[HN Gopher] What Does My Site Cost?
___________________________________________________________________
What Does My Site Cost?
Author : shadowfaxRodeo
Score : 354 points
Date : 2021-07-07 10:56 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (whatdoesmysitecost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (whatdoesmysitecost.com)
| f6v wrote:
| My iPad(it's a 9.7 one, but anyway) suffocates when I visit
| Reddit. The same device that runs heavy 3D games. Something is
| definitely wrong.
| pugworthy wrote:
| Perhaps with your iPad? Your iPad's internet connection?
| dang wrote:
| Past related threads:
|
| _The cost of using different sites on mobile networks around the
| world_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14192503 - April
| 2017 (90 comments)
|
| _What Does My Site Cost?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9187128 - March 2015 (1
| comment)
| dang wrote:
| Submitted title was "Reddit.com weighs 1.39MB. Here's what that
| costs around the globe". Since this has nothing in particular to
| do with the ever-sensational Reddit, that counts as linkbait.
| (Also, "Blah blah. Here's what that blah" is a linkbait headline
| trope in its own right.)
|
| We've reverted the title as the site guidelines ask:
|
| " _Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or
| linkbait; don 't editorialize._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| I've gone the opposite direction (here in Canada). I'm on a plan
| that costs at most $13 (+HST) per month but can get cheaper. It
| gives me unlimited international text/multimedia messaging, 100
| dialed minutes / unlimited incoming minutes per month and 250MB
| of data.
|
| Pathetic? Sure. But just don't use mobile data unless you need
| it. 250MB is enough for data plan based messaging, Strava, Google
| Maps (with cached maps) and whatever information you need to look
| up. You don't really need to watch 1080p streaming video outside
| the house.
|
| If anything this actually encourages healthy phone habits.
|
| If you do need massive data, suck it up, pay the CAD $80/month
| for the big data package, then the incremental cost of visiting a
| given web site is zero.
|
| Cheaper? Look it up. It's Public Mobile prepaid. $15/month minus
| $2 for autopay (which everyone uses), minus $1/month for every
| year you've been on to a maximum of 5, minus $1/month for every
| referred friend (or spouse!) that is currently using it. I think
| the wife and I together are running at $21 or $22 per month
| currently.
|
| Yes, would be nice to have dirt cheap internet and mobile data,
| but we don't. So make the best of what we do have.
| deregulateMed wrote:
| It's interesting to see the rationalization.
|
| "Just don't use it, plus good phone habits"
|
| What about value added uses for the phone? I looked up how to
| harvest basil today and watched a 60 second YouTube video. Or
| reading an encyclopedia. Or fixing a car.
|
| None of those are bad phone habits. And those previously
| mentioned don't necessarily have the luxury of wifi.
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| I have a gigabyte of backup data for stuff like that; it
| costs $30 but you can use it up as slowly as you want (once
| you deplete your 250MB).
|
| I find it super annoying that low bandwidth information (i.e.
| a paragraph or two of text) has been replaced by ad-riddled
| Youtube videos! I've been able to avoid this usage pattern
| while on mobile data, but I can see that not everyone feels
| they can.
|
| Wikipedia is lightweight, no problem on frugal data.
| TenToedTony wrote:
| WTF. You buy a fixed amount of data in Canada?
| Black101 wrote:
| Often in the US too and unlimited usually doesn't mean
| unlimited at full speed... For example, if you use your
| internet at full speed for a full day, you probably would get
| throttled for the rest of the month.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| This is BS, it states 3 cents for France, but most people have
| unlimited plans for 20 euros here.
| Iv wrote:
| old.reddit.com is the only way to browse that site. I really
| don't think I will be able to stay the day they pull the plug on
| the old version.
| DSingularity wrote:
| Canadians are unhappy but maybe in ten years they will be happy
| with a population whose minds remained healthy because bandwidth
| costs luckily created a controlling feedback mechanism to
| otherwise addictive social media.
| pmarreck wrote:
| Does anyone else just use old.reddit.com since the (now no longer
| new) site redesign is so awful?
| Joe_Cool wrote:
| Yes! On older PCs and netbooks the new site is an absolute pain
| to use with massive lag and CPU usage.
| rnhmjoj wrote:
| You should also try teddit.net: it's a minimal self-hosted
| frontend (similar to indivious and nitter). I think it's even
| better than the old design and works well without javascript.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| Brutal. I'm on Mint which costs something like $240 a year for 2x
| 10GB plans. But they don't cut you off or charge you more if you
| go over. They just throttle you a bit more during congestion
| events. It costs me less than a cent to visit reddit, under the
| pessimistic assumption that they throttle me to zero after I use
| my 10GB.
| Traster wrote:
| I don't know about other countries, but in the UK doing this:
|
| > using the least expensive plan with a (minimum) data allowance
| of 500 MB over (a minimum of) 30 days
|
| Is just rubbish.
|
| It's just impossible to price things like this, take EE's pricing
| per GB for a 1 month sim:
|
| * 1GB - PS14 - PS14 per GB
|
| * 120GB - PS20 - PS0.16p per GB
|
| * 10GB - PS20 - PS2 per GB
|
| * 200GB - PS23 - $0.115p per GB
|
| * Unlimited - PS35
|
| The total price of the cheapest contract is PS6 cheaper than the
| next step up, which is _100_ times cheaper per GB.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Why is 120GB the same price as 10GB?
| Traster wrote:
| Because our phone companies are 99.97% marketing. They're
| constantly trying to market deals and segment their market.
| So today it just so happens to be 120GB cheap. Next week it
| might be extortionately expensive. When 5G first came out it
| was ridiculously expensive to get decent data caps, but I
| would assume that they now have excess capacity and so
| they're trying to compete with some other competitor at that
| price point.
| swiley wrote:
| They're also trying to break their old no-longer-economical
| contracts.
| Causality1 wrote:
| _because this is the least expensive plan it is the best case
| scenario_
|
| That is a wildly incorrect claim. The only people I know on
| limited data plans are elderly. Everyone else is either on a
| cheap, slow unlimited plan or an expensive, fast unlimited plan.
| Even if I count my deprioritization quota of 22GB as my "limit"
| visiting Reddit only costs me 0.16 cents.
| coding123 wrote:
| Considering the second most popular website in the world sends a
| gigabyte per hour (youtube) is this stuff a concern anymore?
| Aeolun wrote:
| How is the least expensive plan the best case scenario. The
| prices go down _significantly_ per MB on larger plans.
| NoblePublius wrote:
| I pay $30/month for unlimited everything (including HotSpot) on
| Visible (Verizon MVNO) in NYC.
| davidkunz wrote:
| You can replace reddit.com with teddit.net and have a much
| lighter UI.
| techrat wrote:
| ...and far less data collection, dark patterns, and helps to
| eliminate the temptation to soil ones' self by responding to
| the horrendous comments on that site. At this point, Reddit is
| just Facebook for people who think they're too good to use
| Facebook.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| At this point in history, I thought certain webites would be
| paying consumers to visit their site. Yes--literally paying us to
| view in credits, paypal, or bitcoin.
|
| It wold be nice to see Facebook offering a few pennies for the
| marketing data we pay to give them. It would be nice to be paid
| for high ranking comments too. Say for instance, a guy writes a
| researched answer to a question on Reddit, and it blew up. Reddit
| would pay pay that individual a few dimes. The quality of
| comments would probally increase? Maybe less bathroom humor, and
| real thoughtful answers?
|
| Could anyone imagine if we got a bill at the end of the month
| detailing what we pay per website/download incident?
|
| You went to facebook 40 times, at a bandwidth, or percentage you
| pay us, at a cost of $6.00
|
| You went to Reddit 30 times, at a cost of $3.00
|
| (It will never happen because the big players are becoming very
| good Lobbiest's. If it ever did happen, I can guarantee, there
| would be no bloat. If it ever did happpen, it might redispute
| some if the obsence profits these guys hide? I still think most
| people would cheerily contribute to sites they respect without
| any form of enticement.)
| dcolkitt wrote:
| This always seemed like a back door way to finally have the web
| finally embrace a micropayments business model.
|
| By this point ads, and the tracking scripts associated with ad
| networks, have grown so large that they may cost more in
| bandwidth than they generate in sales. People are famously
| hesitant to pay for content, but in this case it's "free" if it
| means dumping the ads.
| alex_smart wrote:
| The $0.01 number for India is off by at least two orders of
| magnitude.
|
| I use a telephone plan that gives 1GB/day for 3 months for 8USD.
| That comes to around $0.0001 cents per MB.
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| Highly recommend this pertinent and brilliant talk from several
| years ago:
|
| video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYpl0QVCr6U
|
| text: https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm
| Black101 wrote:
| They could easily reduce that... For example, they use 48x48
| images for images that are displayed at 12x12 pixels...
|
| https://i.imgur.com/nMXLd4H.png
| travisporter wrote:
| Not being a web dev, i'm curious why PNGs are used at all? I
| assumed jpeg would be smaller almost always
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| And you pay all that and then the page is covered with a giant
| modal dialog trying to force you to use the mobile app instead of
| your web browser.
| deergomoo wrote:
| I feel this is more an indictment of Canadian data prices than
| Reddit's bloat.
|
| Why on Earth is it so expensive?
| GuB-42 wrote:
| It is due to the way it is calculated.
|
| > "Prices were collected from the operator with the largest
| marketshare in the country, using the least expensive plan with
| a (minimum) data allowance of 500 MB over (a minimum of) 30
| days. Prices include taxes. Because these numbers are based on
| the least expensive plan, they are best case scenarios."
|
| I disagree that it is necessarily the "best case" but it is a
| sensible way to count. Depending on the specific offering you
| may get unexpected results. For example, the 500MB plan may be
| barely cheaper than a 10GB plan, which can make sense if with
| that 500MB you are mostly paying for phone calls and SMS. Heavy
| internet users will most likely pick a plan with much more data
| that will be more expensive per month, but way cheaper per
| byte.
|
| Also, it is split into two section: prepaid and postpaid, and
| Canada is at $0.07 postpaid. They just picked the highest
| number on the list.
| greenshackle2 wrote:
| Their methodology appears to be garbage.
|
| You have it backwards. The chart says $0.17 postpaid, $0.07
| prepaid.
|
| The chart implies a cost of 120 USD per GB, which implies
| it's based on a 500MB/month plan costing 60 USD. There's no
| way in hell the cheapest way to get 500MB in Canada costs 60
| USD. I'm in Canada and I pay 40 USD for 8GB per month.
|
| The only way I figure they can get to such an absurd number
| is that no one sells 500MB plans in Canada anymore, so they
| had to choose a zero data plan + 500MB of additional data to
| make up a "500MB" plan. With my carrier, additional data is
| 104 USD per GB.
| OJFord wrote:
| They still have intranational (i.e. cross-province, I assume)
| long distance call charges too.
| voisin wrote:
| This is largely eliminated. Koodo tried to reinstate it this
| year and there was a backlash. Though Telus still has
| landline plans in BC that have long distance costs outside of
| your city!
| lpcvoid wrote:
| No matter what the cost per MB, why is it completely normal for
| everybody nowadays that websites can be multiple million bytes
| in size? It's text after all. Boggles my mind.
| rplnt wrote:
| Jira (ticketing system - all text) is like 30 MB on first
| download, most of it javascript. It also barely runs on 2017
| MB Pro.
| lpcvoid wrote:
| I have to work with that daily, and yeah, it drives me
| insane.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yes Jira is terrible, not just from a javascript point of
| view but usability as well. Unfortunately we have to manage
| our hours in it.
