Data is Massively More Expensive in US and UK Than India

UK & US Top Data Cap Charges

Be it on your phone or home broadband package, if you have a service that provides you with a ‘data cap’ you know that you have to treat that very seriously. For example, if your phone provider contract gives you 4GB of data per month, it’s pretty clear that if you exceed that, you can expect some pretty hefty ‘additionals’ thrown onto your bill.

In the UK, for example, it was found that on average, a user who exceeded their ‘allowance’ by more than 1GB was charged around £6.66 for it. Even worse, America customers average a fee in excess of $12. The research, conducted by cable did, however, find a far more startling conclusion. Namely, that in countries like India, you would be charged only 2%-10% of this.

Is This Corporate Greed?

Well, if you’re thinking this is something to do with ‘Western corporate greed’, that doesn’t appear to be the case. The figures do, however, seem to be somewhat arbitrary. Well, not entirely. The study says: “Despite a healthy UK marketplace, our study has uncovered that EU nations such as Finland, Poland, Denmark, Italy, Austria and France pay a fraction of what we pay in the UK for similar data usage.”

There doesn’t, however, appear to be any specific correlation between the best or worst countries in terms of development.

Top 5 Best

• India – $0.26
• Kyrgyzstan – $0.27
• Kazakstan – $0.49
• Ukraine – $0.51
• Rwanda – $0.56

Worst 5

• Zimbabwe – $75.20
• Equatorial Guinea – $65.83
• Saint Helena – $55.47
• Falkland Islands – $47.39
• Djibouti – $37.92

What Do We Think?

Many years ago, I did use to be on an internet package that limited me to 10GB of data a month. Despite the fact that this was around 10 years ago (and download sizes were a bit friendly then) I still found myself regularly exceeding it. So much, in fact, that I eventually paid the extra to go unlimited to, ironically, save money!

While the report doesn’t really present any specific conclusions, all I can say is I’m grateful I’m not paying those fees in Zimbabwe!

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!