Slashdot Mirror
Comparing Internet Cafe Rates Worldwide
tcd004 writes "I recently began compiling the hourly rates from Internet cafes around the world into a map. The result reveals wildly different prices, even in countries with similar economic conditions and technological development. This often puts access out of reach for large populations in developing countries who live on less than $1 per day. It seems government policies and telecom deregulation (in countries like Nigeria) are often the strongest forces determining a cafe's hourly rates. If you want to do some of your own rate hunting, take a look at sites like Cybercafes.com."
What's interesting is that internet cafes in a number of the countries with low rates (Pakistan $0.60, Ghana $0.60, Indonesia $0.66, and Turkey $0.50) use government subsidies to keep their rates down. Ghana, in particular, has done this as they believe that increased exposure to the outside world will help encourage its citizens to become literate.
I AM THE SON OF A WEALTHY INTERNET CAFE GENERAL...i have a vast fortune that needs to be transfered out of the country...
I guess the point is that if you live in Nigeria and want to go on the internet, you should make a quick trip to Ghana, so you dont spend 5 days worth of wages in 1 hour
Now that broadband is a cheap commodity and it isn't hard to get a high-end PC that can run pretty much any game as of now, Internet Cafes are becoming more and more useless. Sure, they are sometimes helpful when you're on the go, but that is also solved by notebooks, PDAs, and cell phones.
Who remembers the good ol' days hanging out at Internet Cafes, playing LAN games with friends, browsing with "super-fast" internet speeds, and just overall hanging out at those places? It was great!
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
We can start compiling better (and statistically, better 'weighted') indicators of PPP than the incredibly successful (but somewhat outdated) Big Mac Index.
Looks like i'm heading to Turkey. But seriously, do people even use Cyber Cafes? I find that most of their policies about pr0n render them useless, especially with public indecency laws.
Do these countries have any idea what other countries are being charged? I think they are just making up numbers that sound good, while making the most money off of it.
I can't believe South Korea was skipped in this survey. They have one of the highest rates of internet cafes of any country I've ever been too. And they're really cheap to boot.
Crappy cybercafe listing on Cybercafes.com. It still lists Cyber X in Minneapolis. That place has been out of business for many years.
The site doesn't even have a function to add or modify listings. All it has is a banner ad for cheese!
Globe199
I bet they don't have counterstrike at those internet cafe's...
Yes, I know that spammers use Internet cafes to do their dirty deeds, but the spam-filters should somehow have the ability to detect a genuine e-mail sent using the webmail service.
Prices at Internet cafés are perhaps more interesting for tourists than anyone else. Then again, isn't the point of being on holiday to get away from it all, including (and especially?) the computer?
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
I think those people have more serious issues than not being able to access the Internet. Sure, they cannot afford to view the internet, but the bigger question, is can they even afford to clothe themselves, eat, and have proper housing? When those three issues are resolved, then we should worry about the cost of internet cafes there.
~ kjrose
I love their sliding scale. When it's dead, you can get an hour for like 1 euro. If it's packed and super busy, it's 5-10 euro and hour.
"This is you left and that's your left. This is your right and that's your right. You're gonna die!
That's an odd graph. Australia's rates show up as $7.50US an hour, that's over $10 AUS an hour.
I've never seen internet cafe rates that high here, the most I've paid is $5AUS an hour, and that was in a music store that also provided free coffee.
1) In the short- and medium-term, the question is what kind of access middle-class and upper-class people have. There seems to be some obsession with getting illiterate farmers technology that the average person in wealthy countries doesn't have, but to my mind that's far less relevant than the overall level of computer use and access.
2) This analysis also ignores numbers. A single, dirt-cheap cyber-cafe provides far less access than 50 expensive, well-maintained ones, and it's the higher prices that allow greater numbers and decent tech and maintenance. Again, I suspect I'm going against the political grain of that site by saying so.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
At least in Bomba, where I lived till 2002, cyber cafes cost a lot less than the $1.35 claimed... Rs.60/hour. I think Rs.25-30 is more typical.
That said, maybe its different in smaller cities where cable/DSL isn't available, adn competition hasn't driven down ISP charges as much
... on touching yourself while viewing certain materials off the Internet?
I'm sure it's encouraged in Turkey where they have all the "bath houses".
In Brazil, at least where I live, its hard to find a cybercafe that costs more than $1/hour.
This week I went to several Internet cafés in Montréal. They seemed expensive to me. One had a sign that said C$1 / 10 min -- which of course is C$6 an hour. Seemed a bit pricy to me.
But that site says Canada costs US$4.50 / hour. Which is C$5.95 according to XE.com.
The price of cybercafe hourly rate is only one of the indicator, and this hourly rate alone is definitely not enough to provide a complete picture.
For example, a cybercafe charging $0.50 per hour might be subsidised with other cost. Other considerations like the bandwidth/connection speed has a role too.
Imagine using the internet connection in Starbuck free of charge - because one has paid a hifty amount for a cup of nothing-so-special-expresso.
Sunset over the lake, cool mist over the bridge; A leave upon the ripples, the snow reflects its glow.
Over here in Oslo, I see lots of Internet cafés and they're almost always empty.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
Not to sound trollish, but does anyone actually go to internet cafes? I'd much rather use the PC in the comfort of my own house, rather than a locked-down public computer.
The newfies are part of Canada too.
Who needs internet cafes? There are plenty of unsecured wireless access points.
Keep in mind that although they only make 1$/day, it probably costs a whole lot less to live in those countries, us americans have the highest cost of living in the world
The page linked to from "under $1 a day" does not carry information/statistics about specific countries, but provides only an overview by continent. I'm a little skeptical about the "Percentage of population living below $1.00" - according to the map, only 5 countries: Nicaragua, India, Namibia, Ghana and Kenya qualify as "dark red". I would suspect this is not the case - Pakistan and other fareastern countries for example should be in this range, rather than the green (developed) range.
