India is going to get 10X price hike for cellular data

[Sukrit Kumar]

yes huys 

18 hours ago, Anonymous015 said:

ikr, sounds pretty reasonable to me. I only have 200mb per month and I pay £3 a month

 

19 hours ago, PacketMan said:

Poor ISP, they suffer so much even billions won't make them feel better.... maybe trillions...

 

18 hours ago, Spotty said:

160 Indian Rupee equals 2.15 US Dollars. People in India are currently only paying 13.5c USD per gigabyte for mobile internet?

 

18 hours ago, flashiling said:

as a danish person i pay 1500 Rupee for 20GB data and unlimited calls/texts, each month

 

17 hours ago, Sauron said:

 

Pretty sure wages and the costs of living are a bit lower in India compared to the UK or the US

 

16 hours ago, Vector0102 said:

In a country where lots of people earn less than 200 dollars a month i think thats a fair amount of change

 

15 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

Yeah sure, but 10c / *gigabyte* is really extremely cheap, I don't think it was ever meant to be sustainable in the long run.

 

15 hours ago, Koeshi said:

Doing some quick maths (using numbers from memory) my home internet works out to about 40GB per 1£ or £0.025 per 1GB.  There may be more costs involved in mobile internet, but this is also in India where costs are lower so this doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

 

15 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

Mobile is way more expensive though. You can't really compare it to house internet when there's completely different,  more expensive tech involved. 

 

On top of my head you get like 4GB for 25€ per month here, which on the other hand is ridiculously expensive,  it's about half that in other EU states (approximately) 

 

15 hours ago, TetraSky said:

Geez, increasing it 10x out of nowhere like that? They could've made it an incremental increase at least.

 

14 hours ago, RejZoR said:

I'm paying 877 INR for 35GB here in Slovenia

 

What India is doing is first hooking up everyone on mobile data and then inflate the price. Because that's only thing people can afford there to access internet. Mobile data.

 

14 hours ago, Mihle said:

Here in Norway it is 299 NOK, or 28€, for 5GB

 

14 hours ago, Vishera said:

Consider that what we earn in western countries in one day is what Indians earn in one month.

 

14 hours ago, Sauron said:

I mean... the limits are arbitrary anyway. It's not what they can handle, it's what the costumers are willing to pay.

 

14 hours ago, CarlBar said:

 

Bear in mind the average Indian wage is only approx $1,800 a year, with significant disparity between rural and urban area's. throw in that it's an average and there will be people below that and it looks a lot less reasonable. people in the US earn approx 36 times as much per year, (though according to the world bank it has even worse earning disparity).

 

14 hours ago, Koeshi said:

Yes it is more expensive (which I acknowledged), but also India is a lot cheaper to run a business in.

 

Even putting that aside we can see from the data here that in Italy (a country with much higher operating costs than India) the average price per GB is 0.43USD.  So the prospect of the cost in India (a much cheaper country) raising the cost to 100INR (1.34USD) per GB seems completely unfair and unreasonable.

 

This is painfully true for pretty much all of the telecoms industry

 

14 hours ago, CarlBar said:

 

Your paying 0.75 times as much per GB, but you earn a touch over 35 times as much meaning an Indian is effectively paying a little over 46.67 times as much per GB once you adjust for average wage. This price is the equivalent of you paying 797 euro's for the same data plan. Even the current rate of 160R per 16Gb is equivalent to paying 80 Euro's for the same plan.

 

12 hours ago, Anonymous015 said:

I have family in Pakistan (neighbouring country with same currency) and over there they earn even less money, yet it costs more then India

 

12 hours ago, BuckGup said:

It wasn't out of nowhere and people knew it was coming and some have been prepping for it. It's a pretty messed up story but essentially a rich billionaire saw India had no major cell infrastructure and offered great plans for extremely cheap prices. Obviously this led to insane adoption rates and now since he has a monopoly and people are using the service he can charge 10X and people will continue to pay it. He also has no other competition either 

 

12 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

I knew there was some background story to this lol. 

