When GPRS was first released, carriers charged insane prices for mobile data. This has changed since then – but mobile data still is pretty expensive in some countries.
This month’s State of the Mobile Web report (PDF) contains the following figure:
For me, the most surprising thing was the high price of data in the USA – anyone of you have an idea on why the situation is as it is?
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As I told you before, those numbers are totally bogus. In the US adding a data plan to a phone costs $20-$30 for “unlimited usage”. Unlimited usage of course never really means unlimited usage, but the T-Mobile rep said that they take action after 5 GB of usage (for a month). I believe at that point they simply limit you to edge, but I don’t remember for sure.
5,000MB @ $20 = $0.004/MB. I don’t know how your report managed to find $2/MB; it’s off by a factor of 500.
T-Mobile plans are simple:
$30-$50 for voice (500-unlimited minutes)
+ $10 if you want unlimited texting (otherwise it’s ~$.15/text ?)
+ $20 if you want unlimited data ($30 if you’re under contract with them).
Ex: for me the grand total is $60 – unlocked Nexus One + 500 mins $30 + data $20 + text $10.
Maybe you should be asking those guys where they get their totally bogus data from.
Here’s my source —
http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/plans/Cell-Phone-Plans.aspx?catgroup=Individual
…that and well……I HAVE THAT PLAN……..
What’s theirs?
BTW: If you don’t have a smart phone, then the data plan is just $10/mo. I used the $10/mo plan with an unlocked Centro and used Google maps / facebook without issue (other crappy edge performance).
Opera Saves $27.4B In Yearly Data Costs. Except It Doesn’t.
http://gigaom.com/2010/10/27/opera-saves-27-4b-in-yearly-data-costs-except-it-doesnt/
Opera says they used “lowest cost plans”, and yet for the US they chose only prepaid data plans. In the US these plans are generally only used by the poor, people with poor credit, or people who want a phone for emergencies only — none of which represent your average data user. It would be like pricing lowest $/MB for US internet access…but restricting yourself to 56K dial-up only.
… or excluding the iPhone, Android, and Blackberry in a discussion about smart phones in the US.
Hi Max,
thank you so much for talking back!
I have already posted a report from Opera re this…
All the best
Tam Hanna