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| Software is a gas, and our containers keep getting bigger.
| omegabravo wrote:
| at the same time, which GUI applications on your computer are
| only 1.3mb?
|
| 1.3mb seems optimised to me at first glance
| bscphil wrote:
| Many of them, thanks in part to dynamic linking. (I don't
| think excluding DLLs is too unfair, after all the browser
| constitutes an _enormous_ Javascript runtime environment.)
|
| VLC is one of the more complex programs out there, and yet
| the VLC binaries and the libvlc libraries they ship with
| total only 1.295 MiB on my computer.
|
| The main application for Scid, a chess database program, is
| only 1.1 MiB. (The program also comes with a simple test
| chess engine and some opening books, so the overall package
| is somewhat larger.)
|
| The binary and libraries for hexchat, an IRC application,
| total 1.22 MiB.
|
| The program files for Pinta, an image editing program, come
| in right at 1.3 MB.
|
| The vast majority of programs are under 10 MiB total.
| Moreover, I've tried to pick relatively full featured
| desktop apps, and desktop apps as a rule _do more_ than any
| 1 MB web page. And these applications come in highly
| compressed archives, which means that their download size
| is often significantly less.
|
| Furthermore, I would argue that web pages are rarely
| comparable to applications. When you're browsing Reddit, if
| the home page is 1.3 MiB on mobile, chances are the first
| individual post you click on is _also_ going to be 1.3 MiB,
| and the one after that, and so on. You don 't get the
| benefits of Reddit by downloading an "application" one time
| and getting tiny updates after that. If you're lucky most
| of the libraries being pulled in will get cached, but
| frequently it doesn't work out that way. On desktop Reddit,
| a warm refresh of the site still used more than 2.5 MiB for
| me, and that's with an ad blocker enabled.
| chousuke wrote:
| How much signal is there in that 1.3MB though? We don't
| think about the weight of websites much nowadays because we
| have insane bandwidth, but how much of that is actual
| content? The text on one page can't be more than a few
| kilobytes, and images don't have to be much more data
| either if they're just thumbnails.
| lpcvoid wrote:
| It's possible to create GUI applications with under 10kb in
| size, if you link dynamically and use raw win32 api. Pretty
| sure that my personal wxwidget stuff was way under 100kb
| too back in the days. Never used GTK directly on linux, but
| again, 1MB is an indicator that you are either linking
| statically, or doing something wrong.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| The people who develop said sites live in a bubble where high
| speed computers and internet are the norm, and many of them
| are too young to remember when computers were actually slow,
| so they don't really understand how unbelievably wasteful
| their product is.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| "Developer experience" they chant, as they sit in cushy
| chairs, and post on social media in between grunt builds.
| montroser wrote:
| Indeed. Compare to https://teddit.net (no-js reddit front
| end), and you can see the vast difference in bandwidth and
| performance.
|
| Some of the cause of all this has to do with market forces
| and prioritizing speed of development over customer
| experience. But I don't think that's the whole story.
| cesarb wrote:
| For perspective, a common _high-density_ floppy disk is 1.4
| megabytes. A whole operating system, complete with GUI, could
| fit in that space.
| [deleted]
| 0xTJ wrote:
| This is why I only use old.reddit.com. If they ever stop
| providing the old Reddit, I doubt I'll keep using it. Sure
| the old one isn't perfect, but I find the new one borderline
| unusable, even on a modern laptop.
|
| There's a furniture chain here that has a website so
| terrible, I just gave up on trying to buy what I wanted from
| them. So much happening in JavaScript to make things happen
| on the page. I have to imagine it's also terribly written,
| since it freezes up the tab most of the time, and Firefox
| suggests killing the script.
| decrypt wrote:
| I relate to this a lot. reddit.com struggles to load on my
| MacBook Air 2015, or a Windows with 9th gen i5 with 8GB
| RAM.
|
| I have an extension on my Firefox to always load the old
| reddit. There is an account-specific setting to always load
| old reddit, but there are times when I browse without an
| account.
| pjmlp wrote:
| It won't be around for much long I am afraid.
|
| Now to accept cookie policies you need first to accept
| being redirected into the new site, and then manually
| return to old version.
|
| I bet in about one year time the old is gone.
| bscphil wrote:
| I don't think I've ever been asked to accept a cookie
| policy on Reddit. I normally only browse Reddit while
| logged in, so that could be part of it. Is this a new
| thing?
| pjmlp wrote:
| Yep, specially when always deleting cookies and living in
| Europe.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yes it (new reddit) even brings my i5 to its knees... Way
| overbloated with javascript. Also in FF by the way. Perhaps
| Chrome is better but I won't use it.
| deckard1 wrote:
| Reddit on mobile is a disaster. It's clearly designed with
| one goal in mind: pushing as many people to their app as
| possible. You can't even read threads without logging in.
| silvestrov wrote:
| Especially reddit which has such a simple UI that no
| frameworks are needed.
|
| If you drop support for MSIE 11 and only support modern
| browsers the modern javascript is surprisingly compact.
|
| But then your CV looks stupid: no frameworks on the list. How
| would you ever get a job again?
|
| How do you get any respect if you say "I just code javascript
| directly on the browser", sounds like you're too stupid to
| learn a framework.
|
| You will only get respect from the very best developers but
| not all the copy/paste 'developers', no respect from the HR
| department nor mediocre managers.
|
| It's an uphill battle.
| deergomoo wrote:
| Use of frameworks is often blamed for bloat, but the two
| are completely independent.
|
| React is about 110kB. Vue is 33kB. It's perfectly possible
| (and really not that hard) to write fast, small web apps
| with the big popular JS frameworks. It's the thoughtless
| stuff people do--pulling in huge libraries for tiny
| features, mandating the use of huge analytics packages, etc
| --that cause the bloat.
|
| Whether it should all just be server-rendered is a whole
| other argument, but if you're going to build something the
| size and scale of reddit as a client-rendered app, you'd be
| crazy to not use one of the existing frameworks IMO. If for
| no other reason than you're likely to end up just re-
| creating a worse version of them.
| bscphil wrote:
| I think bloat really means two different things. One is
| the obvious "file size" issue, and as you are mentioning
| it's quite possible to write small sites even using
| heavy-weight frameworks.
|
| But a lot of the complaints in this thread boil down to
| modern sites being slow to run on computers that are only
| a few years old. If modern frameworks are to blame for
| that, it's not because they're a hundred (or more) KB.
| It's because they require the end user to run way more
| Javascript in the browser and consume far more memory
| than a site with minimal Javascript requires to
| accomplish the same thing.
|
| As a random example, Firefox's about:performance page
| says that the three YouTube tabs I have open are each
| consuming about 50 MB of my computer's memory. That's
| obscene. (None of the tabs are open on a video, so this
| is not the result of storing videos in RAM.)
|
| Also, I did a Lighthouse analysis of the Reddit home page
| in Chrome (on Desktop, but targeting mobile). The page
| scores less than 20/100 on performance, and takes _almost
| twenty seconds_ to become interactive!! The biggest
| problem Lighthouse sees with the page is _not_ the file
| size, but the amount of Javascript being executed. There
| 's ~25 seconds of "main thread work" being done in my
| test.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Great point. React's DOM-diffing algorithm does many
| unnecessary computations that make websites run slowly
| compared to targeted DOM manipulation.
| userbinator wrote:
| _If you drop support for MSIE 11 and only support modern
| browsers the modern javascript is surprisingly compact._
|
| On the contrary, I'm pretty sure you could make Reddit a
| usable site in everything down to text-based browsers
| (static HTML + small bits of JS), and _still_ have it be
| faster and smaller than what the new version is today.
|
| "Modern" development is a horrible bloated mess.
|
| I agree with the rest of your comment, however; and perhaps
| the solution is to not hire only "web developers", as those
| whose full-time job isn't to work on that stuff seem to be
| far better at not adding "padding" for the sake of "CV-
| driven development", when they are actually asked to work
| on websites.
|
| I've had a few experiences with that:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23590137
| nelox wrote:
| My guess is monopolistic power at play
| ricardo81 wrote:
| Spent a few years living in Canada but mostly in the UK. It
| seemed that Canadian prices were roughly double.
|
| My anecdotal guess is that the infrastructure costs are higher
| in Canada due to lower population density. Lots more area to
| cover to achieve the same coverage.
| voisin wrote:
| I have heard this argument and the counter is that Australia
| has low population density like Canada and significantly
| lower costs. It all comes down to competition. We Canadians
| love our oligopolies!
| salamandersauce wrote:
| No. It's just utter bullshit due to a lack of competition.
| The province with the cheapest rates for wireless is not
| dense, population rich Ontario. It's one of the least dense,
| least populus. Why? Oh, because they have an extra wireless
| competitor in the form of a Crown Corp.
|
| Other countries like Australia have similar densities and
| infrastructure costs yet still have way lower prices. The
| Canadian telecom industry is sheltered and there's really
| only 3 big players. Foreign competition isn't allowed so
| there's no possibility of Verizon or Vodafone coming in and
| shaking things up.
| tistoon wrote:
| And it's the same for banks in Canada..
|
| Revolut had to quit the canadian market because of the
| cartel banks..
| davidy123 wrote:
| Ontario has 14 persons per square mile. The population
| density of ALL of Western Europe is 181, ten times greater,
| Netherlands is 521. Ontario is quite a bit closer to other
| "less dense" provinces than most countries used for
| comparison.
|
| https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/canadian-provinces-
| and-t... https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/european-
| countries-by-po...
|
| I'm not posting enough references here, but this whole
| conversation has been so limited in facts and proportion.