 

I agree tho, it should have been done incrementally, 10x "out of nowhere" or not is pretty hefty! 

 

11 hours ago, TetraSky said:

Ah, so that's the backstory on this...

Ridiculous.

Still think it should've been incremental instead of 10x in one go. But I suppose there isn't much in terms of customer protection against this sort of monopolistic BS in India?

 

11 hours ago, mariushm said:

It would be fun for Elon Musk to subsidize his Starlink to Indians, just to mess with that billionaire's plans... pay something like 20-50$ for the modem / sat uplink and then a few dollars a month subscription

 

10 hours ago, BuckGup said:

Yeah I don't think they have anything at all as it wasn't a problem that existed 2 years ago even

yes guys this was the marketing strategy that the isp's has played and I saw this coming. It was jio who started and mybe it is airtel who is ending it, lol.

[it_dont_work]

Most isp's will probably start building free data in packages, and charging per mb for extra data. paying RS160 for 1.6gb over the limit is where customers will be ripped off, atleast thats the strategy in place in most countries. 

[Sukrit Kumar]

18 hours ago, Sauron said:

 

Pretty sure wages and the costs of living are a bit lower in India compared to the UK or the US

The prices had gone less for the sake of making the internet facility more used by the people and make the people have more of a necessity so if we see about 5 years ago it was just another just use, but after the prices went down the people start using the internet more than the people used to. from few megabytes to gigabyte's people consume like 5-10gb of data atleast in my circle so you see it was a pretty bug controversy.

[Sukrit Kumar]

1 minute ago, it_dont_work said:

Most isp's will probably start building free data in packages, and charging per mb for extra data. paying RS160 for 1.6gb over the limit is where customers will be ripped off, atleast thats the strategy in place in most countries. 

it was like first jio came in yo and took over the market with free data and phone calls for many months which led people to use the internet more and now they can't live without it so they will pay the amount.

[Sukrit Kumar]

15 hours ago, TetraSky said:

Geez, increasing it 10x out of nowhere like that? They could've made it an incremental increase at least.

nah that was the strategy and also the operators rule the market they are not like asking they are telling. lol

[it_dont_work]

Just now, Sukrit Kumar said:

it was like first jio came in yo and took over the market with free data and phone calls for many months which led people to use the internet more and now they can't live without it so they will pay the amount.

India is an odd market, their middles class is similar to Us and European markets were in the 70's in terms of buying power. Middle class customers make up a majority of the profits for most service companies, the lower income classes while huge in population probably don't that much of a noticable differences. So while arguably many telco customers could probably afford the change, a smaller (profit wise) portion of their market base most likely can't live without . 

[Sukrit Kumar]

4 minutes ago, it_dont_work said:

India is an odd market, their middles class is similar to Us and European markets were in the 70's in terms of buying power. Middle class customers make up a majority of the profits for most service companies, the lower income classes while huge in population probably don't that much of a noticable differences. So while arguably many telco customers could probably afford the change, a smaller (profit wise) portion of their market base most likely can't live without . 

dude maybe you don't have good general knowledge and also stop having myths about many things. Also they used to get a real small portion from the money but now they want the old profit back, that's what their strategy was.

[Sukrit Kumar]

14 hours ago, CarlBar said:

 

Bear in mind the average Indian wage is only approx $1,800 a year, with significant disparity between rural and urban area's. throw in that it's an average and there will be people below that and it looks a lot less reasonable. people in the US earn approx 36 times as much per year, (though according to the world bank it has even worse earning disparity).

also the internet was expensive earlier but now they want to make their old profits that's what their strategy was 5 years ago.

[trag1c]

Not exactly a fair comparison due to average wages and what not but still 35 bucks for 20GBs of data is cheap. Here its 95 Canadian Peso's for 20GB and unlimited talk/text when you bring in your own device.

[mariushm]

@Sukrit Kumar  it's really a bad idea to plaster your email address everywhere. Bots search websites and collect addresses and spam you.