And again, I'm not sure how useful the "under $1.00 per day" statistic is, because it most certainly does not take into consideration, the standard of living - a loaf of bread costs about $2.00 in the US and 25c in other countries I know.
Just my vulcan $0.02.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
People are prejudiced against idiots. That's just how it works...
How many businesses would let me stay if I came in and started spraying skunk-juice around? That is exactly the effect that smokers have on the rest of us. Just stand with a group of smokers for a while and your clothes, hair and everything are reeking of smoke for the rest of the day.
You can smoke all you want... do it in a space suit so you don't stink up the place for the rest of us, mm kay?
In the time it took me to attempt to reply to another post under this same topic, Slashdot has crashed my Firefox again.
As a serial killer, I'm more discriminated against than you are. There's not a single country anywhere that will let me legally pursue my hobby!
some info: ,have an ambience music etc,
they cost close to 1$(US).
The rate per hour in India , i guess varies from city to city- and even within the same city,differs according to the cafe.some are air -conditined
Otherwise barebones internet is available for Rs.15 (1USD=Rs.45)- so roughly available for 33 cents.
Why does yahoo do this
As far as bars, restaurants, stores, etc being non-smoking, you're not being discriminated against, you're completely free to go into any of those places. You're just not allowed to smoke while there because it disturbs other people.
$2.50/hr for China? Perhaps in hotels and other places that cater to businessmen or "rich" foreigners, but even in Beijing, in college areas, you can get online for 10 yuan (about $1.25)/hour at most. At some second-tier cities, the going rate is about 2 yuan (25 cents). You get exactly the same access -- the only difference is that you might be surrounded by smoking kids playing Counterstrike around you...
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
Here's a clue: You stink!
Life in Orange County
And as for the relationship between price and government policy, I would be more interested to see what the relationship is between government policy in new areas like the Internet vs the government policy in general.
In Kazakstan, the capital had a couple of Cafes that went for $1 or 2 / hour. It made life much more bearable there when the only English is the occasional English language video on the TV.
Whre I live you can get Ar $1.5 per hour. And that's in the main city. Since exchange rate is Ar$3=U$S1 it's like 50 US cents per hour. The only way they could reach that cost is on certain cibercafes on remote tourist zones where they might cost that. I've only seen two and those where on places where only hicking and alpinist tourists go.
The overwhelming amount of population has U$S0.66 an hour internet in this country. So I might take a serious dubt about the veracity of those numbers.
Just looking at the numbers, the article seems to capture non-tourist prices. But it's important not to forget that prices are often not based on real cost, but on the customer's willingness to pay.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
I'm not ignorant of the extreme gaps in the lifestyles of the rich and poor in third world countries nor the fact that the rich care so little about their countrymen, but one would think that those very same rich people could afford their own connections, eh?
I used internet cafes whenever I could during my trip to Germany in summer '03. Since I didn't have any other way of sending emails to my family and friends, I used email-providing websites from these cafes. I also know a lot of people who play games in an internet cafe on campus - they seem to think it's the best thing in the world to do on an afternoon after classes.
PLEASE! What a load of crap.
Being a "smoker" is not a state of being, its a habit, an action. Therefore you are not being discriminated against as a person if you are not allowed to smoke in certian places -- it would be different if, say, the sign said "No Smokers Allowed" instead of "No Smoking" Its no different than laws preventing me from strutting around nude, or laws that require me to wear shoes when I go into a resturant.
As a Barefooter I'm Sooo discriminated against. Bitch Bitch.
\forall code \in C, \frac{\Delta readability(code)}{\Delta t} < 0
I travel on a regular basis and have to work away from my hotel for very long (but sparse) hours. This leaves me much free time where I wish I could get to a net connection. The solution? Public Libraries. Almost every library in the country even remotely close to a decent sized population will have some sort of internet connection available to patrons, for *FREE* 90% of the time.
Interesting. Considering the effects of second-hand smoke, perhaps smokers are serial killers?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Broadband and computers will get cheaper, and the home experience will rival that of the cafe one.
Internet Cafe's have the same exact problem as the arcades of the 80's and 90's. They will need to think "outside the box" in order to get people to continue to pump money into them. Arcades did it by offering experiences that just could not be brought back into the home, i.e. slick interfaces (DDR) or cockpits that truly immerse the player into the experience.
I've watched 2 Lan Centers (places to play q3a, CS, ect) close down this year. I looked into starting my own lan center once, but the cost of the competition, plus the costs of hardware, leases, insurance, and monthly licensing for the games themselves came out to about a 2k profit per month, hardly more than I make now and definetly not worth the risk.
Lan centers, and internet cafe's need to be more than just a place where one can browse the web, get a cup of joe, and eat a cheese danish. In order to survive, they need to offer an experience that cannot be replicated in the home.
(Shameless plug warning) The karaoke bar I work for is doing it right. We were even featured in the New York Times yesterday. This month i'm ordering a few kiosks for the place. It offers more than just web access, what we offer is a social experience that will never be duplicated in the home. I'm not saying internet cafe's should offer video streaming of people singing karaoke, but rather they need too offer their clients a way to communicate and participate with people around the globe in more than a "point and click" fashion.
Just a quick response to many of the excellent points made in the comments so far:
1. "Hey, I was in X country and the price was cheaper/more expensive!"