|
| The point is the government wants carriers to provide
| service everywhere, which includes places like Nunavut,
| 0.019 persons per square mile.
|
| There are local initiatives, and some are really fantastic,
| but it's difficult to bootstrap those everywhere.
|
| Go to https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/comm/fourprov.htm and search
| for Nunavut and see who comes up.
|
| These prices need to come down, more competition and local
| initiatives need to happen, and more innovation for systems
| like mesh networks. It is particularly upsetting when ways
| can't be found to share infrastructure. But if providing
| access to every Canadian is the goal (rather than for every
| person in a city at a cost less than a bag of groceries)
| there is probably some logic to the existing system.
|
| Some people will say "just pay for Starlink everywhere,"
| but it's really not ok for a country's access to be owned
| by another country (as long as Musk is still on earth),
| wired ultimately has advantages, and there are probably
| benefits to supporting wired infrastructure, and
| competition and choice are important.
| salamandersauce wrote:
| Ontario has a density of 14 people per square km, not
| square mile. Saskatchewan has a density of 1.9 people per
| square km yet has cheaper rates. And go look at a
| coverage map. The big 3 don't cover huge swaths of places
| including most of Nunavut, heck even Northern Ontario is
| not well covered. It's an excuse. Again Australia has
| similar low density with people mainly concentrated in a
| few cities yet rates are considerably cheaper. Taking a
| quick peek at Telstra and you can get a 40GB a month plan
| for 55AUD (51 CAD) while Telus/Bell/Rogers charge $80 CAD
| for 30 GB. And I'm pretty sure the Australia price
| includes taxes in the price unlike the Canada price.
| davidy123 wrote:
| You're right about km vs mile, but it's consistently km
| in the comparisons so the same proportional result. The
| telcos don't need to provide coverage to every square
| meter, but they do have to reach many sparsely populated
| areas. The large carriers have it as a goal to cover
| areas like Northern Ontario better. I don't know what
| Australia's policies are, but they would have to be part
| of the comparison.
|
| The cost difference between Telstra and Telus/Bell/Rogers
| is double, but over a month tens of dollars is not a
| significant part of a budget, and when consuming video &c
| there's really not that much different between 30 - 40 GB
| (unlimited is another story). For people on a very
| limited budget, there are lower cost plans, but even with
| the Telstra plan it's not comparable to wired.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I think Canada, right or wrong,
| coddles these big carriers as a defence against
| international players, which creates an uneven playing
| field here (sharing infrastructure at competitive rates
| seemed like a fair recourse). I am just trying to bring
| more perspective to the table than "Ontario has a high
| density so should be cheap," besides the obvious "we are
| not just talking about Ontario or Toronto here."
|
| Wired is the real thing to discuss here, and what may get
| lost in the shuffle.
| BeefWellington wrote:
| In addition to the comment salamandersauce made in reply
| to yours, I'd also add that comparing the raw population
| density of the province of Ontario like that is _highly_
| misleading. There 's absolutely massive tracts of land
| that are largely uninhabited up north and something like
| 95% of the population lives along the great lakes, the
| American border, or the Ottawa river, comprising
| approximately 30% of the land within the boundaries of
| the province.
|
| The population density of the areas people live (that
| actually have telco service) is _much much much_ higher
| than 14 people per sq. km.
|
| The Greater Toronto Area has a population density of
| 849/sq. km[1]. Why are its prices not lower than, or at
| least comparable to all of Europe?
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Toronto_Area
| davidy123 wrote:
| See my [comment
| below](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27761413)
| shadowfaxRodeo wrote:
| To put it in perspective, the average website costs $0.12 in
| Canada.
|
| Both an indictment of general bloat and Canada data prices.
|
| More interesting is how much it costs for people in poorer
| countries -- Where the absolute value of visiting a site is
| less, but relative to income is far greater.
|
| Understandably you don't see much about this online -- people
| with expensive data plans don't use it all up complaining about
| it online.
| cube2222 wrote:
| Poorer countries (let's say those in the middle) quite often
| have newer network infrastructure, so prices are actually
| much better, even relative to income.
|
| In Poland it's around 0.25$ per GB for mobile networks. So
| 1MB is 0.00025$ and a visit to reddit according to the above
| calculations would be 0.0003475$.
|
| The prices in the US and Canada are ridiculous from that
| perspective.
| shadowfaxRodeo wrote:
| I should have said, some specific poorer countries.
|
| India has incredibly cheap data. While Mauritania has the
| most expensive in the world compared with the average
| income.
| adventured wrote:
| > The prices in the US and Canada are ridiculous from that
| perspective.
|
| The prices in the US aren't actually a serious problem any
| longer (they were if you go back 10 years, before
| T-Mobile's climb changed the market). Americans can
| trivially afford it given their disposable incomes at the
| median are among the highest on the planet. US plan prices
| have declined over the past ten years in nominal terms,
| while inflation has eroded another 30% of the price.
| $50-$60 is a nearly meaningless part of the average
| person's monthly budget in the US now (the median full-time
| income is $50,000, and Americans have low taxes at the
| median, which is where the high disposable incomes come
| from). Nobody is better at wasting money than Americans,
| they're thrilled to do it, you can tell judging by how they
| so willingly vaporize their disposable income on consumer
| garbage. And US plans typically have plenty of data with
| them these days, whereas Canada gets the worst of both
| outcomes (terrible data packages and very high prices).
|
| People come on HN and say things like: well I'm in Latvia
| and I pay EUR12 and get unlimited data. Well yeah, adjust
| that to the US and it's EUR48 (~$56). Now you've got a
| T-Mobile plan in the US at that price, so what. Or someone
| will say I'm in Britain and I pay PS25; yeah that's not
| cheap either, that's about $50x when you adjust it to the
| US for USD and incomes.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| The average prices in the US are a bit inflated though
| because of older people on plans that are priced like
| it's 10 years ago.
|
| I agree in general. I have added a 3rd line to my plan
| and am spending less than 1/3 of what I spent 10 years
| ago on 2 lines.
| ne0flex wrote:
| From my understanding, there are varying reasons ranging from
| monopoly, to having a relatively small population spread across
| a large area.
|
| There is one thing to note is that there are similar
| observations for other market segments like cars. People will
| pay up to 20% more for the same car in Canada vs. the US. I
| remember when I lived in Canada I saw multiple news segments
| with the gov't getting angry that Canadians were going to the
| US to buy new cars in order to save money. During one news
| segment, the Canadian car dealer being interviewed replied with
| "Canadians are just willing to pay more," when asked why cars
| are more expensive in Canada.
| everdrive wrote:
| Maybe it'd be good if more people had to pay for data? Website
| owners might actually try to optimize their sites rather than
| constantly making them worse.
| theknocker wrote:
| Reddit is the worst thing to happen to the internet besides
| google.
| jedberg wrote:
| Poland is near the bottom of all these graphs (meaning cheapest)
| and that tracks with my anecdotal experience. When I visited
| Europe a few years ago, I bought a SIM card in Poland and for
| just a couple Euro I got 4GB of data. At the time that was
| significantly cheaper than my own mobile plan at home.
| christophilus wrote:
| i.reddit.com for the win!
|
| Really, though, I'm part of the problem. The product I'm working
| on is a heavy JavaScript-based content editor. It's definitely a
| much better UX than the lighter weight previous version. But we
| made the user-facing content pages Preact-based simply to keep
| our stack consistent. We're a small team, and that's been a real
| time saver.
|
| Hopefully, we'll get around to optimizing things in the future,
| but it's not something anyone other than the dev team cares
| about.
| omegabravo wrote:
| Hugged to death (for me). It took a few cracks to get this
| screenshot.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/9QlY5xt
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20210707105923/https://whatdoesmy...
| [deleted]
| viraptor wrote:
| So... from a really quick search I'm guessing there's more to the
| story in practice. Knowing nothing about Canadian carriers, I
| went to https://www.whistleout.ca/CellPhones/Guides/best-cell-
| phone-... and saw a 1G/$23 plan. That gives $0.022 / MB = $0.03
| for Reddit, so much less than $0.17. Is it the choice of the
| largest carrier that breaks the comparison in Canada's case? Or
| am I missing something else?
| OJFord wrote:
| Probably - I don't know which is the largest by marketshare but
| just tried a couple big enough I've heard of (I'm British) -
| Bell starts at $80, ok for 30GB sure, but still that's an
| insane starting point to me; Rogers also starts at $80, for
| 15GB or currently 30GB on offer.
|
| How many people even need that much? In the UK I would guess
| most people are on 1-3GB plans; these cost <PS10pcm.
|
| Edit: or maybe I'm horribly out of touch? In the age of TikChat
| and Snapstagram, maybe most people ( _shudders_ ) need
| 'unlimited'/lots more than that?
| fckthisguy wrote:
| I've had an (truly) unlimited plan in the UK for less than
| 25PS for about a decade now.
|
| The <20PS plans often have caps but it's not so much more for
| unlimited.
| OJFord wrote:
| Yeah, I know they're available, I just don't think _most_
| people need /have them. (Modulo my edit that I might be
| extremely out of touch because I don't have any desire to..
| I don't know, watch short clips of funny dances or whatever
| while out and about.)
|
| The killer in Canada (at least, from the big two providers
| I checked above) seems to be that low-limit plans aren't
| available. They start at 30GB, and charge roughly double.
| salamandersauce wrote:
| There is low limit plans, just only on the sub-brands of
| the big 3. They all operate multiple MVNOs with a low-end
| tier like Lucky Mobile and Public Mobile, a mid-tier
| brand like Virgin (in Canada completely run by Bell
| Canada, only license name and logo), Fido and Koodo.
| These cheaper brands have cheaper plans like 5GB for $50
| or 1GB for $25. But they are also artificially locked out
| on features. You can't have an Apple Watch on the low end
| brands, there's no visual voice-mail support, no RCS,
| etc. Phone choice is limited although that's less of an
| issue than it was.
| 00deadbeef wrote:
| Yeah Three offer unlimited 5G for PS20/month.
|
| I get 160GB 5G with EE for PS20/month but it's a much
| better network.
| mojuba wrote:
| I wonder if the price of mobile data per megabyte depends on the
| population density and larger metropolitan areas vs. rural. I.e.
| the higher the density the cheaper. At least intuitively should
| be the case, because otherwise why would the prices vary so
| widely?
| fckthisguy wrote:
| Lack of local competition.
| yipbub wrote:
| I'm very surprised at how much data costs in Canada.
|
| In India, it costs me 7.43 USD for 84 days of 1.5GiB high-speed
| 4g data per day (plus unlimited calling). After that it drops of
| to a lower speed, but you can top off cheaply.
