<story><title>Mobile data: Why India has the world&apos;s cheapest</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-47537201</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>chewz</author><text>Mobile telecom prices are just a pure licence to print money. The cost base (infrastructure and regulatory costs) is insignificant and the asking price maxed out - depending on the market.&lt;p&gt;Prices could be mitigated by competition but usualy we have oligopoly, by regulators (EU and roaming charges) or by taxation (licences to operate).&lt;p&gt;I always laugh when similar company with similar shareholders charge 15 times more in one country then in another.&lt;p&gt;Digi Malaysia extending prepaid for 1 year 68 ringit 15$, dtac Thailand 1$. Both owned by Telenor.</text></item><item><author>denzil_correa</author><text>&amp;gt; The BBC report, citing a UK-based price comparison site, said that 1 gigabyte (GB) of mobile data cost $0.26 in India (£0.20), compared with $12.37 in the US, $6.66 in the UK, and a global average of $8.53.&lt;p&gt;According to OECD, the Purchasing Power Parities (PPP) for India is 17.729 , UK is 0.691 and US is 1.0 [0]. That&amp;#x27;s a huge difference and hence, ignoring the purchasing power will not give you a full picture about the &amp;quot;cost&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;data.oecd.org&amp;#x2F;conversion&amp;#x2F;purchasing-power-parities-ppp.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;data.oecd.org&amp;#x2F;conversion&amp;#x2F;purchasing-power-parities-p...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vvanders</author><text>I hate mobile companies as much as anyone else but that&amp;#x27;s like saying that once you&amp;#x27;re past the hard part of software development the rest is easy.&lt;p&gt;The bread and butter of mobile operators is infrastructure and spectrum licensing. FWIW I think there&amp;#x27;s a fair amount of competition, at least more than you see in the ISP space. Building towers is usually much more straightforward than trenching fiber&amp;#x2F;cable.</text></comment>
<story><title>Mobile data: Why India has the world&apos;s cheapest</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-47537201</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>chewz</author><text>Mobile telecom prices are just a pure licence to print money. The cost base (infrastructure and regulatory costs) is insignificant and the asking price maxed out - depending on the market.&lt;p&gt;Prices could be mitigated by competition but usualy we have oligopoly, by regulators (EU and roaming charges) or by taxation (licences to operate).&lt;p&gt;I always laugh when similar company with similar shareholders charge 15 times more in one country then in another.&lt;p&gt;Digi Malaysia extending prepaid for 1 year 68 ringit 15$, dtac Thailand 1$. Both owned by Telenor.</text></item><item><author>denzil_correa</author><text>&amp;gt; The BBC report, citing a UK-based price comparison site, said that 1 gigabyte (GB) of mobile data cost $0.26 in India (£0.20), compared with $12.37 in the US, $6.66 in the UK, and a global average of $8.53.&lt;p&gt;According to OECD, the Purchasing Power Parities (PPP) for India is 17.729 , UK is 0.691 and US is 1.0 [0]. That&amp;#x27;s a huge difference and hence, ignoring the purchasing power will not give you a full picture about the &amp;quot;cost&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;data.oecd.org&amp;#x2F;conversion&amp;#x2F;purchasing-power-parities-ppp.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;data.oecd.org&amp;#x2F;conversion&amp;#x2F;purchasing-power-parities-p...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mcv</author><text>In many countries, mobile bandwidth licenses were auctioned for ridiculous sums, which were probably bid based on what they expected the market to be able to bear. That made the expected profit part of the cost.&lt;p&gt;There was a bit of a scandal back then because of the way the Dutch government handled that auction and tried to squeeze as much money as possible out of the various bidding companies.</text></comment>