 

I guess we're lucky we have competition here in Romania ... one of the big providers here Orange has a month to month plan scheme called Yoxo -  https://www.orange.ro/yoxo/ - where you can choose each month between 20GB , 60 GB, 100 GB and 140 GB with unlimited calls and messages in the country ... what you don't use gets shifted to next month

 

Prices...  30, 40, 50 and 60 RON ... 10 RON = ~2.45$ / 2.1 EUR  so I guess that's 10 US cents per GB, if you go by the 140 GB plan ... 

 

Also, there's a 5G plan with unlimited 5G internet and calls and texts for 15 euro a month... but 5G is available in big cities mostly, and I suppose you need a more expensive phone for it. 

 

You can also get a prepay card with 5 cents per minute calls and charge it with 5 euro for 30 day or 7+ euro for 60 days   and then you can choose to purchase a 5 euro option which gives you 5 GB +50 GB bonus (so 55 GB) of internet and 1000 calls and texts. ... 

 

The other big player here Vodafone has 14 euro a month plan with unlimited 4G internet, and 17 euro a month plan for unlimited 5G. they currently have a prepaid 

 

 

[ColdPressCoconutOil]

well just to provide some clarity on this topic

 

most indians here use a plan, where you have unlimited number of calls and sms texts, with 1.5 GBs of data to use on a daily basis. this data cap resets everyday to zero, and once you hit the 1.5GB data cap, your speeds slow down, but to a point where its still usable. these are at reasonable rates, around 300 INR per month(i may be in the wrong here)

 

this kind of a plan was first introduced by jio, and other isps stared to follow and introduce similar plans as well. me and all my family members all use jio service plans.

 

tbh this price hike may not make much of a difference, other than to the low wage workers who subscribe to this same plan on their cheap 8000INR chinese smartphones. and as of now, out of the 15+ service providers, only airtel has gone ahead with this price hike.

 

according to me, jio, the isp who started the entire internet for cheap thing in india, wont follow suit, and they will continue to provide service plans at the same, if not slightly raised prices.

[Loote]

yup, I'm paying 49PLN for 2 numbers, unlimited calls and messages and 50*GB between them, the same isp would offer 100*GB for 29 PLN and it's not even the cheapest one. 1 PLN = 0.27 USD and they are making money

* the offers are 20GB initially, 40 after 6 months, 50 after a year and 60 after 2 years, in case of 29pln offer it's 40/80/100/120 with same timeline, but I also have unlimited 4G at home for under 70 PLN, I managed up to 0.5TB transfer in a month using that.

[flashiling]

16 hours ago, CarlBar said:

 

Your paying 0.75 times as much per GB, but you earn a touch over 35 times as much meaning an Indian is effectively paying a little over 46.67 times as much per GB once you adjust for average wage. This price is the equivalent of you paying 797 euro's for the same data plan. Even the current rate of 160R per 16Gb is equivalent to paying 80 Euro's for the same plan.

i'm just a student with an internship, but yea i know that's why it's more expensive in denmark,

a friend of mine from the slavic countries can spend 1-1.5€ on a great loaf of bread from a local bakery, where i spend 2€ on the crappy white bread from the super market, and 4-6€ on the good bakery bread.

it feels insane when you compare it like that, though he's smart enough he does programming work for a company in england so he earns english wages.

[mariushm]

19 minutes ago, flashiling said:

i'm just a student with an internship, but yea i know that's why it's more expensive in denmark,

a friend of mine from the slavic countries can spend 1-1.5€ on a great loaf of bread from a local bakery, where i spend 2€ on the crappy white bread from the super market, and 4-6€ on the good bakery bread.

it feels insane when you compare it like that, though he's smart enough he does programming work for a company in england so he earns english wages.

A bit off topic ... but a bread making machine is 60-200$ ... ex https://www.amazon.com/KBS-Automatic-Dispenser-Programmable-Stainless/dp/B07BYXHYLY/ and you can buy 25-50 Kg bags of flour and yeast and make your own bread. It's cheaper but not by a lot, after you account for an hour's worth of electricity.

