
Mobile data: Why India has the world's cheapest - pseudolus
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-47537201
======
socialist_coder
Here in the US, we recently moved into a new house (rural) and my broadband
wasn't setup yet, so I needed a temporary solution to continue working from
home.

So, I headed off to the mall to compare mobile AP plans. Literally every
option was either mega expensive (think multiple hundreds of dollars per month
for 100 GB or the price was right but the service area was crap).

A lot of the mobile data plans actually only apply to direct usage from your
phone. _Not_ when using it as an AP (tethering). Those all have separate
bandwidth limits. The standard amount on most plans (that you also have to pay
extra for) is around 10 gigabytes. And, I didn't even find a normal consumer
plan from ATT / Verizon (the only carriers with good service here) that let
you buy more than that. You have to buy a super expensive business plan.

So yeah, fuck US LTE data plans. Absolute garbage if you actually try to use
it for any serious work from a PC.

~~~
vasco
Can the ISP detect if you're using it as an AP?

~~~
the_pwner224
If you use the stock ROM then they probably can. A fey years ago the carriers
would put proprietary hotspot apps on your phone which would integrate with
their billing system, but if you switched to another ROM you could just use
the built-in Android hotspot option and it would work just fine.

With an AOSP ROM like LineageOS they can't detect it from the phone itself,
but there are still some differences in the packets that a phone would send vs
the packets a computer would send (you can Google about how to hide tethering
on T-Mobile and find some discussion on that); it's not very hard to change
your settings to avoid that method of detection.

~~~
firmgently
This probably refers to TTL, which can be easily changed to disguise the 'hop'
from your device to your phone... but Deep Packet Inspection is apparently
commonly used nowadays too. To get around that you need to be encrypting with
a VPN or similar setup.

This is my simplistic understanding of the state of play based on the last
time I looked into it but as mentioned above it's easy to Google.

~~~
dzhiurgis
How do you fix the TTL trick?

~~~
joecool1029
on the AP (phone):

iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -j TTL --ttl-set 65

You will need TTL target built into the kernel of the ROM you are using.
LineageOS is unwilling to do it officially, so I build my own with it enabled.

It's a good idea to only use ipv4 when doing this. A few services are detected
on TMUS, so for those VPN. Sprint doesn't seem to care, but they have a patent
on TTL detection too from around 10 years ago. I normally do not VPN, but I do
use my own DNS since I don't like carrier hijacking.

------
denzil_correa
> The BBC report, citing a UK-based price comparison site, said that 1
> gigabyte (GB) of mobile data cost $0.26 in India (£0.20), compared with
> $12.37 in the US, $6.66 in the UK, and a global average of $8.53.

According to OECD, the Purchasing Power Parities (PPP) for India is 17.729 ,
UK is 0.691 and US is 1.0 [0]. That's a huge difference and hence, ignoring
the purchasing power will not give you a full picture about the "cost".

[0] [https://data.oecd.org/conversion/purchasing-power-
parities-p...](https://data.oecd.org/conversion/purchasing-power-parities-
ppp.htm)

~~~
chewz
Mobile telecom prices are just a pure licence to print money. The cost base
(infrastructure and regulatory costs) is insignificant and the asking price
maxed out - depending on the market.

Prices could be mitigated by competition but usualy we have oligopoly, by
regulators (EU and roaming charges) or by taxation (licences to operate).

I always laugh when similar company with similar shareholders charge 15 times
more in one country then in another.

Digi Malaysia extending prepaid for 1 year 68 ringit 15$, dtac Thailand 1$.
Both owned by Telenor.

~~~
mcv
In many countries, mobile bandwidth licenses were auctioned for ridiculous
sums, which were probably bid based on what they expected the market to be
able to bear. That made the expected profit part of the cost.

There was a bit of a scandal back then because of the way the Dutch government
handled that auction and tried to squeeze as much money as possible out of the
various bidding companies.

~~~
chewz
True. But it is just the government trying to get a slice of a pie. regulatory
cost.

~~~
jandrese
It makes sense that the government wants to only hand out this extremely
limited resource to organizations that will actually use it. And there is some
sense that if someone pays a half a trillion dollars for the spectrum that
they'll be highly motivated to use it to recover those costs, but in the end
it basically guarantees that the service will be expensive because they have
to make back that investment.

But the only other solution I can see is to have the government just pick a
company and hand them the license, and that's effectively guaranteed to be
breathtakingly corrupt since the incentives to cheat are overwhelming. At
least with the market solution the money goes into the government's general
fund instead of into the pockets of the party official in charge of making the
decision.