Yes, prices vary dramatically across nearly every country. When we compiled this data we were seeking out numbers that best represented the most common price in a particular country. For instance, in Saudi Arabia, you can pay $15 U.S for access if you want, but you can also find places who offer it for $3. These numbers are in no way meant to accuraly represent every price of every internet cafe in every country.
2. What do the grey areas represent? Aren't there more countries with high poverty levels?
Grey countries were not included in this survey. Data may have existed for them, but this was originally published in print, and we had a limted amount of space. And yes, many, many other countries live on less than $1 per day. We simply picked a representative sampling.
3. Why do people who live on $1 per day need to worry about internet access?
Good question. First of all, don't literally think of "$1 per day" to mean just that. The point of this exercise was to show that Cafe prices don't often serve their local populations, due to the fact that they're too expensive. The $1 figure is simply an effective way to point out countries with large populations of people living in poverty.
Why do poor people need the internet? Well, often the internet is considered to be a great democratizing and equalizing force. The people who most need equalizing are people who live in poverty. If they can't afford to get on the internet, then how is it improving their lives? Maybe through indirect means?
In any case, our goal was simply to inspire people to ask questions like these. We seem to have been successful. Thanks for your comments!
Tcd004
Nope... no crashy here... sorry dude...
I noticed you ommitted Korea. They have rated in the past as the most on-line country per capita.
When I was there I paid anywhere from $3.00 to $6.00 dollars/hour. Some places served beer. One place served tasty homemade grill cheese sandwiches made by a nice, cute korean girl. There was one place in Seoul with very nice lighting, lots of privacy, and tall leather chairs, which really made it worthwhile.
With all that time you spend compiling the map, when do you have time to get a life?
In related news, a study has shown that the high price of luxary cars puts them out of reach of large populations in developing countries.
Hell, internet cafe rates put internet access (through a cafe anyway) outside the reach of large populations of AMERICANS. Newsflash: Stuff isn't free, and poor people can't buy non-essential stuff.
Slashdot: The Obvious for Nerds. Stuff any idiot with a little bit of common sense already knows.
paintball
Here in Toronto, Internet cafe's are generally $2-3 CDN/hour, which works out to $1.5-2.25 US/hour.
This is a bit lower than their $4.50 US/hour. I guess it depends where you are in the country.
This is probably one of most ignorant excuses for ignoring poverty around the world. Do tell, which country would you like to live in, making the equivalent of one American dollar per day for doing what the citizens in that country typically do for that one American dollar?
See, as a smoker, you're a pain in the butt. You smell funny, you stink up the air, and you give cancer to others. This sort of discrimination is ok, as you've earned it. Contrast this with, say, racial discrimination, which is bad because 1) People can't change their race (you can refrain from smoking) and 2) Race has zero practical effect on anything.
So, how about instead of trying to push your smoke on the rest of us you just stop smoking?
paintball
~~~ I promised someone that I would post here today to introduce Real Troll Talk.
~~~ It's a frequently-updated webzine featuring popular Internet trolling personalities revealing their most intimate thoughts and feelings.
~~~ Stop by today to read the first issue, featuring pb, and the second issue, featuring the one and only TRoLLaXoR.
~~~ (C)opyright Real Troll Talk 2004
..atleast in the case of India. I'm from India and can confidently say that on an average the hourly rate is $0.50-$0.60(Around Rs 20) without government subsidy.
The current rate of $1.35(Around Rs 60) is wrong. I'm not sure how this data was compiled.
This is not a study. This is an advertisement for his site.
paintball
While in US majority of the cafes are on boradband, same is not true for developing countries. The connection speed is horrible and the price does not necessarily reflect the quality of servcie. ;>)
Also some countries ban government/trading/legal sites of other countries. In US its a luxury to "The Whitehouse" online
The Philippines' rate is off by a considerable gap. I am from the Philippines and internet cafe's are more widespread than mcDonald's here. the rates would fall under the range of Php30.00 - Php60.00 which is around USD0.54 - USD1.09. Piracy keeps the costs alot lower and even your average gradeschool-finished person can be trained to click a few buttons. There are alot of them here. No pun intended.
While yes, these people are much poorer than people in america, and other developed countries typically are, to say that they only make 1 dollar a day is misleading. The people that make this in these countries (most of the countries anyway) aren't starving, but instead of relying on their money are using other items for barter to get food... I don't think he was saying that these people are relatively rich and we should just ignore them, rather I think he was pointing out that they're not as bad as people typically imagine when they hear 1 dollar per day.(in most places, though no one can deny that in some places things are indeed really bad, this being typically places with difficulty with natural resources, and the ability to produce items to trade with.)
WANNAWIKI Wannawiki WannaWiki WANNAWIKI!
Sure. $1 buys you a week's groceries in Bombay... and Bombay has a pretty high cost of living compared to other places in India.
I looked at Ireland's entries on the world-wide map, and most of the prices seem to be quoted in Irish Pounds. Since Ireland's been using the euro exclusively for a year-and-a-half (I lose track, lving away from home), either (a) the info's out of date; (b) the contributers are using the pound symbol instead of the euro. Which is it?
The reasons for low prices, however maybe related to the fact that minors go to internet cafes a lot to play Counter Strike, GTA etc. Obviously this is because, in Turkey, many houses don't have computer. As the minors are the main customer group, and they cannot effort expensive prices, I think math is clear.
I should also mention that, my friend's internet cafe is always full during the summer. I don't know much about the school period though.
Touristy places will screw you over, period. My hotel wanted 1 quid for 10 minutes, while the indian shop down the road wanted 1 quid for 80 minutes.
Ask locals, they'll know the cheap spots.
