US Wireless Data Prices Are Among the Most Expensive On Earth (vice.com)

A new study from Finnish research firm Rewheel has found that U.S. wireless consumers pay some of the highest prices for mobile data in the developed world. The mobile data market in the U.S. has the fifth most expensive price per gigabyte smartphone plans among developed nations, and was the most expensive for mobile data overall. Motherboard reports: While the report notes that mobile data prices have dropped 11 percent during the last six months in the States, U.S. mobile data pricing remained significantly higher than 41 countries in the European Union and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Normally, having four major wireless carriers helps boost competition, in turn lowering prices. But the Rewheel report was quick to note that the often stunted level of competition seen in U.S. wireless is more akin to countries where there's just three major players. Meanwhile, a monopoly over business data connectivity generally keeps consumer mobile prices high. According to the FCC's own data, 73 percent of the special access market (which feeds everything from ATMs to cellular towers) is controlled by one ISP. This varies depending on the market, but it's usually AT&T, Verizon, or CenturyLink. These high prices to connect to cellular towers then impact pricing for the end user and smaller competitors, those same competitors and consumer groups have long argued. Another area where prices were high: mobile hotspots. The report found that Verizon charges users $710 per month for its 100 gigabyte mobile hotspot plan. That same plan costs between $11 and $23 per month in several European countries.

Comments

Re: Yeah, so?

[jd]

Actually, not so good.

The extra added on to petrol in Britain simply gets paid by the US driver by other means. And by having more people collecting the money by more methods, you pay a higher premium.

Your distances are about twenty times greater, and your vehicles maybe twice as heavy, so you end up using fourty times the fuel for the same tasks.

So you pay far more and pay far more often, all you do is pay less at a time.

And you fell for it.

Re:Yeah, so?

[Kiuas]

Data is expensive. OK?

The defense of all monopolies and oligopolies. 'It's not that we really want to charge as much as humanly possible for this thing because we know people want it and have nowhere else to go, it's just that it's really really expensive you see..."

Large parts of the US have no competition on the mobile networking side of things, which basically allows the companies to dictate the price. This is basic economics. It's right there in the summary:

Meanwhile, a monopoly over business data connectivity generally keeps consumer mobile prices high. According to the FCC's own data, 73 percent of the special access market (which feeds everything from ATMs to cellular towers) is controlled by one ISP.

Meanwhile, while we're a relatively small and a sparsely populated country here in Finland, we've got 2 major telecoms that have 4G coverage of most of the country. And whaddayaknow, once some competition appears, suddenly it turns out that data is not so expensive after all. My current plan has unlimited text messages, unlimited domestic call, unlimited (actually unlimited, no datacap) 5G (in theory, in practice the network is still 4G, we're in early phases of 5G infrastructure building) data in the Nordics + 15 gigs of outside the Nordics EU roaming data at at 30 euros a month.

How are we doing on gasoline price, against the same group of countries?

The real question is, how's your infrastructure doing? 'Cause last I checked, according to american engineers, it's pretty dismal. See, the reason gas is expensive here is that we tax the shit out of it (75 % of the price of gas is tax here), which we then use to you know, actually maintain the road and bridge infrastructure. Moreover, gas being more expensive reduces the incentive of people to drive and actually has lead to fast development of public transit. I own a car, but it's actually faster for me to use public transportation to get from my front door to my main office because turns out the subway bypasses traffic jams, and it saves me money; for less than the price of refueling my car full once, I get one months unlimited use of Helsinki's puvlic transit network consisting of buses, a couple metro lines, a tram system, ferries and trains.

In the mid-to-long term, I'm actually all for gradually increasing the gas tax even more to drive people away from using it and to adopt modes of transit less destructive to the planetary ecosystem, because I really like breathing air and would like my potential kids and grandkids to be able to do it as well.

But yay for cheap gas! Never mind tomorrow or actual long-term planning like intelligent tool using apes that have an understanding of their own resource use and its impact on societies and the planet overall. Let the planet burn, as long as there's cheap gas for everyone amirite? Or maybe, just maybe we could for once take a hint from people with a long running relationship with the environment who understand that we're not outside the system but a part of it and we can't just keep exploiting it because we like fast cars and insanely inefficient combustion engines?

Your people are driven by a terrible sense of deficiency. When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.

-Alanis Obomsawin, a member of Abenaki tribe from Canada, talking to author Ted Poole, from the book “Who is the Chairman of This Meeting?” (published in 1972)