~~~
iguy
> but in the end it basically guarantees that the service will be expensive
> because they have to make back that investment

Isn't it exactly the other way around? They bid high because they estimate
that they will be able to make back the investment. The sole reason for making
that investment is to sell it on to customers.

~~~
mcv
It works both ways. They bid high because they expect to be able to made back
that investment, but having bid so high, they also need to meet that
expectation, or they're in trouble.

------
KorematsuFred
While it is cheapest there are many shady things that are going on. For
example both Jio and BSNL automatically throttle your speed for porn and many
other websites. BSNL outright bans the porn websites.

~~~
goombastic
You forgot to mention the fact that BSNL injects malware and ads. And
outrageously, they claim it is a feature! The way they do it by injecting
javascript into your page that then does shitty pop-up scam ads (including
ones that increase page counts for some pretty big e-com sites). Some of the
pop-up/under ads then install malware of their own.

The entire company is run by morons.

~~~
aws_ls
Yes, can attest to that. I had a BSNL connection, which would always inject
some JavaScript/etc stuff for Http sites. With HTTPS sites they could not do
anything. But I got rid of the connection anyway.

------
rock_artist
The BBC didn't do their homework iiuc. Here is a plan here in Israel.
Unlimited text and calls with 100GB data - 29nis which is about 0.1$! per
1GB...

[https://golantelecom.co.il/web/](https://golantelecom.co.il/web/)

Overall, Israel is a very expensive country excluding mobile plans...

~~~
YetAnotherNick
It looks like there is some catch.
[https://golantelecom.co.il/web/plans](https://golantelecom.co.il/web/plans)
is the most deceptive plans page I have seen.

~~~
rock_artist
* There is no catch on the specific plan and a other similar plans by other operators. overall in Israel there are many plans or services that are X for the first 1-3 years and then will change. but some plans (such as the above) should be without those limits.

* Notice, that in the BBC article they suggest there is haggling involved in getting low prices. so we also don't get much information what limitations imposed.

------
the_mitsuhiko
A lot of European countries have unlimited data for data SIMs (Finland,
Austria, Estonia, France, Switzerland and many more). With such SIM cards you
can completely replace your home internet. I used that for a while and
downloaded 1TB+ a month for less than 20 Euro. That would put me to
2ct/Gigabyte which would be even cheaper than what is quoted here.

I think what matters more than the price for the gigabyte is what you get in
service for that. I'm absolutely happy to pay 50 EUR or more a month if the
service is good.

~~~
SXX
Russia also have mobile ISP that have "unlimited" internet and at some moments
can provide 70Mbps. There is some obvioua shaping for torrents, but with VPN
it's possible to go well over 1TB on $15 / month plan. There were actually
bunch of such options in past, but only few remains.

~~~
the_mitsuhiko
In rural Austria internet over LTE has replaced a lot of DSL installations. So
much that most ISPs now offer hybrid VDSL2+LTE connections with GRE tunnel
bonding.

~~~
gsich
Not just in rural areas.

------
lozf
India's mobile data may be cheap, but it's also pretty poor. It may be 4G
technology, but speeds are far below what's common in the UK / Europe. Last
week in Delhi I was getting anywhere between a few kbps and ~2-3Mbps on
Vodafone 4G.

~~~
kylehotchkiss
I spend a lot of time in Delhi myself. My Airtel sim often gets 10-15mbps down
nearly anywhere in the city.

~~~
lozf
Thanks, I'll try Airtel next time.

------
monksy
So India does have cheap mobile services, but the quality of it isn't great.

There are service outages, issues with coverage, and there are serve limits on
the data.