|
| That's $0.058 per GiB or $0.00005 per MiB
| neom wrote:
| Canada 204% larger than India with a fraction of the
| population. Unfortunately everything is overpriced here.
| Karsteski wrote:
| This comparison never makes sense. A large percentage of
| Canada lives within 100km of the US border.
| makecheck wrote:
| Given all the other things Reddit does, it seems to me this could
| just be another part of the "ruin the web to push the app"
| strategy.
| techrat wrote:
| Even their mobile site and app has become more hostile and
| laden with dark patterns.
|
| At this point, I can't even treat Reddit like a collection of
| community forums anymore... They make it impossible to read a
| thread when you come in from a Google result (unless you know
| the cheat code, change www in the url to old) and their content
| filtering is something out of a dystopian novel written by a
| schizophrenic bot. Trying to find any specific piece of info?
| Good luck.
| postalrat wrote:
| I always assumed the push to the app was to give them more
| control to push whatever content they want down your throat.
| hcoura wrote:
| Interesting way to put this data, but it's outright wrong in most
| cases in day to day life. The plans most people purchase has much
| better Data/$ ratio.
|
| And this conclusion is the opposite:
|
| > Because these numbers are based on the least expensive plan,
| they are best case scenarios.
|
| They are the _worst case scenarios_ at the very least in Brazil
| where I have purchased such packages
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| While it doesn't change the results by an order of magnitude,
| reddit.com is very different depending on who's loading it. Just
| playing with exit points of a VPN provider, I can get mobile
| website that's anywhere from 500kb to 3mb to load depending on
| which articles are at the top in a given region. Some regions
| seem to love articles with big graphics, and some seem to value
| text articles. Or, it could just be luck of the draw.
| mjlee wrote:
| The methodology is a bit odd. As best as I can tell it looks at
| the cheapest data plan that offers >500MB. If there's a plan
| that's $1 more per month but offers 100GB of data, the price per
| visit would drop rapidly but this tradeoff wouldn't be reflected
| in their price.
|
| They say it's "best case" but that appears to be based on the
| minimum hurdle to get a data plan, rather than the minimum data
| price.
|
| I think a better measurement would be a range based on a few
| different price levels (cheapest/most expensive/modal) but I
| understand that would be much harder to implement.
| viraptor wrote:
| I honestly can't tell if the "least expensive plan" combined
| with "best case scenario" actually means the lowest total
| price, or least expensive per MB. I agree that it's either odd
| methodology or odd wording.
| londons_explore wrote:
| A more representative figure would be to look at the typical
| data plans actual citizens of those countries have.
|
| Eg. Ask 100 citizens how many gb's they have and how much they
| pay. Calculate cost per gb for each. Take median.
| Communitivity wrote:
| So happy I have my grandfathered unlimited Verizon. I know I'll
| lose that when I move to 5G, based on what I'm seeing. Enjoying
| it for now though. I am excited to see the number of free
| municipal wi-fi growing [1], though none are near me yet.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_wireless_network#Uni...
| snwfog wrote:
| Deck for Reddit [1] is even worse [2].
|
| Thanks, super useful, now I know I gotta work on some assets
| optimization.
|
| - [1] https://rdddeck.com
|
| - [2]
| https://www.webpagetest.org/result/210707_AiDc8S_8ed51fd2240...
| caymanjim wrote:
| The article won't load for me, so I'm not sure if this is about
| reddit.com in a browser, or the Reddit mobile app. Sounds like
| the browser, based on other comments. They intentionally make the
| browser experience as terrible as possible to force people into
| the app (not that the app is much better). Reddit is hostile to
| their users and doesn't care about usability.
| docdeek wrote:
| I imagine this assumes you pay for a certain amount of data each
| month? The standard plan I have here in France has unlimited 4G
| and 5G data and costs me 15 euros a month (I also use them for
| the home/office internet for 40 euros a month so it is 15 instead
| of 20 euros for the cell). The cost of visiting a site on moibile
| under such a plan is essentially zero.
| malobre wrote:
| I think I have the same plan as you (Free 10G-EPON + 5G ?),
| I've seen lots of posts about broadband / mobile subscription
| and while prices do seems a bit higher than in Europe what
| shocks me the most is data caps on home internet.
| docdeek wrote:
| You're right - the home internet caps are really
| unbelievable. It's hard for me to imagine having to think
| about whether I should be streaming Netflix in the last week
| of the month in case I 'go over' my limit.
|
| The Free Mobile team email me every couple of years to tell
| me that my mobile 50GB limit has gone up to 100GB and then
| transformed into unlimited data. I don't think I've ever gone
| over about 40GB on mobile, anyway, and a lot less than that
| in the pandemic - but good to know I don't have to think
| about it.
| uyt wrote:
| I am in the US and I feel like most people have unlimited data. I
| am atypical and have Google Fi so I pay 10 dollars per gb. So
| 1.39mb would be $0.0139 for me. Are Canadians really paying 10x
| my rate?
| londons_explore wrote:
| In the US, even plans with limited data seem to just cap you at
| 64kbps when you go over the limit. Thats still very usable for
| messaging people.
|
| In most of the rest of the world, when you run out of data the
| only website you can access is your bank to make another
| payment to the phone company...
| coding123 wrote:
| I keep hearing that, but what country over a million people
| do you have limited internet at home?
| dewey wrote:
| In case you are wondering why that's the case:
| https://cansumer.ca/canada-phone-plan-pricing/
|
| > The Big 3 Canadian telecom companies (Bell, Rogers and Telus)
| own 90% of the market and charge higher prices due to a lack of
| competition.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| These prices are batshit insane.
|
| Here you get 20GB for 20 euro on prepaid with unlimited calling
| (which I never use at all - all my calls are on Whatsapp etc
| :') ). Or 5GB for 10 euro. I use the 20 euro plan as my 4G
| backup for when my fibre goes down and I worked a whole week
| off the 20GB during the first lockdown when there was such an
| issue (I do shut down some stuff like steam downloads and
| netflix with a script on my router when it's on failover). It
| really saved my bacon. The good thing about it is that it's
| even prepaid so I can just load money up on it when I need it.
|
| Strange thing is, we have 3 mobile operators here too (not
| counting the many MVNOs). Shouldn't be a barrier to decent
| competition. If you have more than 3 the available radio
| spectrum starts getting diluted anyway.
| cnity wrote:
| Here in the UK I am paying around PS23 for truly unlimited,
| including unlimited hotspot usage (no, not the type with an
| actual limit in the smallprint).
|
| For a period of about two months I was tethering my smart TV
| to my phone while the broadband was being upgraded and was a
| bit shaky. I was using around 200GB a month.
|
| I would never want to go back from unlimited.
| dade_ wrote:
| MVNOs are not allowed in Canada. The 3 carriers have even
| paid for economic studies that state it would be devastating
| to the the telecom market and innovation. They also own media
| conglomerates, who 'independently' agree.
|
| MVNOs would only disrupt their ability to buy sports teams.
| This does come up in elections, but so far they have gotten
| away with window dressing.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| > MVNOs are not allowed in Canada. The 3 carriers have even
| paid for economic studies that state it would be
| devastating to the the telecom market and innovation.
|
| Like the devastation it brought to all the other countries
| where it's been a success? :D
|
| Sometimes I don't know how these lobbyists manage to make
| this stuff up.
| bb101 wrote:
| Seems like the mobile industry and ISPs in Canada have the
| same problem as in Australia: too few people across too
| wide a space. The incumbents will only agree to improve and
| service their network if they are given protected positions
| by their government. Leads to results like 10Mbps fibre NBN
| "broadband" and CAD$80+/mo plans for 30GB of data. Far
| inferior to that enjoyed by UK and Europe.
| neom wrote:
| Our carriers argue that the country is huge and the
| population is low, so providing service/upgrades across it is
| expensive, in Toronto I'm effectively subsidizing a village
| of 6 somewhere random up north. However... this explanation
| is _mostly_ bullshit at this point in time.
| seniorivn wrote:
| in russia unlimited mobile traffic with hundreds of minutes
| on average among 4 major carriers cost about 6-14 usd And
| the only difference in costs for them compared to canada is
| labor cost, which is not a big part of their business
| model.
| II2II wrote:
| I have been to towns up north with larger populations (one
| to two thousand people) and no cellular service. There are
| also towns where service means one tower to service the
| town itself, but no coverage outside of town.[1] I suspect
| the actual costs come from down south, where there is an
| expectation of coverage in lower density areas and along
| transportation corridors.
|
| [1] It is also plausible they installed the tower to reduce
| the cost of phone service. There are cases where a
| microwave tower is necessary to deliver any communication
| service to the area, so the tower is already there to
| provide cellular service.
| kevincox wrote:
| While that is true it is a simplification. There are
| providers that service only the main populations such as
| FREEDOM (was WIND). However many people decided against
| these because they have to pay extra when leaving the city,
| such as visiting a cottage or going camping. So there is at
| least _some_ market demand for providing wide coverage
| included in your base plan.
|
| (I don't really understand it though, because Freedom
| Mobile has agreements to roam on the other networks and
| while the cost is much increased, for people who leave the
| city once every month or two it doesn't add up to the cost
| of the more expensive providers. These days Freedom even
| includes some included roaming in their plans, presumable
| to help customers see this line of thinking.)
| acover wrote:
| I believe freedom uses worse frequencies that don't
| penetrate walls as well. I left freedom when I'd randomly
| flip between roaming and not inside my house.
| Filligree wrote:
| Most people can't afford to take the cheaper option,
| because it makes their expenses unpredictable. You need
| money in the bank if you want to do that.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| It is bullshit. On regions where there's a strong local
| competitor (videotron in Quebec, Sasktel in Saskatchewan)
| the big three do lower their prices and offer more
| competitive plans - so they do have significant wiggle room
| without sacrificing a ton of profit.
|
| There was even a way to, say, register a phone number in
| Saskatchewan and use it in say Ontario, leveraging a cross-
| carrier agreement to basically use Rogers or Bell
| infrastructure at Sasktel prices. I think they found and
| closed this loophole, though.
| willhslade wrote:
| Canadian telecom is a racket.
|
| When Wind was around, the Egyptian billionaire owner gave
| an interview saying that if he could take his entire
| investment out of Canada at a 10% haircut he would do it in
| an instant. Wind operates in 170 countries. He compared
| Canada to China and North Korea.
|
| More here if you're bored. I would also say to Americans
| looking to move to Canada in light of... recent events, be
| prepared to be frustrated with the lack of choice in banks,
| telecom, grocery chains, and doctors.
| https://financialpost.com/telecom/tight-reins-leaves-our-
| tel...
| ng-user wrote:
| Out of curiosity, where is 'here'? Germany?
| jorams wrote:
| Judging by their username: The Netherlands. Not sure which
| provider they're talking about though. Those prices suggest
| it's an MVNO.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| No I live in Spain but I am indeed Dutch.
|
| And no, it's not an MVNO, I use Orange Spain. The tariff
| I mean in particular is "Go Fly":
| https://www.orange.es/tarifas/movil/prepago
|
| It looks like they now upped the allowance to 65GB (35
| standard and 30 as temporary "gift" :) ). Didn't even
| realise that. They often have temporary deals like that.
| I mainly use my work SIM in my phone.
|
| I think there's even better deals available here in Spain
| but I use Orange because they have a cell on top of this
| building and the 4G coverage is full bars (high buildings
| around so the signal reflects back to me).
