Re:India has the highest data usage per smartphone
by ska on Friday June 21, 2019 @12:22PM
(#20243910)
You pay $18/month for unlimited?
Re:India has the highest data usage per smartphone
by saltcured on Friday June 21, 2019 @02:40PM
(#20245228)
There is a pre-paid T-Mobile MVNO called Mint who will give you 3 to 12GB/month LTE for $15 to $25/month, with unlimited at slower speeds when you go over your limit. To get those prices, you buy in bulk, prepaying 12 months at a time. If you need to buy extra LTE capacity in one month, they charge $20 for 3GB increments.
In reality though, I think many US users here probably get the majority of their bandwidth over WiFi and do not really use that much LTE data. But, if I wanted to replace my $70/month cable Internet with just a Mint subscription, i.e. the $25/month plus 2x $20 refills, that would buy 18 GB/month of LTE.
Re:India has the highest data usage per smartphone
by uep on Sunday June 23, 2019 @10:27AM
(#20255736)
Absolutely not. Thanks for pointing that out. I definitely misread the grandparent's post to be monthly (which means I'm paying 3x). I think ~$2.16/month is so cheap that it didn't register as possible.
I do, however, have truly unlimited, which means I can tether without hesitation. T-Mobile does have unlimited plans at $35/line a month for 55 or older, but that is still twice the $18/month price.
As the sibling post states, there are competitive plans like Mint, or FreedomPop, which offer extremely cheap plans, but nowhere near 1.5GiB of data a day. So I guess we are much further away than I thought we were.
Strictly multiplying by 8 isn't really a good comparison, as the cost of supporting such a network in India isn't going to cost 1/8th as much as the US. I'm sure there's a lot of room for the US cellular carriers to be more efficient.