I used JIO and had an average about 4mbps speed. Also, there has been concerns
about censoring sites. (see r/india.. they blocked reddit in the last week)

I paid about 199inr (~$3) and got 2gbs per day for a month.

~~~
jandrese
2GB per day for $3 even at 4Mbps is like a dream to someone in the US where
plans are more in the range of $45/month for 2GB per month. Speeds are better,
but useless because you'll smack directly into the cap if you actually use it.

The lower speed in India is at least partially due to it being heavily used
instead of sitting idle because people don't want to blow out their cap. IMHO
this is more egalitarian. They aren't keeping the poors off of the system just
so the elite can download their cat videos faster.

~~~
monksy
>2gb for a month

?! I'm paying about $43 for 8gb on the Verizon network.
[https://www.pagepluscellular.com/plans/](https://www.pagepluscellular.com/plans/)

> They aren't keeping the poors off of the system just so the elite can
> download their cat videos faster.

They're oversubscribed. I'm not sure where this helps "the poors" to stay
subscribed to the service.

------
virtualwhys
3GB per day for 90 days for around 1,000 Rupees with Airtel. As a tourist Jio
isn't an option, have to go pre-paid.

Not bad at all, blazing fast compared to most WiFi connections here in
northern India (Himachal Pradesh).

Now if the power would stop cutting out... maybe in a few more years :)

~~~
bluedino
How useful is 3GB for 90 days?

~~~
yellowflash
* per day

------
RoadieRoller
Before Jio, different players held monopoly at different pockets and Jio
flattened it. (Think BPL in Kerala, Airtel in metros, BSNL in rural areas,
Orange in tier two cities). Because of this, when a provider increase prices,
others will follow suit as everyone benefitted. So I assume the prices were
high before Jio, and Jio did a correction.

Jio, will soon become a monopoly and as the article says, might jack up prices
when they have the bigger slice of the pie. An acquisition of the second best
then would seal the low price game and everything will go up then. Thats what
Airtel was doing when they were number 1 a while back.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
India is not as rich as developed economies, so the optimal price point for
monopolists in general is lower (due to more people becoming unable to pay
monopoly rents at lower prices).

------
praveenweb
When Jio was launched in 2016, Mukesh Ambani (Managing Director of Reliance
Industries, parent company of Jio) quoted saying “Data is the new oil and we
don’t need to import it”

Jio comes bundled with value added free services like JioTV, JioCinema,
JioMagazine, JioMusic(JioSaavn now) and bunch of other apps.

India is a price sensitive market and hence Jio would keep prices lower for as
long as possible to keep other players out. Jio is already posting profits.

They are in it for the long game. The bottomline is that prices may not go up
anytime soon.

~~~
dugluak
all of that sounds so scary. One corporation controlling what you watch, read
and listen.

~~~
inapis
They’ve already shown troubling signs. When Jio was launched, senior
executives, when asked about how they’ll increase revenues, said, “There’s
something called as Deep Packet Inspection and the potential is enormous”[1]

Second, Jio frequently blocks VPN connections. Proactively and sometimes
without reason even if there’s no government order. Sometimes, I’ve had to use
techniques from blog posts about bypassing the great firewall of China to be
able to connect to VPN services. Its not as ridiculous as the actual GFW but
the signs are there.

Reliance is also engaged in a plethora of businesses, especially consumer
facing ones and have shown increased desire to link it all together.

[1] [https://in.reuters.com/article/reliance-telecoms-jio/from-
bi...](https://in.reuters.com/article/reliance-telecoms-jio/from-big-oil-to-
big-data-inside-mukesh-ambanis-20-billion-start-up-idINKCN11611V)

------
baybal2
China Mobile Pakistan sells a 200 GB plan for ~100 USD. Not do cheap given
that median white collar salary in Pakistan is $500.

~~~
selimthegrim
How's Mobilink? When I roamed with T-Mobile there they seemed to be the one
that my SIM locked onto. I heard they were good but expensive (but this was
2014)

~~~
baybal2
Haven't been in the country in a while, but I don't expect anything remotely
comparable from Jazz. The maximum I found was $15 for 50GB on a plan.

------
mruts
I live in Tanzania (moved from the US) and mobile data prices are also
relatively cheap. I could get 4gb for 75 cents for 24 hours 11pm-5pm. Or I
could get 1gb for 50 cents for 2 hours. The one I usually go for is 10gb for 7
USD for 7 days.

But because 4G is the only way to get internet, it actually becomes more
expensive very quickly. I route all of my internet traffic through my phone or
through my 4G mobile hotspot.

