No matter how you felt about that monthly or quarterly recharge of your mobile data pack, here is a revelation that will change your view on that regular expense.
A report “Worldwide mobile data pricing: The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries” by a UK-based company Cable has found that India is the number one, yes the top, in the cheapest mobile data in the entire world. In India, one GB of mobile data costs $0.09. For comparison, the highest cost in the world is $52.50 per GB.
The report claims, “A country whose young population has a particularly high technological awareness, India offers a vibrant smartphone market, with strong adoption and many competitors. Data, therefore, is quite staggeringly cheap.”
The reasons for the low costs include large-sized data plans with allow for a lower per GB cost e.g. India and Italy. An additional reason is the availability of multiple service providers and thus the market competition.
Most of the neighboring nations of India too are ranked near the top. Pakistan is no. 17, Bangladesh is No. 19, Nepal is no. 31, Sri Lanka is no. 8, China is number 12, and Singapore is no. 95 in the cheapest mobile internet ranking.
In the most expensive mobile data ranks, the region of Sub-Saharan Africa was dominant, as well as Caribbean and Oceania.
Also Read: Bangladesh set to overtake India in this year’s per capita GDP, claims IMF
Dan Howdle, consumers telecom analyst at Cable.co.uk, comments that, “Many of the cheapest countries in which to buy mobile data fall roughly into one of two categories. Some have excellent mobile and fixed broadband infrastructure and so providers are able to offer large amounts of data, which brings down the price per gigabyte. Others with less advanced broadband networks are heavily reliant on mobile data and the economy dictates that prices must be low, as that’s what people can afford.”
For the most expensive ones, he comments, “At the more expensive end of the list, we have countries where often the infrastructure isn’t great but also where consumption is very small. People are often buying data packages of just a tens of megabytes at a time, making a gigabyte a relatively large and therefore expensive amount of data to buy. Many countries in the middle of the list have good infrastructure and competitive mobile markets, and while their prices aren’t among the cheapest in the world they wouldn’t necessarily be considered expensive by its consumers.”
Interestingly, the researchers found that the contemporary world is composed of four nation archetypes – excellent infrastructure countries, heavily reliant on mobile internet countries, small data consumption countries, and wealthy economy countries.