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Internet data prices in the US and UK

H

HarryC

Well-Known Member
I'm in Australia, and I'm always hearing about how cheap Internet data is in the US and UK (for example) compared to here.

As an example, a standard kind of phone/internet plan here would be:

-$50-$75 per month for 50gb when bundled with home phone on a 24 month contract, the price depending on the carrier.

-I'm on 4G mobile broadband (eg for laptop internet anywhere, I don't know what it's called elsewhere), and for that I pay $60 for 8gb.
That's at the pricey end, but it's with Telstra which has by far the best reliability, speed and coverage.

Could someone living in those places give me a rough idea of what you pay for broadband, are 12/24 month contracts the norm etc?
ie. what's a standard sort of deal?
 
Straight Talk, a virtual network operator, charges US$45/month for unlimited talk and text and 2.5GB of data before you're throttled (to pre-Christian-era speeds). For 2 phones on AT&T, not Straight Talk (we pay for the phones as part of the contract with some mobile plans) with unlimited talk and text and 10GB/month, I pay about US$130 (plus about $10 in various fees and taxes).

As far as home service goes, I pay about $150/month for TV (a few hundred channels, most of which I never watch) and 25mb/s unlimited internet. (It's rare here for home internet to be limited in amount.) For phone service I use a VoIP company that charges about $100/year, so that's negligible. The nice thing about that is that if I came to visit you in Oz, I could bring my VoIP modem and a wired phone and still make and receive calls in the US on the same number.

I don't know how typical any of these are - I don't ask my neighbors what they pay for their service.
 
Aio wirless has higher throttle than straight talk for comparable pricing.

Throttle that is high enuff for me to teather and play online games like gran turismo 6 over it.

They dont complain about tethering.
They dont complain about me using 40gb a month.
 
Assuming the $50-$70 is Aussie $s, then it looks like the prices in Aus are much the same as the UK - maybe cheaper.

The best price on EE for 4G appears (the page is a bit confusing) to be
 
In the US two year contracts are normal, but the main carriers are starting to push no contract offers.

Data rates very greatly. Some give you unlimited data (with throttling) and talk/text for around $35 - $40 a month. Others can charge around $45 for just 1GB of data.
 
kate said:
Data rates very greatly. Some give you unlimited data (with throttling) and talk/text for around $35 - $40 a month. Others can charge around $45 for just 1GB of data.
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There must be some difference between them otherwise why would anyone ever take the 1GB for $45?

Also, pardon my ignorance but what's throttling? I'm guessing it means slowed service after x amount of data use, so it's misleading to say unlimited data with throttling (as these days a slowed service is as good as no service at all).
 
HarryC said:
There must be some difference between them otherwise why would anyone ever take the 1GB for $45?
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Usually, but not always, higher data rates come with getting a contract to help pay for the phone. There are hundreds of plans to choose from - some have cheap minutes, others have cheap data, others are pay per use. This site lists many prepaid (no contract) plans if you want to see how different they are.

HarryC said:
Also, pardon my ignorance but what's throttling? I'm guessing it means slowed service after x amount of data use, so it's misleading to say unlimited data with throttling (as these days a slowed service is as good as no service at all).
Click to expand...

Yep, throttling = slower data. Many carriers start throttling around 2 - 2.5GB. Some of the cheaper plans start around 500MB.
 
My apologies kate, I should have clarified that I'm not referring to phone internet, but home landline and/or mobile.
 
HarryC said:
My apologies kate, I should have clarified that I'm not referring to phone internet, but home landline and/or mobile.
Click to expand...

Oops. :o

For slow home internet speeds you can get 3 - 6Mbps for $30 - $45. Faster 30 - 60Mbps speeds are usually around $40 - $80 per month. Most allow 100 - 300GB per month.
 
HarryC said:
My apologies kate, I should have clarified that I'm not referring to phone internet, but home landline and/or mobile.
Click to expand...

Usually its $62usd/month for 25mpbs Download/5mbps upload DSL but I pay $44 for 12 months. I could upgrade to the 40mbps/5mbps for $67 but I really don't need that much. All unthrottled. All unlimited. This is in the U.S.
 
The 'deals' we get in the UK aren't as great as they make out, some networks are biased towards calls & texts, others make out to be modern data providers for smartphones but still impose limits on data usage. They are businesses & want to rake in as much money as possible without too much outlay from themselves.
 
For cable internet I have been paying about $55.00 per month plus tax, (no TV just internet), with speeds of about 25Mbps. It is "unlimited", but they will gripe a little if you pass 200GB in a month.
 
Codegerm said:
For cable internet I have been paying about $55.00 per month plus tax, (no TV just internet), with speeds of about 25Mbps. It is "unlimited", but they will gripe a little if you pass 200GB in a month.
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Here in Oz the emphasis with pricing is more on data quantity than speed, but it sounds like in the US and UK you all have, generally, high or 'unlimited' data and the pricing is more about speed. Normal speed here (ADSL2, not a lot of fibre here yet) is up to 20mbs on a good day.

Out of interest, what form does the griping take?
 
HarryC said:
Here in Oz the emphasis with pricing is more on data quantity than speed, but it sounds like in the US and UK you all have, generally, high or 'unlimited' data and the pricing is more about speed. Normal speed here (ADSL2, not a lot of fibre here yet) is up to 20mbs on a good day.

Out of interest, what form does the griping take?
Click to expand...

Usually an email or something about assisting in reducing bandwidth consumption. I had only passed it a couple times, and just ignored the email. I just think they gripe to try to keep their connection from being overloaded (imagine every one of their customers all streaming different HD video at the same time). It was hard to pass the gripe level even with me sharing my connection with my neighbor across from me (I added his PS3 to my secure guest connection)

FiOS customer discovers the limits of “unlimited” data: 77TB a month | Ars Technica
 
Here there are lots of people who claim they get throttled (speeds slowed by the network) if they use excessive amounts of data but most networks deny doing it, at least for unlimited customers. I'm with a cheapie network (PlusNet) and recently, a post on their forum asked if using 1TB in a month was a record. A rep replied that not only was it not a record, it was not even close to the top usage that month.

The networks of course use traffic management but they claim it's not aimed at particular high usage customers but simply prioritises certain types of activity like streaming.

The move back to unlimited is relatively recent: years ago it was the norm, then they started doing plans with data limits however recently, they seem to have given up on that and returned to relatively reasonably priced unlimited deals. Thankfully.

Re pricing, most providers will have a cheapy, low data plan (maybe 10GB/month), an unlimited plan, then a couple of fibre plans (if your exchange has fibre).

Apart from our one cable network, it's actually hard from the providers to differentiate on much except price because they all use the same infrastructure: whether you're with BT or TalkTalk or whoever, you're still connecting over the same copper to the same exchange. That's also true of the fibre network.
 
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