I'm curious to know why it's so damn expensive for data on a "smartphone" yet in comparison it's much cheaper for lots of data for ones house internet service. Why is it so much for cell phone data?? In Canada for example a person pays around $80 plus fees and taxes to have 1GB of data on their cell phone plan per month. Yet I can get a home internet plan from Rogers (for example) and get $20GB per month. And 20GB is nothing for internet usage today. That 20GB can be used up quite quickly. So why such a big difference in price?? Data is data isn't it??
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Cell data vs house data
- Thread starter bigpoppamac31
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Well yeah obviously it's a money grab. I recall back in the day when I was a teen and my family got "high speed" internet in our house. Their plans didn't include X number if GBs. Just different speed levels. It was only later that they started doing data caps for different internet plans. Which now meant if you wanted more GBs you had to pay more money.
Service pricing (like data service) is FAR more about what the market will pay than it is about actual cost to provide that service.
With that said, cable/fiber Internet typically runs on the same infrastructure as cable TV. So there's an additional revenue stream to help pay for much of the shared infrastructure.
Also, and I'm speculating, but there may be a greater ability to scale the distribution network with ground based networking than with cell towers. Translation: the equipment costs of outfitting many cell towers may be higher than the costs of outfitting the same area for cable/fiber.
With that said, cable/fiber Internet typically runs on the same infrastructure as cable TV. So there's an additional revenue stream to help pay for much of the shared infrastructure.
Also, and I'm speculating, but there may be a greater ability to scale the distribution network with ground based networking than with cell towers. Translation: the equipment costs of outfitting many cell towers may be higher than the costs of outfitting the same area for cable/fiber.
Either way 500MB or 1GB or data per month is nothing. I go through that in a few days. A week at most. Thankfully I still have my 6GB of data I signed up for a few years ago. It was a special deal at the time. Sadly my plan costs me $100 or so a month.
It is far, far more expensive to keep equipment current for cell data. There is only so much bandwidth available to each provider. Thus, they must create more towers that cover smaller areas to confine congestion to smaller areas. Land networks have it easy in comparison. It's much, much easier to upgrade their equipment. It's cheaper as well.
Why land based providers charge for data, I do not know. I would do my best to stick with a flat rate, unlimited provider based on what speed I would pay for. Cell providers, I do understand the limitations.
Why land based providers charge for data, I do not know. I would do my best to stick with a flat rate, unlimited provider based on what speed I would pay for. Cell providers, I do understand the limitations.