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| It's Spain! https://www.orange.es/tarifas/movil/prepago
| nelblu wrote:
| The pricing chart on that page is for customers who are not
| smart enough to shop around. I have lived both in the US and
| Canada and in the US I used to pay 120USD for 6 lines with
| 2.5GB data per line(T-mobile). In Canada currently I am
| paying 20CAD per month for 1.5GB data (Public Mobile).
| johnwalkr wrote:
| And they probably still argue that 1GB is 1,000,000 emails or
| 100,000 web pages based on outdated number.
|
| The speeds are fast though so you can be sure when you tether
| just as MS Office is updating you run out of data in about a
| minute.
| xvf22 wrote:
| Telus and Bell partner on wireless so we have even less choice.
| 988747 wrote:
| In Poland we have 4 big telecoms and they compete like crazy
| with each other. I can't see why having 3 would be any
| different.
| agilob wrote:
| It was like that in Poland before Play joined the market, I
| remember watching TV and there were ads from established
| network simply attacking Play "In Orange you can have X,
| which is 15% better than our competitor <Play logo in
| background>"
| agilob wrote:
| Cant edit this anymore. But telecom prices were stagnating
| in Poland for a long time, then Play joined the forces and
| in 3 years prices were cut at least 50% on everything. The
| trick was that Play built their own IT-telecom
| infrastructure, not based on existing from Orange.
| konschubert wrote:
| I once read somewhere that it's been observed in many
| countries that when telecom markets go from 4 to 3,
| competition tanks.
| fart32 wrote:
| I don't know about that, but in CZ (right next to PL),
| there are 3 telecom companies and competition is pretty
| much non-existent. You can save some money by switching,
| but you'd need to do that every year, as those better
| offers come with an expiration. After many years, I've
| recently started to think about just cancelling it, because
| that's probably the only way to let these companies know
| that they can stick those offers up their...
|
| Fixed lines, on the other hand, are fast, cheap and there's
| no data cap.
| BeefWellington wrote:
| Do the Polish telcos also all operate in these spaces?
|
| - Newspapers
|
| - TV stations/channels
|
| - Radio stations
|
| - Content streaming services (a la Netflix)
|
| - Land-based telco (phone, cable, fiber)
|
| - Wireless telco
|
| Each of the providers in Canada does all of those things to
| some degree or other and because they own news outlets they
| wield a lot of political influence. Combine that with the
| fact that most of the people who have been in charge of our
| telco regulator have ties to these media conglomerates, it
| becomes pretty clear it's a captured market. So much so that
| it's newsworthy when someone actually doesn't just rubber
| stamp everything[1]. It also means external competition is
| limited to being unprofitable, so newcomers who enter the
| market don't tend to stay long and generally just get bought
| out by the incumbents.
|
| It's a mess and no political party seems to think it's an
| issue worth pursuing.
|
| [1]: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-
| business/careers/c...
| stavros wrote:
| Because of cartels.
| fckthisguy wrote:
| In this case, I think they have an established status quo,
| with different providers being the clear winner in certain
| markets, so they don't compete directly. At least, not very
| much.
| cunthorpe wrote:
| No, it's because telcos cartels are illegal in Europe and
| there are actual consequences. European telcos are no
| saints at all but they occasionally get fined and things
| are a little better for a few years.
|
| Just as an example, many tried to shorten the "month" to 28
| days and they got a combined EUR228M fine in early 2020: ht
| tps://www.repubblica.it/economia/2020/01/31/news/bollette_.
| ..
|
| EUR228M for essentially a 7% hike in pricing.
| bobiny wrote:
| I think that's what antimonopoly laws are for. As a Russia
| citizen, mobile and internet prices in supposedly more
| technologically advanced countries just blow my mind.
| oefrha wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210707105923/https://whatdoesm...
| (posted another user, I can't load the site)
|
| Out of the countries listed, I only have recent experience with
| the U.S. It says $0.09 for 1.39MB using "the least expensive plan
| with a minimum data allowance of 500MB over a minimum of 30
| days". That works out to $30.6-$34.2 for a 500MB plan. I'd say
| the pricing data is several years out of date.
| hakube wrote:
| I wonder how much would it cost to visit CNN
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| There is lite.cnn.com for a text-only experience.
| wccrawford wrote:
| > https://www.reddit.com weighs 1.39MB.
|
| Google Fi (in the US, at least) is $10/GB. So 1000mb is $10, or
| $.01 per mb. It'd be only $.0139 on Fi.
|
| That's quite a huge difference. The chart even says that US data
| would be $.09 which is still hugely different.
|
| It claims to use the cheapest plan from the dominant carrier in
| the country. That doesn't mean that everyone is getting screwed
| like this, just most people.
|
| They say they get the prices from ITU, but I don't know where on
| ITU they found that data, but I feel like maybe something is
| being used wrong.
| timvdalen wrote:
| I can't imagine paying $10/GB for data, wow!
|
| For reference, I'm paying about $23/month for unlimited
| everything in NL. I'm pretty sure that's not even the cheapest
| plan you could get, I just haven't switched providers in a
| couple of years.
| jodersky wrote:
| It seems expensive at first sight, but the $10/GB are _world-
| wide_ , and limited to $60 per month.
|
| It's not something I would recommend as a substitute for
| wifi, but definitely worth it if you travel to multiple
| countries, and don't want to deal with getting and/or
| swapping sims at every destination.
| flixic wrote:
| Lithuania, around EUR10/month for everything unlimited.
| Granted, we have some of the cheapest mobile plans in Europe,
| but I just can't imagine paying my entire plan's price just
| for 1 GB.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| Yeah the mobile data price in NA is insane.
|
| I will be honest, it usually isn't _too bad_ when I am in my
| work-home routine due to having Wi-Fi in most of places, but
| becomes quite obvious (and painful) once I travel.
| calibas wrote:
| Do you actually get unlimited data? In the US, we have
| "unlimited" plans that are only "unlimited" until you hit the
| limit of a few GB per month. After that, I can still
| technically get data, but at extremely limited speeds.
|
| It always seemed like calling it "unlimited" was just boldly
| lying, especially when the limits are there in the fine
| print.
| dbbk wrote:
| Yes, in the UK I get real unlimited 5G for PS30 a month
| ($40)
| robjan wrote:
| I'm in HK and I pay HK$150 ($19) for 20GB full speed,
| unlimited fair usage policy (capped at around 50Mbit/s)
| timvdalen wrote:
| Yes. The fair-use policy is 4GB/day, but you can get an
| extra 1GB of data an unlimited number of times (with a
| manual action, to avoid abuse).
|
| The policy makes sense to me.
| jonathantf2 wrote:
| In the UK, my provider (O2) offer unlimited data but will
| "move you to a more suitable plan" if you tether more than
| 12 devices and/or use more than 650GB in a month.
| neom wrote:
| Cell phone plans in Canada are a joke. I pay around $80CAD a
| month and I get 10gig data, no ability to buy more once I run
| out either (only my carrier does this though, most you can
| buy per gig after you run out, but it's extremely expensive)
| - It's cheaper and better for me to get an ATT sim from the
| US and use it in Canada (and that's indeed what i've done).
| shawnz wrote:
| I have been quite happy with my grandfathered 6gb for $30
| plan from Freedom Mobile. Their currently available plans
| aren't so bad either. In the past they have had poor signal
| compared to Rogers but these days it's fine for me in
| Toronto.
|
| For example you might want to consider their current 10GB
| for $40 plan here: https://www.freedommobile.ca/en-
| CA/plans?planSku=Freedom%202... (note there are some
| conditions to get the full 10GB of data)
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Agreed, thought I think you're in a special sort of hell.
| I'm on Bell and I'm at $75 / 20GB "Unlimited". After the
| 20GB I'm reduced down to 512KB/s so I never actually get
| cut off or a huge additional charge.
| FractalParadigm wrote:
| I've got a Rogers 50GB 'Unlimited' plan, with the phone
| financing I'm paying just north of $175/mo - when you
| approx the 'max-speed limit' they send you a text offering
| 3GB for $10, or 10GB for $30, just reply A or B and it'll
| automatically go on your plan on your month. There's no
| limit to the number of times you can do this, but it's a
| little sickening paying that much money for such little
| data.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Do you find you go through that much data? Do you do a
| lot of tethering?
| neom wrote:
| I should do that, I just moved back to Canada having been
| gone for a very long time, so I don't have credit here -
| it was way easier to go on a bell prepaid plan. Wait till
| the europeans heads exploding see our prepaid plans..
| haaaah....
| ipsi wrote:
| Yikes. Even in Germany, which is probably the most
| expensive EU country for mobile plans (yay...), and using
| the most expensive carrier (Telekom DE), it's EUR39.99
| (CA$58) for 6GB, EUR49.95 (CA$73) for 12GB, EUR59.95
| (CA$88) for 24GB, and Unlimited for EUR84.95 (CA$125). Plus
| you can get additional SIM cards (for an Apple Watch or an
| iPad, for example) for EUR4.95 (CA$7.27)/month.
| ekianjo wrote:
| In Japan 3GB/month is about 15 USD so it's not that much
| cheaper. There are usually "unlimited like" plans for 40/50
| USD.
| [deleted]
| danielenick89 wrote:
| France isn't bad also, right know I have a plan with 150gb
| for 20EUR, and 50gb abroad (roaming) which includes US. I
| think there are better plans but I've chosen this one also
| because I'm planning to move to the US and I'd like to test
| if keeping this plan would be a cheaper viable alternative to
| local contracts.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Is that 4G?
|
| Mint Mobile in US is $15/4GB/mo , which is plenty for
| everything except extensive video chat/streaming movies.
