Don't forget that pays for coverage of a land area roughly twice as big as the entire EU[0] with no roaming charges. Also, this article is from 2012 and has outdated prices. If you go prepaid you can get 2.5 GB for $35 with unlimited voice and text[1] or 5 GB for $30 with 100 minutes voice and unlimited text[2]. Or pay-what-you-use for voice, text, and data[3] (great for people who need a phone but hardly use it or with highly-variable use). Of course you can also pay a lot more for worse plans, but savvy shoppers have decent options available to them these days.

[0] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28land+area+of+the+us+... (I excluded Alaska because most of that state doesn't have cellular coverage and the parts that do make up for the parts of the mainland that don't.)

[1] https://www.cricketwireless.com/cell-phone-plans

[2] http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-plans#other-month...

[3] https://ting.com/rates

Median income in the US is higher than Poland (which just means you might expect people to spend more on similar things), and cell phone company marketing has been very successful selling higher cost plans (which helps them avoid competing on price).

The last 12 months has seen more price competition ($40 a month on T Mobile is the data equivalent of your plan, with unlimited voice (that's the no contract plan)).

An example of how successful the marketing has been, people regularly talk about the subsidy they get from the phone company to buy their phone. It's really a contract where they end up paying more than the price of the phone (plus interest), but it still gets called a subsidy.

Most of the European countries that got internet infrastructure installed recently, like Poland and Romania for example, have very fast, very cheap internet access.

Some of my East European friends make me positively jealous with their cheap and very fast internet speeds compared to those in the UK.

My GF is with nju (and I'm moving to them soon), for $13 a month she has unlimited calls, texts and 5gb of data. Sweet setup.

About the same here in France, though the speed is sometimes a bit slow, and I think I got a 4,99€ deal because of a limited time offer. But it´s cheap in any case compared to what you see in North America.