterling, then most countries will seem cheaper than the US than last year. As such the prices should be weighted to reflect this or expressed using some form of PPP (purchasing power parity).
In addition, consumer price inflation does not affect all areas of the economy equally. Energy, transport and food have got more expensive but these are not the main drivers of cost for mobile networks: power is important but quite a few base stations are self-contained, not least because this reduces the cost of a mains connection.
Like for like? The cost per GB also ignores whether you can acutally use what you pay for: having the capacity in the network both where you need lots of it (stations, football stadiums, etc.) and covering large areas (mountains, fens, etc.) are key determinants of costs. But these are primarily capital and not operational expenditures and as such less subject to fluctuation. The other main determinants are state support, especially for rural areas, and competition, with many studies suggesting that at least four providers are required for a truely competitive market.
Prices for services will go up as wages go up but, at the same time, capacity will probably continue to grow faster. This is why cost per GB is so much lower now than, say 20 years ago.
Re: Poor basis for comparison.
If prices are compared in dollars and, as has been the case for the last year, the dollar has strengthened signigiciantlly and the Euro has fallen faster than Sterling, then most countries will seem cheaper than the US than last year. And yet, the US is in 202nd place. Damn, I wanna move.
Re: Poor basis for comparison.
You wanna move because of the price per GB gap... or because your whole country is descending into a christo-facist nightmare?
Re: Poor basis for comparison.
Well, apart from the fact that the US telco market is not competitive and has been expensive for years, that is because of the exchange rate. The Economist has for years used [1]the price of a Big Mac to demonstrate the effect of PPP. Currently, the pound is around 14% undervalued and the Euro 7.5%. NB the pound is also undervalued compared with the Euro…
[1] https://www.economist.com/big-mac-index
Re: Poor basis for comparison.
at least four providers are required for a truely competitive market
One of the interesting aspects of the UK market is the extent to which operators are effectively competing against themselves through MVNOs - either through genuine third parties or via low-cost subsidiaries (giffgaff/SMARTY/VOXI...). It's as much about market segmentation as it is about competition.
Whereas median pricing might make some sense to a network operator (in the end it's a measure of its income), it's not in itself of interest to the consumer in search of the cheapest deal - but its falling does imply that consumers are more keenly interested in price and less afraid of SIM-swapping and number portability.
Re: Poor basis for comparison.
Yes, lots of countries have MVNOs and I agree it's largely segmentation. In Germany, the telcos are still very much more expensive for data than SIM only deals. But, in general, prices have hardly moved the last 5 to 10 years. The only thing that continues to change is the number of people going SIM only and not relying on a contract when changing the phone.
Mobile Data pricing stays the same, but data amountrises
Switched to giffgaff about 6yrs ago due to cost with other providers constantly rising... I pay £10 a month for unlimited calls & texts, and at the time about 2 or 3GB of data.
The calls/txts remain the same, but the data is up to around 15GB now... Not a huge amount I know... But I rarely use more than 1GB a month because I'm always connected to my wifi (work from home) and I never use public wifi because of privacy concerns and the insipid data harvesting all of them do.
Everything goes through my VPN too.
I have never once, used up all of my data in that entire time. Came close once when I was away for a week and used some data for netflix streaming because the bedroom I was sleeping in was too far from the router and was disconnecting wifi as I was watching some movie/show before sleep.
statistics for their own sake?
Ranking according to the average price seems pretty meaningless when the range of deals (for the UK) start at $0.12/GB and go up to $61.52
Unless there are special circumstances (such as pitifully low caps on the cheapest deals, or latency measured in days rather than milliseconds) wouldn't a better comparison be to take the cheapest cost/GB as a measure of ... whatever it is this survey is trying to prove.
Or at least, weight the deals according to how many punters cough for each of the ones surveyed.
(I can see that one of the most sought after pieces of marketing information would be the customer lists of the highest cost deals. Presumably those people can be persuaded to pay completely over the odds for other things, too)
Re: statistics for their own sake?
I pay 15€ for unlimited usage - but 0.00€/GB is not identified as possible, although it would gravitate towards that with the use I make of it - as a mobile hotspot for everything (including TV) and everyone in the household while away in our country cottage, we could easily top 50GB per day! (alright, not really 0.00/Gb, but I didn't see 0.01€/GB either)
It did not, however, look at the cost of roaming data when travelling abroad.
... otherwise the UK would have plummeted this month.