|
| Your deal seems far better than all the plans mentioned here:
|
| https://prepaid-data-sim-card.fandom.com/wiki/Netherlands
| timvdalen wrote:
| Yeah that's 4G in NL and in the rest of the EU
| Liquid_Fire wrote:
| There is always a difference in price between a prepaid SIM
| and a monthly contract with some minimum period.
| uomopertica wrote:
| In Italy I get 30 GB/mo at 5EUR, we are doing exceptionally
| fine in this department.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > For reference, I'm paying about $23/month for unlimited
| everything in NL.
|
| It's easier and cheaper to provide cellular service to dense
| populations like NL.
|
| The population density of NL is over 100X more dense than
| Canada. Of course, once you exclude the largely uninhabited
| areas of Canada the difference isn't as large, but it's still
| significantly more costly to build cellular infrastructure
| across large and spread out places like Canada and the United
| States than smaller, densely populated places like NL.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| The legal structure around telecoms in Canada also requires
| providers to provide at least phone service everywhere, so
| margins have to be extremely high in the dense areas to
| make up for the unprofitability of servicing remote areas.
| defaultname wrote:
| We've had providers pop up that have only served the major
| cities, where people would get a lower fee but have roaming
| if they go basically anywhere outside the ultra-dense
| areas. The rates were still astronomical compared to many
| European countries.
|
| Providers in Canada are a cartel in every definition of the
| word. The three major cartel members can "compete" in a
| province and amazingly all have identically bad pricing and
| policies. Then they go to Quebec or Manitoba (or maybe it
| was Saskatchewan?) where there is a location-specific
| alternative and their pricing is significantly better.
|
| Having said all of that, I should be fair and note that
| some of the providers have "infinity plans" now. So if you
| got a Rogers 5GB plan and have used 5GB by day one, you
| still have free data for the rest of the month at a speed
| of 512Kbps (again, amazingly all three of the major
| providers have identical policies). Which is still an
| entirely workable speed for a lot of things.
| hadrien01 wrote:
| Oh wow you're right, I checked Rogers where the price is
| 90 CAD for 25GB in most provinces, and 75 CAD in Quebec.
| The exact same price as Videotron (which I suppose is the
| alternative you were talking about)
| bbarnett wrote:
| For perspective:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Collines-
| de-l%27Outaouai...
|
| The county I live in, is 2200 sq km, with a population
| density of 24/sq km. This is in Quebec, at 1.5M sq km in
| size, and beside one of the largest metro areas in Canada,
| the National Capital Region of Ottawa and Gatineau, 5th or
| 6th largest.
|
| NL is 423/sq km density, 20x. It is only 40000sq km, or
| about 18x larger than my county.
|
| Quebec is 35x larger, Canada 230? 240 times larger.
|
| Further point, my municipality is in a populous province,
| and effectively a suburb of the nations capital.
|
| Lots of places have far lower population densities, and we
| have parks, and counties larger than the Netherlands.
|
| Lots more area to cover, for sure.
| TFYS wrote:
| Population density in Finland is pretty low and we get
| unlimited data for about $25/month.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Population density in Finland is pretty low and we get
| unlimited data for about $25/month.
|
| Finland population density: 18 per km^2
|
| Canada population density: 4 per km^2
|
| Population density doesn't explain everything, but it's a
| big factor.
| belval wrote:
| I understand why people say "Canada's population density
| is low that's why prices are high", but in practice only
| a very small fraction of the country is inhabited so it
| really just sound like a talking point and not a genuine
| issue.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| Yeah, do you even get cellular signal in these remote
| areas? If not it definitely shouldn't be taken into
| account.
| Filligree wrote:
| It would make more sense to compare population density
| over that fraction of each country which has any coverage
| at all.
|
| That would be harder, of course.
| secondcoming wrote:
| UK here, I pay PS25pm for unlimited data that I use in a 5G
| router, speeds top out at 240Mbps
| 101008 wrote:
| I pay aprox $8/3GB for data in Argentina, which is OK
| considered most of the time I'm using wifi at home (and I
| usually don't consume media if I am outside). Also, companies
| here offer Whatsapp (including media) without cost, that
| means it doesnt consume your data (so your dat consumption
| only applies against YouTube, Spotify, browsing, etc...)
| Macha wrote:
| Similarly in Ireland, I'm paying EUR20/month (prepaid) for
| "unlimited" (T&Cs: 30gb) data. Even including the cost of my
| purchased outright phone amortised over the expected
| lifecycle (EUR450/36 months) leads to EUR32.50/month.
|
| Bill pay plans end up way worse on the low end though. The
| cheapest bill pay plan from my provider is EUR40/month, only
| includes phones that are EUR30 outright, and comes with 20gb
| of data. A year or two ago it would have been EUR30/month
| with only 1gb of data included.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I pay $44 per month for unlimited data/phone in
| US/Canada/Mexico with ATT Unlimited Plus Multiline. But that
| is because I have 6 people in my family plan. An individual
| with my plan would be paying $133 per month.
|
| Also, I assume mobile networks are doing heavy QoS when
| towers get congested, where people who result in more profit
| for the mobile network get higher priority/more bandwidth.
| wccrawford wrote:
| And that's on top of the actual service, which is $35/mo for
| 2 lines.
|
| It still ends up cheaper than our previous unlimited plan
| because we just make sure to use Wifi whenever possible.
|
| Fi has an unlimited plan, but it costs more and it doesn't
| include roaming (outside of country) data.
|
| We've got a huge credit because we got deals on a couple
| expensive phones, but after that credit runs out (in like a
| year, I think) we'll probably re-evaluate.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| What about https://old.reddit.com/ ? I find the mobile version
| of the site unusable as it's an infinite scroll that forces you
| into the app to see any restricted content (which can include
| some mundane topics). The previous version of the site is far
| more useable, even on mobile.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| They also seem to use the <total amount paid> divided by <total
| amount of data used> rather than the marginal cost of
| downloading a single MB. For example, with 3 lines, my family
| uses 1-2GB of data per month and we pay around $40. That would
| imply a price of $20/GB using their model, despite the fact
| that if we were to use 1GB more we'd only pay $5 more.
| Shadonototro wrote:
| fighting global warming starts from here, we should punish the
| bloat culture advocators
| vincengomes wrote:
| There is a small mistake in the results.
|
| Its Hong Kong not Honk Kong
| mmacvicarprett wrote:
| The cost numbers does not make any sense for me, you get 8gb for
| 10 usd in Brazil postpaid, around 3 times lower than the prices
| used.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| we're all working from home, no one's using mobile data /s
| api wrote:
| As soon as Reddit turns off old.reddit.com I will never return.
| Their now years old redesign is just horrible. It's bloated,
| information poor, and has totally ruined the site.
| RantyDave wrote:
| Bear in mind that the smallest data plan is a pathologically bad
| case. For instance in New Zealand 40GB is $80/mo - so almost
| exactly 1USD/GB. So 1.39MB is $0.00139 but is listed at $0.05.
| busymom0 wrote:
| I realize this is more of an indictment on how crazy expensive
| data is in Canada but I would like to mention that the
| "redesigned" Reddit is so bloated, even my i5 Mac mini from last
| year struggles. And other than the bloat, they also added extra
| unnecessary white space to make you scroll more (and thus shove
| move ads in). Also the continuous popups in mobile browser to
| "Open in official app" is very use hostile. They basically ruined
| their site on purpose to make users go to their app instead as
| most apps can't have ad blockers unless you use PiHole or
| something. If I really need to, I use unofficial Apollo to view
| Reddit. But other than that, I have pretty much stopped visiting
| the site.
| jcims wrote:
| Every time I wind up on the site without going to
| old.reddit.com, I get frustrated first but then I become
| enthralled that the site has been completely broken for _years_
| now.
|
| I know there are folks that defend it and possibly enjoy it,
| but I think they have somehow built the muscle memory to not
| fuck up and accidentally look the wrong way while browsing.
| phr4ts wrote:
| Use this to automatically redirect to the old.reddit version
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-re...
|
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirec...
| nicbou wrote:
| Apparently, my website's heaviest page costs 0 to 1 cent. Smaller
| pages are a fifth of the size.
|
| It bothers me that many similar websites (i.e. text content) load
| 2-5 MB of data for just text on a page. Pretty much everything
| past the first few kilobytes are useless to the reader.
|
| These websites fall apart when you're not on a recent Macbook
| with a wired gigabit connection. Developers forget that people
| browse the web in the subway, on intercity trains and on crappy
| hotel/airport internet.
| arcadeparade wrote:
| should be increased to $100
| jokoon wrote:
| Curious to see how much of this homepage is thumbnails, how much
| html, how much js...
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| The site is ~~wrong~~ somewhat correct about how big reddits
| homepage is.
|
| ~~It seems to not run any scripts when testing, so 1.5MB is the
| basic JS + CSS.~~
|
| In reality, it's much, much worse. (On a desktop)
|
| Even with an adblocker, reddit.com downloaded 18MB in the first
| 10 seconds. That would put that cost at over $1.
|
| I stopped after that because it seemed to be just continuously
| downloading... something.
|
| I know Reddit is quite media driven these days, but it seems to
| be unnecessary prefetching a lot
|
| Edit: Looks like I was testing the desktop version, see jefftk's
| reply.
|
| However, it doesn't help reddit's case that much. After looking
| into what it's actually downloading in my "desktop" test, there
| are lots of huge PNG images (1000x1000 +) that seem to be
| displayed as tiny thumbnails.
|
| And for an infinitely scrolling page, it prefetches all the
| images in the feed at full resolution.
|
| If I turn off my adblocker, I get an autoplaying amazon ad
| (~5MB).
|
| Additionally, it starts auto-playing a livestreams which is just
| below the fold.
| arbitrage wrote:
| i mean a lot of that is adjustable in settings if you create an
| account.
| fhsm wrote:
| Wow. That's a lot.
|
| I'm not sure how to replicate this but I would be curious what
| old.reddit.com does via an equivalent methodology.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Firefox dev tools said ~1.3MB transferred. I think it's the
| increased number of thumbnails per "page", even though
| they're smaller. On the other hand it has no autoplaying
| videos and livestreams.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> It seems to not run any scripts when testing_
|
| They source their claim to a WebPageTest run [1], and WPT does
| run scripts. I can reproduce their results as:
|
| 1. Open an incognito window in Chrome
|
| 2. Open devtools, and configure it as mobile
|
| 3. Navigate to reddit.com
|
| 4. See ~1.5MB transferred
|
| [1]
| https://www.webpagetest.org/result/210707_AiDc36_6f01cdff93b...
| liveoneggs wrote:
| you need to tell it to scroll and things
|
| https://blog.webpagetest.org/posts/understanding-the-new-
| cum...
| jefftk wrote:
| Both WPT and browser devtools will, by default, tell you
| the data usage that happens just by visiting a page. As you
| interact with a page, for example by scrolling Reddit, you
| will cause more network traffic, yes. Since Reddit does
| infinite scroll, you can get Reddit to use arbitrary
| amounts of traffic this way.
| liveoneggs wrote:
| I was attempting to explain the disagreement up-thread.
| Also that article is full of really good tips and I just
| felt like posting it.