This is especially important in small areas like Venice where everything is so scattered around.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Would you want a bar to kick me out if I came up and started pissing in your beer? You are, in effect, pissing in my air. "Discriminating" against you is absolutely fine in my book.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Whoever modded the parent troll is either a smoker or quite dumb. The GP is the troll here, if anyone is. Complaining that people you're actively hurting with your habits discriminate against you, ah, the injustice!
Here it's about 400 or 500 colones an hour... at the current exchange rate, that's about US $0.91-$1.25. In tourist areas it can cost more, obviously, especially out in the beaches, since the capital San Jose is in the mountains and has the best (or by my north american standards, less piss-poor) connectivity.
Also, in some tourist areas and hotels they usually have terminals you can use for free, but they don't let you hog it if people are waiting.
In Argentina the rate is $1,50/h which is 0.5 USD/h.
On saturdays some places charge 1,20/h and I have only seen higher prices in tourist places where tourists get scamed because they come used to paying in dollars.
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Actor Marlon Brando was found dead in an undisclosed Los Angles hospital this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
sorry, no crashing
i have noticed that firefox is not releasing memory though. right now it is using 56MB
If you're an idiot, or you're consciously aware that your 'Study' is a pile of crap and you just want the extra traffic to your site.
Why do poor people need millions of dollars? Often, millions of dollars is considered to be a great democratizing and equalizing force. The people who most need equalizing are people who live in poverty. If they can't afford millions of dollars, how is it improving their lives? Maybe through trickle-down Reaganomics?
In any case, our goal was simply to get a bunch of people to visit our site and look at the information we made up and the links to a bunch of cyber cafes that have long since gone out of business. We seem to have been successful.
paintball
There is one Internet Cafe in Wallace, ID and the ad in the local newspaper claims $1/hour access time for e-mail, web browsing or what ever.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
$1-$2/h depending on location, quality of computers and connection, time you pay for (1h cheaper than 2x30min) etc.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Yes, plenty of people use internet cafes. There are lots of reasons.
Teenagers go to internet cafes in groups, for gaming. Can't get the same experience at home (unless you have 6 computers with big monitors set up in a row).
Not everyone has a broadband internet connection at home. Not everone even has dial-up, or can afford a computer... but they want to learn more about computers, do research online (job-hunting, apartment-hunting, date-hunting, etc.), and so on. Some people aren't even using the internet - they type up documents and print them out.
Even if you have broadband at home, lots of college/grad students use wireless access points in cafes near school (not so much $$ internet-only cafes, but coffeehouses w/ free or very cheap access). Why go home just to check your email, or do some surfing before class?
Travellers. Not even just tourists -- many hotels advertise only that fancy "data port" for your computer... which is just another phone jack for you to dial out. Ethernet or wireless in hotels is spreading, but it's not everywhere yet, and business travellers often need to (or want to!) access the internet. I'm moving to Michigan from New York, and was there earlier this week looking for a place to live. When I didn't have appointments, I did work in a cafe that had free wireless access. No, not on a "locked-down computer" -- on my own laptop.
And yes, tourists. I was surprised to see another post saying tourists shouldn't be in internet cafes, since they're supposedly on vacation. Uh, the internet is not just for "work" anymore! Lots of people send emails instead of (or in addition to) postcards nowadays. Internet cafes are also invaluable for planning your travels as you go -- booking train tickets, finding hotels, meeting up with friends, telling the folks back home that you're still alive -- especially when you're in a place where your grasp of the local language may be tenuous at best. You learn how to switch the keyboard layout to "U.S. English", look for the US or Brit flag on the webpage, and you're good to go.
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
In Tashkent, Uzbekistan (right below Kazakstan) last December, I went into a cyber cafe that was $0.30/hour. I was impressed. But of course the average salary there is $50/month. Yes, per month. Average.
Why does he have Japan and UK in the list but not on the map? The map makes the US look worse in comparison than it really is because it doesn't include these other industrialized countries with more expensive internet cafes.
Anyway, there is free wifi in many places around the U.S., which makes it even more deceptive. Where I live (Olympia, WA), at any given time there is probably far more people using free wifi with their laptops (sometimes free electricity as well) than are using a desktop computer at an internet cafe. A few people pay to use the sevice at Starbucks, because it is less crowded and has easier access to electric outlets, or because they just like Starbucks. But even that is cheaper, I think.
So basicly what is driving the price of the internet cafe around here is the high start-up cost combined with small number of clients. That requires that they must charge the occasional client much more to pay for all the time that the computer is not being used.
Mathematics is not a crime.
I am looking at the map and it is hard to read the cost of Internet off of it -- I mean, the numbers are right there, but they're just numbers, not graphical in any way. It sort of defeats the purpose. I have to go searching for the highest and lowest numbers.
More specifically, I was interested to see which countries had the most affordable Internet in comparison to their costs of living. But there's no way to pick the highest and lowest numbers out, and it is especially hard to observe the particular piece of data I was interested in (although, to be fair, a scatter plot would be more useful for that). Still, I feel like the most important data is not plotted in a graphical way, and it's lacking.
Believe it or not, but there are still plenty of places left in the world where people can rely on themselves and each other to supply the necessities. It doesn't always take money to get fed (certainly you've heard of gardens and private ownership of animals?), have clothing, and have 'proper' housing. Sometimes all it takes is a community effort, or trading with somebody who has what you need.
I'd argue that people living in such an environment are substantially more wealthy than you and I are.
I am probably one of the most discriminated-against individuals
No such thing as a "discriminated-against individual." Discrimination by its very definition is being distinguished categorically instead of individually. You could have said you were a member of one of the most discriminated-against groups in the western world and that would have been fine.
