August 12, 2020
How Much Does Mobile Data Cost Around the World?
Our latest visualization takes a deep dive into the price of mobile internet around the world. The data we used comes from Cable.co.uk and includes information from 230 countries and territories. The colors on the map correspond to the price of 1 GB of mobile data in each country, with dark green being the cheapest at less than $1 and red being the most expensive at more than $50. Countries shaded in gray do not have data available. For ease of comparison, all prices are expressed in U.S. dollars.
How Much Does Mobile Data Cost Around the World?
Bell Rogers and TELUS get slammed in the press repeatedly for their prices. We always hear that prices in Canada are ridiculously high in particular vs. the USA.
Turns out that Canada isn’t much higher and given the disparity in population (34m vs. 340m) you’d think that the differential would be considerably greater it’s not at all.
Mexico looks to be quite high relative to the GDP per capita, and we expect prices to rise as consolidation occurs.
UK and German prices are unsustainably low but the highest in Europe.
What is particularly interesting is when you compare Latin America vs. Continental Europe.
It speaks to articles we have written in the past where we have called out EU regulators in particular for their unsustainable policies.
I think we can all agree that there is a significant disparity between wages in the EU zone and that of Latin America, yet EU wireless prices are cheaper.
We expect LATAM prices to rise further as Telefonica exits the region.
We also believe that 5G prices need to be considerably higher than their current promotional offerings in order to just meet the cost of capital associated with 5G infrastructure deployments let alone 5G operational costs (see our 5G posts on each).
How Much Does Mobile Data Cost Around the World?
Back