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| You're right. Reddit seems to load a different homepage based
| on useragent.
|
| I was using Firefox, but I could get the 1.55MB result by
| trying that.
| jefftk wrote:
| I get 1.22MB in Firefox with a similar approach:
|
| 1. New private browsing window
|
| 2. Open devtools networking
|
| 3. Responsive design mode: Galaxy S9
|
| 4. Load reddit.com
| justanotherguy0 wrote:
| IT'S BETTER ON THE APP
|
| >>>DOWNLOAD THE APP<<<
| app4soft wrote:
| [ Got it ][0]
|
| [0] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.quantumbadger.red
| reader/
| vorticalbox wrote:
| I just did this in in private tabs and got:
|
| firefox: 17.85 / 12.54 MB transferred, brave: 15 MB, vivaldi:
| 9.6 MB, chromium: 13.1 MB,
| jefftk wrote:
| Did you configure it as a mobile browser? Your numbers are
| about what I get if I configure it as desktop.
| vorticalbox wrote:
| I did not I tested as a desktop, using a mobile does drop
| it down to ~2 MB.
|
| I actually think that Reddit is just loading less of the
| posts due to the small screen.
| retSava wrote:
| firefox with ublock origin, privacy badger and overall
| stuff turned off: 16.17 / 11.44 MB. Haven't scrolled
| anywhere yet.
| bl5THJUSFXWy4ii wrote:
| The old mobile site (i.reddit.com) cuts that in half to ~700
| kB transferred.
| hanniabu wrote:
| > I know Reddit is quite media driven
|
| Yet they still have a worse video player than what was
| available in the early 2000s
| r1ch wrote:
| It depends a lot on which posts are on the frontpage and what
| rewards they've been given. Those tiny little icons next to
| each post can be upwards of 1 MB each as they are rendered with
| ridiculous resolutions sometimes (eg https://www.redditstatic.c
| om/gold/awards/icon/Illuminati_512...)
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| What about old.reddit.com?
| techrat wrote:
| The point may be that, by default, Reddit's website is now
| incredibly heavy for something that was once a lean and
| nimble site when it comes to media.
| mattl wrote:
| Or https://old.reddit.com/.compact
| giantrobot wrote:
| https://i.reddit.com is a shortcut for that. It's the most
| usable Reddit interface IMO.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I didn't know about this, thanks!
| lurtbancaster wrote:
| I also recommend libreddit -
| https://github.com/spikecodes/libreddit
|
| Recently on teddit.net, I've been getting an "Unable to
| connect" via some Tor Exit Nodes. So I'm having to create
| new circuits until teddit loads.
| coldcode wrote:
| It's the only way I will read reddit. It does seem smaller
| (on Safari Big Sur I get 5.5MB).
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| Still horrendous. Where's that data going?
| [deleted]
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Even with an adblocker, reddit.com downloaded 18MB in the
| first 10 seconds.
|
| I loaded https://www.reddit.com/ in Firefox with an adblocker;
| the network inspector showed 4.8 MB transferred.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| I can't imagine the internet without adblockers... I can't
| watch mobile YouTube because of that... I know there are
| options but still. There is some bad stuff out there too I
| recently came across this reversecaptcha thing wow... that
| sucks. It prompts you like the location/cam permission
| allow/block stuff (top left of browser).
| mdoms wrote:
| I don't think you're looking at the right thing. When I load
| reddit.com with no ad blockers I'm seeing 1.2MB transferred
| over the wire for a total of 18MB of uncompressed resources.
|
| Edit - after waiting about a minute it crept up to 5.2MB
| transferred for somehow the same amount of uncompressed
| resources.
| notjustanymike wrote:
| Not to mention the time one of their scripts got stuck in a
| loop and caused my 2 Gigabyte plan to explode in 20 minutes.
| tomcam wrote:
| Hurts just to read this
| notjustanymike wrote:
| "Why is my phone so hot? What are all these alerts?"
| ksec wrote:
| I thought an interesting comparison would be Mobile Web Reddit
| and Reddit App on Data usage.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> it doesn 't help reddit's case that much. After looking into
| what it's actually downloading in my "desktop" test, there are
| lots of huge PNG images (1000x1000 +) that seem to be displayed
| as tiny thumbnails._
|
| I'm not able to reproduce this either. Here's a desktop WPT
| run:
| https://www.webpagetest.org/result/210707_BiDcXB_65148b09266...
|
| Could you share a screenshot, or a link to one of these
| oversized PNGs?
| tkadlec wrote:
| You probably already noticed, but you can also access site
| cost data from the WebPageTest itself. (Note the cost column
| in the metric summary for your linked test, for example: http
| s://www.webpagetest.org/result/210707_BiDcXB_65148b09266...)
| iso1631 wrote:
| Highest roaming fee on a network I've connected to with
| Vodafone UK (On Air Aerospace) was PS7.20 per MB (about $10)
|
| That would make it $200+ to load the page including the advert.
|
| Highest I've actually paid was in China at PS3 per megabyte,
| and not only did I use normal phone stuff like data and email,
| because the UK network I was on allowed connections to my
| company, but the local wifi didn't, when I accidentally
| connected plugged in my phone without disabling tethering, the
| laptop started downloading stuff - ran up a $400 bill in about
| a minute before the flood of text messages I get every 5MB
| started to arrive (out of order) and I realised what was going
| on.
| bb101 wrote:
| Better to get a Ubigi or Truphone eSim, much cheaper data
| roaming if you're not willing to get a local SIM.
| arcticbull wrote:
| I've found GigSky cheaper than Truphone, but ill check out
| Ubigi
| niij wrote:
| Those are horrible fees. You can buy local sims for cheap
| when travelling to avoid those roaming fees.
| hnov wrote:
| I've been traveling a lot and what I've done is setup an
| AT&T based MVNO on my iPhone's eSIM, freeing up the
| physical slot for local SIMs. With WiFi calling enabled on
| my AT&T line, I can go around the world spending peanuts
| compared even to Google Fi, while keeping my US number
| working.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Local sims in Beijing which will bust through the great
| firewall back to base for my 16 hour stay that I can just
| pick up for cash?
| yellow_lead wrote:
| You can pick them up for cash but often times they will
| ask to see your passport. They don't bust through the
| great firewall but in my experience foreign sims don't
| seem to either.
| khc wrote:
| google fi busted through GFW when I last went there in
| 2017
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Or even just get t-mobile if you're based in the US, which
| has free roaming in many international locations
| reaperducer wrote:
| T-Mobile US' international roaming was almost useless
| when I was in Japan before the pandemic. Coverage was
| good on SoftBank, but even with five bars, my latest-and-
| greatest T-Mobile 4GLTE hotspot would only connect as 3G,
| and the speed was closer to dialup.
|
| It seemed more of a marketing gimmick than a useful tool.
| dannyw wrote:
| Your device is not compatible on Japanese LTE.
| awill wrote:
| I couldn't disagree more. Of course T-mobile's free
| roaming isn't going to be super fast. You can pay extra
| 4G/5G. But if you're hopping across countries, it's
| great. It's obviously not made for instagram/youtube.
|
| T-Mobile's free 128kbs is enough for whatapp, navigation
| and a few emails (Their MAX plan gives free 256kbs).
| rootsudo wrote:
| I disagree, it's a great tool - T-Mobile has roaming
| agreements with Softbank, NTT and DoCoMo, not KDDI.
|
| The biggest issue is the phone bands, if your phone does
| not support the local bands, it will not connect.
|
| I had no issue having a secondary phone in Japan w/ my
| T-mobile sim and having a local NTT sim. With dual
| sim/esim even easier nowadays to run both networks.
| SapporoChris wrote:
| I had terrible problems with T-Mobile US international
| roaming in Japan also. I was able to make calls and
| recieve calls, however I was not able to use internet.
|
| After basic troubleshooting T-Mobile requested that I
| call their international support on a 2nd phone and they
| would happily help me fix the problem with the original
| mobile phone.
|
| Of course I didn't have access to a 2nd phone, I was
| livid. Cancelled the contract with T-Mobile and got local
| service. Even in cancelling T-Mobile couldn't get it
| right, they sent me two additional bills for trivial
| amounts in the months that followed. Each bill under a
| dollar.
| arcticbull wrote:
| It actually gives you 5G in Canada and Mexico for free,
| which is particularly useful to me.
|
| In international locations to your point it gets you
| enough for Maps and Mail, and some basic web browsing.
| You won't be streaming, that's for sure. However, if I
| need more than that, I use it to bootstrap an e-sim like
| GigSky which you can then route all data traffic to (at
| least on iOS) via Cellular settings.
|
| This way you keep your phone number, iMessage, texting,
| and get 5G data too.
| xeromal wrote:
| I'm no longer with T-Mobile US but I used it in Peru,
| Iceland, Mexico, Morocco, Brazil, Bolivia, and Italy
| without issue. Maybe Japan is a fluke but working service
| in North Africa and South America speaks volumes for me.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| I think the basic problem here is that there's
| essentially no overlap between the LTE bands used by
| T-Mobile in the US and Softbank in Japan.
|
| Unless you have a device with radios that happen to
| support extra bands that are not used in the US, then
| it's essentially incompatible with the Japanese network
| despite both being "LTE".
| com2kid wrote:
| I don't rely on their international roaming to do hotspot
| work, but it suffices to check HN, use google maps to get
| around, and order uber if I am in a place w/o amazing
| mass transit.
| ykat7 wrote:
| "On Air Aerospace" being an inflight roaming [1] provider
| like AeroMobile, right?
|
| I recall getting a text about that PS7.20 fee during a flight
| a couple years ago.
|
| [1]: https://www.aeromobile.net/inflight-roaming/
| pstuart wrote:
| The reddit iphone app is a data/cpu pig.
| dwild wrote:
| Their data is so wrong.
|
| Fizz for example is for Quebec subscriber only (but offer
| coverage over the whole country). It's still quite expansive per
| GB if you get the smallest amount of data, but still you would
| get for 16$ CAD per month for a 1 GB mobile plan. That means
| 0.0178$, which is an order of magnitude cheaper than what they
| said.