Of course it would still be false since as a smoker you have far more places that you are allowed to smoke than you are not allowed to smoke. As a non-smoker I am helpless when encountering a smoker walking down the street or outside my office building's door. I am willing to be that I am inconvienced more often by a smokers smoke than they are by a non-smoking area.
BS, is that like being wealthy in friendships and love?
Huh? I don't know what pipe they where smoking, but internet access might be 3u$s/h if it includes a blowjob. On a normal cybercafe it is .3, or .6 u$s/hour, no more.
Everybody has a purpose in life, maybe mine is to lurk in slashdot.
I've recently been to Chile and Russia and paid less than $1 an hour in each. Nowhere near the $3 listed. Where did these guys gather their information from, tourist hotels? No matter how poor the country, internet access can only get so cheap, you still need a computer which is likely imported. Elecronics always seem to be about the same price, no matter what country you're in.
I paid about 10 UK pounds (about $18 or something) for a week at Easy Internet Cafe in London a few years ago. No time limit other than that (they closed at 2AM).
Keep in mind that although they only make 1$/day, it probably costs a whole lot less to live in those countries, us americans have the highest cost of living in the world
No. That would either be Japan or some places in europe. Americans have a generally low cost of living in comparison to the rest of te developed world. Food and nessecities are a relativly small % of take home pay. In absolute dollars, Americans pay less then most europeans and japanese. In japan a plain dress can be $100+ usd and a nice dinner can be 50$-120$ while the same dress would be $20 and the same dinner would be $30 in America.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Peace
Interesting that in this article, Nigeria has that highest cost/income ratio in the world.
I bet I can guess the reason
They are one of the following:
A: Way too old. It hasn't cost that much on average for several years now.
B: Only sampled from some particular hotels etc, that aren't internet cafés as such.
C: Made up.
Matrix, a large internet café in Stockholm charges around $4/hour for non-members. They also have some packages where it becomes cheaper. Dragons Lair charges around $2/hour. Nexuz about 2-4, depending on time etc.
Same thing with other places around Sweden.
It seems government policies and telecom deregulation (in countries like Nigeria) are often the strongest forces determining a cafe's hourly rates.
Are we really sure we want any more Nigerians on the internet? Haven't they abused it enough?
But on a more serious note, back in '98, I helped open the first two internet cafes in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Playa is a pretty big tourist destination these days. At the time, there was only one ISP in town (which I assisted at off an on as well). We started off sharing a 56k dial-up line with 8 computers at each cafe. When we first opened, we were charging a peso a minute, which is roughly $0.10/min. We were making a killing.
Well, word got out we were making bank and within 1 year of the first cafe opening, there were 26 of them in town. Then the price wars began and we eventually ended up at around 10 pesos/hr (about $1.00/hr).
The two owners of the first cafe split (because one was an alcoholic and he spent most of the company money on the most expensive booze he could find). That first cafe went out of business within a few months. Largely because of the alcoholic owner, partly because of the mice, scorpions, and other things that made it just a nasty place. But in fact, a lot of the cafes that appeared in that first year went out of business because of the price wars.
Our second cafe ended up surviving the war (and is still around today, visit Atomic Cafe on Calle 8 con Avenida 5), but largely because we made internet a secondary concern and concentrated on the bar business. There are still a couple of places that offer exclusively internet access and I have no idea how they survive. Most of the rest that survived ended up doing other things.
Anyway, that's my internet cafe story. Glad to be out of that business now. The early days were fun, though.
I don't quite see why you would want to pay for internet access... There are many free (and legal) ways of getting wireless internet access these days.
I'm just trying to point out that you don't have to pay $5 for internet access in the US... I would guess that the same holds true for some other places like the UK.
(It's spelled "segue", people. That said, you make a valid point -- either (Seg)way.)
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Um, Sorry, he says $7/hour for the UK, but I spent a week in london recently and there was only one place out of many where it was two pounds an hour; everywhere else was just one pound.
Read jack phelps dot net
...and security (personal and 'job') and personal satisfaction and in having a real place in one's community.
At the risk of going wildly off-topic, I'd enourage anybody who views my claim with skepticism to pick up My Ishmael or Beyond Civilization by Daniel Quinn. His other, related, books (such as Ishmael, The Story Of B) are excellent, but these two focus more on the fallacy of money as wealth, and where that's led our culture. If you don't want to spend the money on either of them, inquire at your local library.
I live in Mexico City. The site says the rate here in this country is $2.25. You can find this rate in the most exclusive cafes in the city; however there are places that go for $1.50 and even $1 in other areas.
In Xalapa, the capital of Veracruz, the hourly rate is about 50 cents of a dollar. There are even some places that charge by the minute, 12 cents of a peso for a minute (which amounts to about 63 cents of a dollar, for a whole hour).
So, is this chart showing the price for the most expensive rate found in the country, or for an average, or what?
Does anybody know if the rates shown for other countries are as inaccurate as the rate for Mexico?
Go hug some trees.
Economic growth is the only way to raise standards of living in developing countries -- or any country for that matter. The Solow Growth Model explains that this is a function of capital-labor ratio and population growth, but technological growth can impact this as well.
In order to have growth, access to the rest of the world is pretty much a prerequisite, as is some element of a knowledge economy. For these to occur, access to the Internet is essential the way that the telephone was 50 years ago.
So Internet access impacts food, clothing, and shelter. Western countries can give handouts and solve the problem for the time being, or we can help promote Internet access and solve the problem permanently.
Moreover, many people in the US and EU do not have enough food, clothing, or shelter. Does this mean that we should ignore science and technology until everybody does? No rational economist would argue this.
