<story><title>The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)</title><url>https://www.cable.co.uk/mobiles/worldwide-data-pricing/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>amingilani</author><text>Not all Internet experiences are equal though. 1 GB of internet in Pakistan ($0.69) ≠ 1 GB of internet in Canada ($12.55). I would gladly trade my Pakistani internet plan for my Canadian internet plan.&lt;p&gt;Last month, when I was in Pakistan, my experience was:&lt;p&gt;+ highly censored to the point where even services like Cloudflare&amp;#x27;s edge-node&amp;#x27;s within the country were being MiTM-ed by the censors [0];&lt;p&gt;+ I couldn&amp;#x27;t use &amp;quot;any mode of communication such as VPN by means of which communication becomes hidden or encrypted is a violation of PTA regulations&amp;quot; in the words of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authoruty (PTA) —Pakistan&amp;#x27;s FCC-equivalent. I asked them if TLS&amp;#x2F;SSL was included but they never tweeted back; and&lt;p&gt;+ I didn&amp;#x27;t have access to services like Paypal, and when a service hadn&amp;#x27;t rolled out &amp;quot;globally&amp;quot;, it wasn&amp;#x27;t available to me.&lt;p&gt;Oh, and while I had &amp;quot;unlimited&amp;quot; internet, I was subject to my carrier&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;Fair Use Policy&amp;quot; which had an unspecified maximum download limit after which your internet would be cut off. This was reported by a lot of people during the initial work-from-home boost during the pandemic when home-data-usage spiked.&lt;p&gt;Now that I&amp;#x27;m in Canada, my internet is nearly unrestricted.&lt;p&gt;Edit: previous said my ISP restricted IRC. Just rechecked, it no longer does.&lt;p&gt;[0]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;amingilani&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1283448960666009601&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;amingilani&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1283448960666009601&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>neya</author><text>This isn&amp;#x27;t necessarily true in all cases - I can cite you an opposite example. Pre-covid, I was in Singapore. You pay $10 SGD for 1GB of data ONLY (no calls included). The top network operator in Singapore is state-backed Singtel.
Their network coverage is very poor in many areas within the city. Singapore is almost literally just one big city and yet, the 4G experience is extremely poor.
Also, customer support is very difficult to get hold of, if you&amp;#x27;re on the prepaid plan. I almost found it a rip off to pay so much for 1GB of 4G data for such a crappy experience.&lt;p&gt;Now, after my trip, I went to India. I paid $10 for 1.5GB of data DAILY from Airtel (India&amp;#x27;s top provider) which also includes free unlimited calls. The experience isn&amp;#x27;t uniform (India is quite huge in comparison to Singapore) but within any tier A city, Airtel is MUCH better than Singtel. Also, the customer support is top notch for the peanuts you pay them and you can find an operator to talk to in usually a minute or less. For comparison, in Singtel, you would have to navigate the crazyily designed IVR and wait for atleast 5+ minutes before you can talk to a real person.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m just citing this example to prove that the most expensive 1GB isn&amp;#x27;t necessarily the best.</text></comment>
<story><title>The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)</title><url>https://www.cable.co.uk/mobiles/worldwide-data-pricing/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>amingilani</author><text>Not all Internet experiences are equal though. 1 GB of internet in Pakistan ($0.69) ≠ 1 GB of internet in Canada ($12.55). I would gladly trade my Pakistani internet plan for my Canadian internet plan.&lt;p&gt;Last month, when I was in Pakistan, my experience was:&lt;p&gt;+ highly censored to the point where even services like Cloudflare&amp;#x27;s edge-node&amp;#x27;s within the country were being MiTM-ed by the censors [0];&lt;p&gt;+ I couldn&amp;#x27;t use &amp;quot;any mode of communication such as VPN by means of which communication becomes hidden or encrypted is a violation of PTA regulations&amp;quot; in the words of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authoruty (PTA) —Pakistan&amp;#x27;s FCC-equivalent. I asked them if TLS&amp;#x2F;SSL was included but they never tweeted back; and&lt;p&gt;+ I didn&amp;#x27;t have access to services like Paypal, and when a service hadn&amp;#x27;t rolled out &amp;quot;globally&amp;quot;, it wasn&amp;#x27;t available to me.&lt;p&gt;Oh, and while I had &amp;quot;unlimited&amp;quot; internet, I was subject to my carrier&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;Fair Use Policy&amp;quot; which had an unspecified maximum download limit after which your internet would be cut off. This was reported by a lot of people during the initial work-from-home boost during the pandemic when home-data-usage spiked.&lt;p&gt;Now that I&amp;#x27;m in Canada, my internet is nearly unrestricted.&lt;p&gt;Edit: previous said my ISP restricted IRC. Just rechecked, it no longer does.&lt;p&gt;[0]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;amingilani&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1283448960666009601&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;amingilani&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1283448960666009601&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Scapeghost</author><text>And let&amp;#x27;s not forget being assumed to be a spammer by almost all sites, getting rate limited or shadowbanned, not to mention being buried with captchas and having to do unpaid labor to train Google&amp;#x27;s AI just to access some sites! If you&amp;#x27;re not outright blocked, that is.&lt;p&gt;All for having an IP address originating from such regions with cheap internet that you can&amp;#x27;t do much with anyway.</text></comment>