India has place in fifth place on the Worldwide Mobile Data Pricing 2022 list. It is a part of a report that has measure the cost of 1GB of mobile data in 233 countries.
This list was top by Israel at the least expensive price of $0.04 (approx. Rs. 3) per GB.
Saint Helena, a British Overseas Territory in the South Atlantic Ocean was the most expensive with a cost of $41.06 (approx. Rs. 3,500).
Northern America was list as the priciest region in the world averaging around $4.98 (approx. Rs. 400).
The Worldwide Mobile Data Pricing 2022 list was compile by Cable.co.uk, which is a price comparison site.
It claims that Israel, Italy, San Marino, Fiji, and India, in this order, are the top five cheapest countries to pay for mobile data.
As previously mention, India comes fifth, with a cost of $0.17 (approx. Rs. 14).
The report suggests that India’s population greatly relies on mobile data, and that this has supposedly create high demand, forcing providers to offer competitive prices.
Israel has supposedly a global leader concerning 5G technology and holds its position at the top when it comes to pricing as well.
As per the list, Saint Helena, the Falkland Islands, São Tomé and Príncipe, Tokelau, and Yemen are the five most expensive countries to purchase mobile data.
Four of the five are island nations and two are locate in the Sub-Saharan African region.
Sub-Saharan Africa is also the second most expensive among the 13 global regions of the world with an average cost of $4.47 (approx. Rs. 400).
Northern America is the most expensive and Northern Africa is the cheapest with an average of $1.05 (approx. Rs. 80).
The researchers have reportedly attribute the difference in cost to four main country archetypes.
Countries can be categorise using a mixture of four Archetypes :
Researchers uncover four main country archetypes that go the greatest distance to explaining the expense, or lack of, mobile data across the globe.
- Excellent infrastructure,
- Heavy reliance,
- Small consumption,
- Wealthy economy.
NOTE : Many countries will be form of a mixture of two or more of these.
Excellent infrastructure
Countries with long-establish, ubiquitous 4G or new 5G infrastructure tend to fall towards the cheaper end of the table.
This is due to the fact that their mobile data plans tend to offer considerably more data than the global median, caps usually in the hundreds of gigabytes, or even completely unlimited.
The cost per gigabyte in these countries will tend therefore to be very low.
Heavy reliance
Countries with little to no fix-line broadband availability therefore rely heavily on mobile data provision.
In these cases, mobile data is the primary means the population has of getting online, and adoption is often near-ubiquitous.
With a saturate market and many competing providers, often accompanied by a low average wage, data pricing in such countries can be exceptionally cheap when compared globally.
Small consumption
Countries where, although mobile data is widely available and widely use, the basic and/or overburden infrastructure dictates a limited-use culture.
In countries such as these, SIMs tend to be relatively cheap but predominantly available load with very small data amounts.
In such countries, amounts of 2-5MB and with single-day expiries are not uncommon.
When multiplying such small quantities to figure out the cost of a gigabyte, then, such countries tend to find themselves at the most expensive end of the table.
Wealthy economy
Wealthy nations tend to have good mobile infrastructure, decently-size data caps and relatively healthy markets.
Since populations can afford to pay more, and network infrastructure costs that much more to own and run, and provide they haven’t reach the ‘excellent infrastructure’ category where data limits are beyond normal usage or entirely unlimited, data pricing tends towards the global average.
They note that the cheapest countries roughly fall under the excellent infrastructure or heavy reliance archetypes.
The most expensive countries tend to have small consumption and terrible infrastructure.
Lastly, the data pricing of wealthy economies tends to tilt towards global averages.