There is a good deal of research that shows that deregulation of telecoms leads to wider access at lower prices. (Examples can be found in Turkey, Argentina, and Ghana.) So the best thing that developing countries can do is liberalize their telecom infrastructure and stimulate investment in telecoms and IT. Does this preclude subsidies? Of course not. We subsidize in the US and it's a good thing. And it's a good thing in developing countries.
about $0.80/hr
Again, thanks for feedback and comments.
We collected prices by calling, visiting cafes, emailing, and via cafes' published rates on the internet.
There is no guarantee that all of our prices are perfect repesentations. Even sampling 20 or 30 cafes in a country that houses 20,000 is too limited of a sample to be called definitive.
In some cases, we may reevaluate our data if we can get solid evidence that our prices are wrong. Again, this is a piece meant to illustrate the divides between many countries and regions. Even since this map was originally published, prices have begun to drop in Nigeria thanks to better regulation.
Perhaps these numbers should be revised and revisited on a yearly basis.
Also, please do not consider this project to be a "Study". It is meant to illustrate a point, if loosely. but not to be a definitive-end-all-be-all study.
Thanks for everyone's feedback!
tcd004
The hell it does. You would be lucky to live for a day in Bombay for 1$. Prices have gone up son.
I missed that place. It was never dull going there. Sure, the seating was an ergonomic mess, but where else.. ...do you get to see a drug deal take place? ....do you see the owner yell at customers(usually homeless people, etc) ...get panhandled for money from said homeless people?
That place was as Uptown Minneapolis as you could get.
I've been living in Brazil the last 6 months and browsing slashdot occasionally. I can tell you cafe rates never approached $3.00 much less $3.50.
I'm in Salvador paying 4 reis ~= $1.25. Yes, I've been to the more expensive south too.
#6495ED - cornflower blue
You can smoke all you want... do it in a space suit so you don't stink up the place for the rest of us, mm kay?
How about you non-smokers stop trying to deny my rights with your pollyanish, restrictive worldview?
You are stepping on my toes, legislatively.
I don't like it.
The prices in Chile are nowhere near US$300 an hour.
In Santiago (the capital), internet access is around 400-600 pesos per hour. US$1 = CLP$650, so we are talking 60 - 90 US cents. I've also seen these rates on the beach side towns and in the south (on the Island of Chiloe, currently isolated from the mainland due to band weather, but still with reasonably priced internet).
In places like San Pedro de Atacama in the North and Puerto Natales in the South, both remote places heavily infested with gringo touriests, you might push $1000 an hour, so US$1.50 max.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
Chile at $3 an hour? Yeah right.
I was in Chile last January, the internet cafes were _much_ cheaper then that.
I have to strongly question where they got these statistics, and why they chose the countries that they've chosen. Then again, I guess that 99% of all statistics are made up...
$2.5/hour in china? I know places as cheap as $.25/hour in beijing.
Stop being a fucking pussy and kill yourself the fast way, e.g. with a shotgun. It's much faster than smoking and we won't have to hear anymore of your whining.
Here's a clue: You stink!
Well, I guess that says it all, doesn't it?
If there ever was prejudice, this is the officially sponsored one.
But it's important not to forget that prices are often not based on real cost, but on the customer's willingness to pay.
You just described real price in economic terms: supply and demand. Price is always a function of the supply of an item and the demand for an item. When the supply of the item (in this case internet access) intersects with the demand for it, economists magically get PRICE. Therefore, where supply is low (on the island of Samui) and the demand is high (go tourists), the price will automatically be higher - thus forcing those who can't or won't pay that price out of the market.
Where is the data? Are these numbers based on your "feeling" of what the typical price is? This is just about useless without the data showing location and actual price of cybercafes surveyed.
And where does this $1/day thing come from? Is that just your "guesstimate" of the standard living cost in a given country?
The merits of this type of study may be useful (though not in the context of "why don't poor people get access to the Internet for cheap") but this fails to start any meaning discussion because the numbers just aren't there...
Most Internet cafes in Buenos Aires cost 0.5 USD / hr (some less than that). In cities in the inner part of the country, this could cost up to 1.2 USD / hr. Far way from 3 USD / hr. as the page states.
The only place in Argentina you could pay as much is in the Airport, because they have "international rates", but 99% of the inet cafes (cybercafes as we call them) the rate is less than 1 USD/hr.
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
Being a "smoker" is not a state of being, its a habit, an action
You are missing the point of my arguement. The point was that group A easily dismisses the rights of group B.
Apparently this type of discrimination is now authorized. But, hey, it's all done in the name of overall good, right?
Now, not only are we exporting jobs, but we will export actual people as well as slashdotters look for a place to finally get a date!
Smokers and smoke in public places are dying out. The smoking status quo is turning, it used to be that smoking was allowed everywhere, including many areas that now seem like very strange places to smoke, like hospital wards. The tide started turning perhaps ten years ago. It is very good to be able to go to restaurants and other places that don't reek of cigarette smoke. I will leave the health issues to others, I am just enjoying the lack of smoke smell, cigarette butts, cigarette burns, and brown gunk. I have seen very expensive test equipment ruined by cigarette smoke (brown gunk from cigarette smoke along with humidity destroys the high voltage power supply in high end oscilloscopes). It is amazing to no longer smell stale cigarette smoke and see brown stains on air vents on airplanes and in restaurants. I hadn't really noticed the gradually reducing level of cigarette smoke in the indoor environment until I recently went into a mom and pop icecream store and did a u-turn when I smelled cigarette smoke. The smell was no different than I had experienced for most of my life, it was just that the levels of indoor smoke have been decreasing over the past few years to the point that the smell now just totally turns me off. There are usually arguments from bar owners when laws are passed that prohibit smoking in bars because they claim that they will lose business. I doubt that it will be very long before business INCREASES in bars that prohibit smoking. The day is quickly coming when BUILDING OWNERS and tenants ban all smoking in all indoor public areas in the U.S. Smokers need to get used to smoking on sidewalks and in parking lots instead of inside restaurants and other public areas.