So I think the real reason that the data is cheaper is because 4G is the only
way to get data, if your a consumer or a business. So the pricing reflects
that.

Because in the first world we have fiber optics, this allows mobile companies
to charge a ton of money per Gb, since no one is downloading large files with
it anyways.

------
davchana
This is exactly what I miss after moving to US from India.

In 2012 the data in India was too much expensive, like a GB or two for a
Dollar. Around 2017, It was About Two GB every day for 30 days for Two Dollars
total. Amazing. 4G. Good coverage. Airtel. Here in US ATT gives me 3GB for a
whole month, & extra $15 if I go over 3 for next 1 GB.

Infact from few days I am trying to find a cheaper data only prepaid pay-as-
you-go Sim for my second phone.

------
ggambetta
Not sure where they're getting their data, but from anecdotal evidence, it
seems off - in the UK I have something like 20 GB (not sure because never been
anywhere near the limit) for £12 or so¹, so it's £0.6 per GB - a whole order
of magnitude cheaper than quoted in the article.

[1] Technically less, because the £12 includes calls and SMS as well.

------
whack
The article doesn't mention anything at all about technology or
infrastructure. Are we really to believe that wireless data is orders of
magnitude cheaper, purely because of price fixing in USA/UK? How much of the
price difference can be explained by infrastructure, technology choices,
labor, quality, etc?

------
grwthckrmstr
Here in India I pay ~$2.50/mo for 60gb of mobile data and ~$50/mo for 875gb of
150mbps broadband.

It's one of the few things I feel blessed about while living in this country.

~~~
mandeepj
is it from Jio?

------
snambi
Population density is another important reason why the prices are cheap.

------
ofcrpls
TLDR: Jio upset the status quo, for now.

~~~
addicted
I think the argument that Jio’s prices must necessarily go up is suspect. For
one thing, the article does not present any reason this should be the case,
other than prices being higher before Jio. But the other is that Jio’s
business model is equivalent to Xiaomi’s. For Xiaomi, the phones are sold at a
price that basically recovers costs, so they can make money off services. Jio
is basically doing the same thing, only using its network instead of the
hardware as a subscriber acquisition strategy.

It’s very possible that the strategy may not work, but if it does (and the
article provides no evidence it won’t, in fact, it reveals that Jio is
actually making more money per subscriber than the average telco), then there
is no reason to believe prices will need to go up.

~~~
devoply
In an economy of very poor people it's possible that having dirt cheap prices
leads to more profit overall. In economies where people have money it's
guaranteed to go up because it's essentially leaving money on the table.

~~~
addicted
Which makes the article’s claim that prices will go up even more unlikely.

------
temp_warrior
This is a stupid comparison. How can BBC claim with a straight face that India
has the world's cheapest mobile data when access is sold by the gigabyte and
other countries have truly unlimited mobile data?

~~~
ash663
Faster access is sold by gigabytes, which gets reset every 24h (You can still
continue browsing after hitting the quota with lower speed). Meanwhile in the
US, it's the same but your quota gets reset every billing period. Not sure
which is the better model, but it's practically the same

------
geodel
Median income per annum in India would be about ~700 dollars per annum. Once
one account most basic necessities of life there is not much money left to be
paid for data plans in India. Its either you give them dirt cheap data plan or
they won't use it.

Also not related to data plan but 22 out of 30 most polluted cities are in
India. Just to put in perspective that their is more to life than cheap data
plans. Broadband/data price is oddly a perennial obsession for relatively well
earning group of people here.

[https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/04/health/most-polluted-
cities-i...](https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/04/health/most-polluted-cities-india-
china-intl/index.html)

~~~
kkarakk
maybe i can answer this - pollution is out of your control as a "well earning
person", you can't even support a party that has anti-pollution measures as a
platform ticket coz no party bothers - that is how many people care. That plus
pollution doesn't impact me in my area, it's only really bad in the poorer
areas. You can't organize cleanups for multiple hectares of garbage dumps.
even kids can't be educated to go throw trash in a dustbin as there usually
isn't a dustbin in sight in poorer areas.

What does impact me daily and affects QoL that I personally can affect?
Internet speeds,Bandwidth rates and the quality of my next meal.

