
Prepaid mobile Internet is the most expensive in the US - sasoon
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/10/daily-chart-5
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hannibalhorn
This is really frustrating for temporary visitors (even us Americans that live
abroad but visit on occasion.) Here I can pay about $3 for a SIM card and
$1/day for a "data package", all prepaid, and most of the world has similar
options available.

When visiting the US, I've tried using some of the cheaper, less known
providers that they sell in Best Buy (H2GO, Boost) and have never actually
gotten data to work, just voice. The only thing that has worked for me is
T-Mobile, for which I have to fork out $50 for a month, when I just want 4-5
days.

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barake
T-Mobile actually now has a per-day plan - $3/day for voice, SMS, and 200MB of
data. SIM kits are ~$10.

[http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/pay-by-the-day-cell-
phone...](http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/pay-by-the-day-cell-phone-plans)

~~~
hannibalhorn
Cool, that's definitely new! Thanks for the link!

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bluedino
What percentage of subscribers to mobile internet in the USA use pre-paid
services compared to contract? And what about the other countries where it's
cheaper?

Most pre-paid providers in the US go through a MVNO (basically a reseller)
affiliated with Sprint. Therefore performance in most cases is terrible. I can
burn up a Verizon or AT&T-based mobile phone hotspot pretty quickly thanks to
the high speed an low data cap (3-5GB).

There's wifi everywhere, or I think there'd be a bigger push for this. I might
only use 300mb of cellular data a month as long as I don't stream or do
something like an OS update on mobile.

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jcampbell1
There must be an issue with the methodology. It is hard to reconcile $85 for
500MB when Virgin Mobile and Straight Talk offer monthly plans for
$35-$45/month with a lot more than 500MB of data.

The mobile data situation for tourists is not good, but this chart and story
don't accurately represent the US market for mobile data.

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hannibal5
> but this chart and story don't accurately represent the US market for mobile
> data.

It says it's for prepaid in the title. Its not inaccurate just because it does
not measure what you want it to measure.

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cbhl
I would still have liked to see the same graph at 2GB and 6GB.

When I roam from Canada to the US, the incumbents charge something like $1 / 4
KB (yes, KB, not MB) of data for anyone on a post-paid plan, and deny data
roaming to pre-paid users. I keep a T-mobile SIM around just for when I visit,
even though I only use it for a few months every year.

If the cost of data is the same for 500 MB as it is for 6 GB (most prepaid
plans I could find last time I visited were either 100MB with huge overage
costs or 2GB+) then the relative expensiveness of the US goes down as the
amount of data used increases.

I'm not saying that wireless data in the US isn't expensive -- it is. Besides,
financial ITMPs are one of the most effective ways of regulating data use when
bandwidth is finite.

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hannibal5
>and to the fact that it costs more to build a network than it does in small,
densely populated European countries.

No. Finland has population density 16/km^2, United States has 34.2/km^2

It's not ever correct for urban areas. Population density in Helsinki (urban
area) is 1800/km^2 spread out American city like LA has urban area density
3200/km^2.

The number of cell towers is related to number of people using the services.
If you have densely populated area you add them more close to each other
because ether has bandwidth limits. The cost increases only if the population
density is so low that towers are not utilized even when they are as sparsely
placed as possible.

I could not find prepaid provider in Finland with strict limits for data
transfer. For example in Saunalahti mobile prepaid 0.861 EUR/MB (maximum cost
is 1.9 EUR/day, after that data transfer is free). In other words, you get
unlimited data transfer for ~$57 per month.

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josefresco
Population density alone should not be be used to determine the
cost/complexity of setting up a network. Even with the same density of
population, the overall geographic size (and land features) of the network is
still important.

~~~
hannibal5
Overall geographic size adds logarithmic cost to the physical network but big
networks also gives scale benefits that might be bigger.