That's the truth i write and it gets modded flamebait? Bloody moronic moderators on slashdot and yes i've been in Bombay.
In Argentina, the cost per hour is $0.30 - $1 (USD)
It's NEVER more than that. And in big cities (like Buenos Aires, where I live) it's always $0.30 - $0.50
In fact, many people use "Locutorios" (dedicated internet/telephone places) as offices: at $0.30 an hour, it's less than $50 a month.
And I always thought Nigeria was just being friendly to 419 scammers because they were getting a piece of the action.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Its not prejudice. You quite literally do stink. Ask any non-smoker. Cigarette smoke permeates everything, but because you're inhaling it all the time you can't smell it.
Its kind of like pet owners with stinky pets can't smell the dog/cat smell in their homes.
For nearly every country we collected prices from at least 10 cafes. We eliminated the most expensive and least expensvie cafes, based on the assumption that these prices reflected tourist-type locations. (note that many "back-alley" or "grey market" cafes probably didn't make our study. These locations often have lower prices) At this point, we found it would be innacurate to take an average of the remaining prices. (the averages were too often different from the most common price, since even the prices left varied widely. So, we used the most common value or mode.
The $1 figure is from the United Nations Millenium Development Goals Indicators database.
Can't beat Free
Check Panera Bread . com foor location - most metro areas are served - show Starbucks the Cyber door!
The problem is that the claimed right of group B is killing both themselves and group A in the excercise of their so-called "right". Since when is the ability to pollute indoor air with smoke a "right"?
Yeah, but look at the map they made: aside from the USA, Canada, Sweden, and Austria, the surveyors basically ignored the first world. The sampled as many developing and under-developed countries, where it seems safe to assume that the average people are far less likely to have a computer or broadband access at home.
For people in these places, access to a cybercafe is about the only option -- which is why the surveyors looked at the ratio of average hourly cybercafe rates cost to average daily wages. That's why the "expensive" $5.00 average in the USA and the $4.30 in Canada gets a bright green "cheap" rating, while the "cheap" $0.60 average in Ghana and $1.35 in India get a deep red "expensive" rating.
Most of the world's population aren't wealthy westerners like the average Slashdot reader!
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
In Cozumel, I was charged ~$6 hour on the beachfront street where all the fat American cruise ship passengers got drunk, and $1.50 an hour 6 blocks away where the wealthier locals shopped. The gradient was truly awe inspiring. One could escape 99% of the tourists by walking about 500 meters.
Not, mind you, that anything in Cozumel could be considered untouristy.
... grumble, grumble, grumble, mutter, mutter, Millenium... Hand... Shrimp, I tol' 'em, I tol' 'em.
No matter which way you look at it $1 dollar a day is not much to live on. NO MATTER WHERE YOU LIVE!! In most 3rd world contries it pretty much takes the entire family working (brothers, sisters, spouses, children of working age) just to feed, cloth and house the family. Here in America, "Everyone lives in their own home", we have an affluence that every American takes for granted.
I was just in Vietnam, price at the nicest Internet cafe in Ho Chi Minh (cant remember the name) was 6,000D/hour or about $.50/hour. Which is still quite a bit for there.
I've used internet services in China, Vietnam and Russia and the rates shown on that map for those countries -- US$2.50 to US$3.00 -- bear no relationship to reality; they're pure nonsense.
Current rates in China are about RMB2/hour. That's US$0.25/hour, a tenth of what's shown. Maybe less at times -- I've paid as low as RMB1 -- and maybe a bit more, particularly for an LCD screen or such. But regardless of price, it's always broadband and always pretty quick.
That such a prestigious publication as Foreign Policy would host such a spurious study is dumbfounding.
Instead of posting excuses here, the author ought to be withdrawing the study and re-doing it properly. The results might surprise him.
This could be very useful for students who are studying abroad and may not have access to computers.
For instance, a friend of mine recently did a 6 month research project in Costa Rica in an area that had no phones, tvs, computers, etc. There were various towns nearby with internet cafes, and my friend could either walk or hitch a ride if they needed access to them. For an unpaid research project with limited funds, I could see the benefit of knowing the local spots with cheaper access. With limited funds coming in, you've got to make do with what you left with.
Wow, what a great Troll, best one yet. Sorry to have wasted your time. Pipe up and remember to not inhale!
We offer connectivity at over 100 locations throughout the Portland Oregon area for the amazing price of
$0
www.personaltelco.net
How do we do this? Its a little something called Community and it seems to be a far more powerfull force in this town then all the T-mobile run hotspots combined.
Welcome to Portland.
-tomhiggins
www.personaltelco.net
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
I've used many different internet cafes in the UK, mostly in London, and the most expensive I've ever seen is 2/hour, with the average about 0.50...
Were the researchers staying in Buckingham Palace and connecting to the internet using satellite phones??
They should've included the standard deviation or something within countries... I wonder how many cafes they checked within each country. I know I paid much less than 2.50 for internet access in szechuan china.
London: Big Mac $6, Night in Hotel $100, Gallon of gas $8. (internet Cafe $1.8/hr)
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
I live in Canada and I only have to pay $1.50CDN per hour and almost any cafe here in Toronto. $4.30US per hour is pure BS!
I remember a nice cheap Internet place in Granada in Spain last year and browsed through to find other ones in the area. They were listing prices in Pesetas, but I'm pretty sure that Spain is using the Euro more or less everywhere.
Can anyone confirm?