[CarlBar]

1 hour ago, flashiling said:

i'm just a student with an internship, but yea i know that's why it's more expensive in denmark,

a friend of mine from the slavic countries can spend 1-1.5€ on a great loaf of bread from a local bakery, where i spend 2€ on the crappy white bread from the super market, and 4-6€ on the good bakery bread.

it feels insane when you compare it like that, though he's smart enough he does programming work for a company in england so he earns english wages.

 

Oh i wasn't singling you out or anything, your post just had some solid numbers i could run a comparison on. Honestly once i got the maths right i was kinda shocked at how bad the disparity was, (hence why i didn't question my initial maths screwup that i had to go back and edit to fix, it fit my expectations). I basically just wanted to put the indian prices both pre and post price hike into perspective for people.

[EnVii]

I pay £18 per month for 105GB of data,

 

So that’s just over 17p per GB, if my math is correct, 

 

Which is 16.60 Ir per GB. 

[CarlBar]

14 minutes ago, EnVii said:

I pay £18 per month for 105GB of data,

 

So that’s just over 17p per GB, if my math is correct, 

 

Which is 16.60 Ir per GB. 

 

Again your average income is way higher, though your also paying quite a lot less before accounting for that than Indians will after the price hike.

 

The average UK income is 22 times that of the average Indian Income. Accounting for the effects of that that the same 105GB of data under the new rates would have to cost you £2,300 to be comparable in expense. Even under the pre-hike rates it's the equivalent of £230

 

 

[Benjamin22044]

I know how less Indians are paying for the internet and it's all due to a brand named Jio that is a major competitor to Airtel. If Airtel makes mistakes by increasing the cost, I think Jio will have a huge benefit in terms of new customers. 

[yian88]

On 8/26/2020 at 1:15 PM, Spotty said:

160 Indian Rupee equals 2.15 US Dollars. People in India are currently only paying 13.5c USD per gigabyte for mobile internet?

Why would you pay per GB? doesnt everyone have like a fixed ammount subscription like here in romania i pay 2$ for 50GB month subscription, after 50GB you cant get anymore and the speed drops to 256kb.

[Mr.Meerkat]

13 minutes ago, yian88 said:

Why would you pay per GB? doesnt everyone have like a fixed ammount subscription like here in romania i pay 2$ for 50GB month subscription, after 50GB you cant get anymore and the speed drops to 256kb.

Nope, even in countries like the UK, some are still on a pay-as-you-go sim, which isn't as cost effective as a monthly plan if you are a medium to heavy user but at the same time, you only pay for what you use so for some, it's definitely worth it (especially if it's a backup phone). 

[Luxzio22]

22 hours ago, ColdPressCoconutOil said:

well just to provide some clarity on this topic

 

most indians here use a plan, where you have unlimited number of calls and sms texts, with 1.5 GBs of data to use on a daily basis. this data cap resets everyday to zero, and once you hit the 1.5GB data cap, your speeds slow down, but to a point where its still usable. these are at reasonable rates, around 300 INR per month(i may be in the wrong here)

 

this kind of a plan was first introduced by jio, and other isps stared to follow and introduce similar plans as well. me and all my family members all use jio service plans.

 

tbh this price hike may not make much of a difference, other than to the low wage workers who subscribe to this same plan on their cheap 8000INR chinese smartphones. and as of now, out of the 15+ service providers, only airtel has gone ahead with this price hike.

 

according to me, jio, the isp who started the entire internet for cheap thing in india, wont follow suit, and they will continue to provide service plans at the same, if not slightly raised prices.

lol as someone who uses jio on a 7K INR Chinese smartphone, I'll be the first to say that the difference it makes is substantial. I have a BSNL broadband connection for the 3 PCs we have at home and compared to that plan (12GB/day at 4-5MBPS, still actually usable afterwards) for a total bill of under Rs. 1500 per month, even Jio's current plans of Rs.500 for 84 days at 1.5GB/day is a total ripoff and the only reason I use it is because BSNL internet is uselessly gimped on mobile and I need some reliable internet on my phone for work. Increasing rates even further(which Jio thankfully hasn't talked about doing yet) will just widen the gap of this ripoff and anyone watching their spending will notice it.