|
| I don't know how they got their price, that's really not clear
| from their page. Canada is a HUGE country, there's not a single
| provider that has an unique price for the whole country. Some
| province get far cheaper price for many different reasons
| (competitive market, population density, type of users, etc...).
| Even the big providers doesn't keep the same price in every
| province.
| danbruc wrote:
| For Germany it says 0.07 USD prepaid for 1.39 MB which is 50 USD
| for 1 GB. Telekom offers 2 GB for 9.95 EUR prepaid which yields
| 0.0082 USD and is an order of magnitude lower than the quoted
| number. And this is literally the first offering I looked at, the
| second provider I looked at offers 12 GB for 15.99 EUR which
| brings the number down to 0.0022 EUR.
|
| I would take those numbers with a large grain of salt at the very
| least.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| From reading the comments, it appears that most of the prices
| on this website are wrong for most people. They might be taking
| either the worst-case price or the least value data plan (500MB
| starter plans) instead of the average data plan.
|
| These cost analyses are always popular for people to brag about
| how much cheaper their country's data plans or broadband speeds
| are, but I seriously doubt that many Canadian Redditors are
| paying $0.17 for every page load. Simply browsing the front
| page and clicking on a few comment sections could cost $10 or
| more. Doesn't pass the sniff test.
| ivirshup wrote:
| But they claim:
|
| > Because these numbers are based on the least expensive
| plan, they are best case scenarios.
|
| Which is... a weird statement. Best case scenario for what?
| The cheapest plan is the best case if you wanted to access
| the site once per billing period. But then price per visit is
| the cost of plan? I don't know what they're trying to say
| here.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Good catch. The cheapest plan is almost always the worst
| cost per GB. It seems they've crossed terms and chosen the
| opposite of what they wanted to represent.
| greenshackle2 wrote:
| I'm in Canada, it's true that telcos are expensive here but
| $0.17 for 1.39MB is like $120 per GB which is absurd. I pay
| $40 for 8GB/month (USD).
|
| Even additional data (if you go over plan limits), which is
| by far the most expensive way to get data, is less than that,
| it's $104 per GB with my provider.
| maury91 wrote:
| Also in Italy the price is wrong, Iliad offers 120GB for
| 9.99EUR + SIM ( 9.99EUR ), considering the worst case scenario
| ( using the offer for 1 month only ). It become 19.98EUR for
| 120GB: 19.98 / (120 * 1024) * 1.39 = 0,00022EUR, almost 2
| orders of magnitude less than 0.01$ ( 0.008EUR ) ( pre-paid
| price shown in the website ). Price can go further down if you
| keep the SIM for 1 year or more: ( 9.99 * 13 ) / ( 120 * 12 *
| 1024 ) * 1.39 = 0,00012EUR
|
| The only thing required to buy a SIM is a passport so every
| foreigner can buy one.
| tomcooks wrote:
| Lycamobile is about 15 for unlimited data eh, give it a spin
| gpas wrote:
| Unfortunately, if I'm not wrong, they don't have that plan
| anymore. Best they can do now is 100GB/EUR11.99 for new
| sims or 100GB/EUR7.99 with number portability, 4G LTE
| connectivity.
|
| Not a great deal if you ask me. For example Iliad is
| offering 120GB/EUR9.99.
| latk wrote:
| The site does explain its methodology.
|
| By default, it shows the costs when using the cheapest post-
| paid plan with at least 500MB allowance for at least 30 days -
| cheapest in absolute terms, not per GB.
|
| You can toggle the option to show prepaid plans with the same
| parameters (at least 500 MB for at least 30 days).
|
| But since it takes data from the ITU and not from the real
| market, the numbers do indeed seem inflated. One of the
| cheapest (in absolute terms) prepaid plans for mobile internet
| in Germany is AldiTalk at 4EUR/1GB/4 weeks, so that the
| pageload should cost even less than 1ct (0.0056 EUR).
| Similarly, your Telekom plans are for 4 weeks. Maybe they've
| excluded these plan because it's not for at least 30 days.
| ketzu wrote:
| One possible reason is that 4 weeks are 28 days, which is
| less than 30 days, their minimum.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| The problem with that methodology is that the cheapest plans
| in terms of cost/month are actually likely to be the _most
| expensive_ in terms of cost /GB.
|
| If a service provider offers a $20/month plan with 500 MB of
| data, their $40/month plan will almost certainly offer a
| _lot_ more than 1000 MB. The cheapest plans are usually
| designed specifically for people who _don 't_ plan to use a
| significant amount of data.
| [deleted]
| tobyjsullivan wrote:
| Alternatively you could argue that the cheapest plans are
| targeted at people who have the least money to spend on
| wireless data. It seems reasonable that these are the
| people who would be most sensitive to the unit cost of
| accessing a single website.
| tkadlec wrote:
| I built the site and I agree. :)
|
| Two things:
|
| 1. The data is in the process of being updated. Prices change
| quickly and from the trend of past changes I fully expect these
| prices to drop as soon as I make the change.
|
| 2. While the ITU (and other data sources) try their best to
| look at all sources, I have to take them at their word. I've
| heard several times that they seem to have overlooked plan A or
| plan B, so it doesn't surprise me if there are other plans
| lurking out there.
|
| Long-story short, it's absolutely best to consider this as a
| gauge/appromixation, rather than a scientific exact number.
| Kranar wrote:
| But the conclusions are wrong by orders and orders of
| magnitude.
|
| For example your calculation is that 1.39 MB costs Canadians
| 0.17, that would mean 1 GB costs Canadians 125 US dollars.
| There isn't a single plan in Canada that charges 125 dollars
| for 1 GB of data.
|
| This isn't just a minor inaccuracy of +/-10%, this is off by
| literally a factor that's closer to 15-20x.
| deathanatos wrote:
| The site has a pre-paid US plan at $103 / GiB. ($0.14 / (1.39
| MiB / 1024 MiB/GiB)) This doesn't seem like "plans change"
| levels of error, this is more than twice what I pay for all
| service (SMS, voice, data) since I first got a plan that
| included (allegedly unlimited, but actually not) data a
| decade ago...
|
| The site also says "Prices were collected from the operator
| with the largest marketshare in the country" but follows it
| with "Because these numbers are based on the least expensive
| plan, they are best case scenarios." which doesn't logically
| follow. But going with that, the largest carrier in the US is
| apparently AT&T, and just the first plan on their site offers
| a 4GB plan at $50, or [?]$12.50 / GiB, which is an order of
| magnitude lower than the figure on the site?
| mkr-hn wrote:
| Carriers probably display different prices for different
| people.
| nicbou wrote:
| I'm on Vodafone CallYa and I pay 10EUR a month for 2-4GB (I
| forgot). As a Canadian, these prices are crazy low, but to EU
| citizens, they're allegedly pretty high.
| 00deadbeef wrote:
| Yeah the UK price is quite wrong too. I pay PS20 per month for
| 160GB which is PS0.125 per gigabyte or $0.17. Other networks
| offer unlimited data for the same cost.
|
| At my rate, reddit.com should cost $0.0002363
| tonyarkles wrote:
| The site says they're using the least expensive plan with
| >500MB data for each country, presumably as a benchmark for
| what someone on a very limited budget would pay. Maybe that's
| a methodological problem though.
|
| Unrelated, wow, thank you for reminding me how badly we're
| getting screwed in Canada :). Approximately $90 CDN here for
| a 15GB soft-cap with "unlimited" slow usage beyond that.
| beardyw wrote:
| It says "Prices were collected from the operator with the
| largest marketshare in the country" so I guess it depends who
| that is.
| Vahkesh wrote:
| Agreed, I'm trying to figure out where this site is getting
| their pricing data.
| herbst wrote:
| I assume its something like numbeo. Thing is with this kind
| of data there is always a local and a tourist price. In many
| countries (especially Europe) you can not always buy a
| prepaid SIM card with a foreign passport (without extra hoops
| at least) or you need a real residence address.
|
| So these prices often reflect the few options that are
| (visibly) available for tourists.
| Anderkent wrote:
| I've never had an issue with a foreign passport buying a
| SIM. You usually need a local address but you can just use
| your hotels.
| herbst wrote:
| I usually did not either. However Netherlands and Germany
| have been an exception. In the Netherlands every mobile
| provider shoo me out of their shop refering to yallo or
| libera. I had an apartment and was staying 2 months, so
| this wasn't the issue. And Germany was essentially the
| same except I only tried with 3 or so providers.
|
| Most tourists still pick one of the shitty providers
| available at the airport or train station and go with
| that. Some of them provide a faster verification do you
| can walk out having internet, in Austria if you buy
| internet at a supermarket (it's uncomplicated there) it
| can take a few hours to verify.
|
| Or Italy, if you arrive in Venedig you find ads for
| internet packages everywhere. I actually needed to go to
| the mainland to buy a a normal SIM. As no one on the
| island acknowledged the cheaper packages available.
|
| My point is, it's complicated
|
| Source: I've spent months (if not years) with my laptop
| In Europe and Asia and internet always was the #1
| priority. I also do not know if things are better today
| Symbiote wrote:
| For a short-term stay, why not just use Lebera, or a
| similar operator?
|
| They have short-term or no-contract options at low
| prices, and often have a website in English.
| herbst wrote:
| It's not low price compared to local alternatives. I was
| work travelling so internet was a must, I always tried
| getting the best rate as part of my welcome to a new
| country ritual :)
|
| Also what is short? In Austria I get a new prepaid for
| every few days I stay (because uncomplicated and cheap).
| In the Netherlands libera was the only real option even
| thought I was there for 2 months.
| mejutoco wrote:
| As another data point. A few years a go I bought a sim
| card in Germany (mediamarkt I think). They asked for the
| Anmeldung document (proof of residence, needed also to
| open a bank account) and photocopied it.
| herbst wrote:
| I just remembered the actual issue in Netherland, Germany
| as well as Switzerland. Normal Prepaid is generally
| expensive, what you want is a always cancelable contract
| to get the fairest (most local) price for a short time.
| And here is where it gets more complicated based on
| residence and stuff
|
| Edit:// I spent over 200EUR on prepaid internet that 2
| months I was in the Netherlands. A always cancel contract
| would have costed I think about 20$ a month for unlimited
| (and way faster) internet
| OJFord wrote:
| https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Pages/ICTprices/defa.
| ..
| swiley wrote:
| More disturbing than mobile prices in Canada is electricity
| prices in Africa IMO. I heard a while ago that people are
| actually trading sex for access to generator power.
|
| This means on that continent at least unneeded JS in web pages is
| literally AIDS.
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