I used the Internet at cafes in 20 different countries last year. A site like this would've been quite helpful for travellers trying to find an affordable place within a city. Often the best places are hidden away (we found a great one in the backstreets of a university district in Naples). Some places in Europe were hideously expensive, Asia was a mixed bag. Some in South America were quite affordable.
The best was a sushi-internet-cafe in Hong Kong. The staff were confused, having never had anyone come in before who wanted to only use the internet and not eat sushi, so they didn't charge us. Very convenient to do some price-checking on iPods and digital cameras before we went back into all the stores!
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
Wonder where the author got this ridiculous number. That may be true in China 10 years ago. But today it is nowhere close to this number. $2.5/10 would be close.
In Cordoba (the second biggest city in the country) cybercafe prices varies from AR$0.75 to AR$1.50. FYI, 3AR$ = 1US$, so we're talking about US$0.25 to US$0.50 instead of US$3 as the article states. More than 90% of the cybercafes are at AR$1.
In Buenos Aires (the capital) prices are slightly higher but no more tha AR$2.
This holiday I went to a very touristic beach city, with low conectivity and expensive connectivity the price was between 3 and 5 AR$ (i.e., between 1.00 and 1.66 US$). To find places with more expensive rates one would have to look at very remote places, or expensive hotels and airports.
Here in Venezuela the rate is 0.60$ (without subsidies)
Gasoline costs 0.03$ per liter (gasoline is cheaper than coke and water).
A BigMac costs 2$ (too expensive for the crap you get).
A Whoper costs 3$ (this is a good meal).
A Grand Cherokee Limited 2004 costs NaN$ (30,000$ basic model, ouch!)
BTW, the minimum wage is 90$ a month, a graduated computer engineer (at least me!) makes 6,000$ a year.
Please ensure your Batcape does not get stuck when you close the door behind you.
Now that Batman is gone, don't tell him that to be on holiday si not equivalent to be on jail in complete isolation. Well it may be for some, but for people that need to be in touch back home or investigate the local scene, a handy Internet connection is very useful.
Regards.
The Riddler.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
In many places in $1 a day salaries a meal will cost you 10 cents or even less.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Big Macs don't cost that in London. Perhaps more in the range of 2 US$
Hotels can be anything from 40 to 300 US$
Yes, gas is expensive.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
But your circumstances are not the norm.
In many places around the world the price of a computer or the infrastructure to support it (electricity) make cybercafes the only sane alternative.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
i've been to several of the countries listed and the actual prices of internet at a cafe are actually WAY lower. for example, in australia, it's probably ~2 dollars per hour. not 7.5. in china, it's about 50 cents to a dollar per hour. not 2.5.
you can't believe everything you read on the internet. even if it's been slashdotted.
In Sydney you can get 1 hour for AU$4 which is about US$3. Not the US$7.50.
Did he just pull the figures out of thin air or has he really been to these countries? I hope he is not talking about the cost of internet charged by the hotel he has been staying in.
Did he just pull the figures out of thin air or has he really been to these countries? I hope he is not talking about the cost of internet charged by the hotel he has been staying in.
You insensitive clod.
In Soviet Russia, houses are put on top of legends...
What are you listening to? (http://megamanic.blogetery.com/)
There are some internet cafes in South Korea that charge 500W per hour. That comes out to $0.57 Canadian and $0.43 American, as of todays xe.com rates. Many other cafes charge up to 1000W per hour, but that's still pretty cheap compared to a few years ago back in parts of Victoria, BC, where you'd pay 9$ an hour and be glad for it. Some Koreans have brought the business model over to Canada and are giving the internet cafes a run for their money with the cheap service.
Downside: These are mostly for gaming, so a lot of the services that come in other internet cafes (like scanning) aren't always available. Don't know the rates or quality on printing, but I imagine they're probably a little cheaper than back home, IF the service is available.
Also, the machines are all in Korean, which isn't too much of a problem because Windows 98 is pretty brainless to use, until you want to try to hunt down programs in the menu hierarchy (the Run menu command recognizes things like Notepad fine, though). Also, trying to get help from the counter brings up the language barrier.
One of the nice things about the low rates is that some places let you bring a headset to the cafe, hook it up, and do long-distance phone calls over the internet. Stupid cheap.
Plus, 500W an hour means about 4000W a night, and if you can find a nice hidden place to nap you've got some of the cheapest overnight accomodations anywhere. (Haven't tried this out yet, though...)
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
I've traveled in 40 different countries in the last few years and used internet cafes everywhere and I have to say this data is the biggest bunch of meaningless misinformative tripe I've seen on the net in a long time.
The averages quoted are based on very small and outdated samples that in no way could represent the average for a whole country.
This fact totally undercuts the goal of distinguishing differences between global regions, which are already obvious anyway.
Anyone been to a net cafe in Venice lately?
Last time I was there in 2002, every cafe in the city was charging USD $12/hour!
It was always the same, everywhere you went. I wonder if they're still pulling that crap.
I don't beleive the data. the netcafes down my high street cost between $2-$5 per hour.
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
USA is not even in the top 10. Where are you getting your information?
Look at this report published in CNN on 14 June 2004. You can see that the most expensive cities in the USA are New York (#12) and LA (#27).
Not what you expected, eh?
Take it from me... Internet Cafes do not cost USD$7.50 per hour here in Australia - they don't even cost AUD$7.50! Even if there are one or two of them that are that greedy, there's no way you'd come up with an average price anywhere near that high. I question therefore, how reliable the rest of the numbers on that map can be?
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Hi,
The price in Nigeria is high because of the number of people hitting it rich with the 419 scams. See this for details. $1000.00 goes a long way in West Africa.