India Tops The List Of The World’s Cheapest Mobile Data Provider: Study

India emerged as the number one country across the world to offer the cheapest mobile data packs. According to the study, despite the global price per 1 GB data is  $8.53, India is offering the same at $0.26. The study was conducted by Cable.co.uk in around 230 countries across the world to compare the vast difference between mobile data price. The study found Zimbabwe the most expensive country which offers 1gigabyte of mobile data at $75.20 which roughly translates Rs 5,304.

According to the study, the most developed nations such as US and UK charge highest prices for 1GB of mobile data. If you want to buy 1GB of data, you will have to pay almost $6.66 and $12.37 respectively in the UK and US. India has topped the list of cheapest countries to offer 1GB of mobile data to its citizen followed by Kyrgyzstan ($0.27), Kazakstan ($0.49), Ukraine ($0.51) and Rwanda ($0.56).

“A country whose young population has a particularly high technological awareness, India offers a vibrant smartphone market, with strong adoption and many competitors. Data, therefore, is quite staggeringly cheap,” Cable.co.uk notes in its research.

Talking about Western Europe, Finland has topped the cheapest mobile data list with an average price tag of $1.16 for 1GB of data. Among the countries which offer under 1gigabyte mobile date under $ 2 are Denmark, Monaco and Italy. Apart from these, there are other 15 countries in Western Europe that provide cheaper data than US and UK.

“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. It will be interesting to see how our position is affected post-Brexit,” said Dan Howdle, the website’s telecom analyst.

According to the study, Poland is the cheapest at USD 1.32 per GB, followed by Romania (USD 1.89) and Slovenia (USD 2.21) in Eastern Europe.

“Some countries have excellent mobile and fixed broadband infrastructure and so providers are able to offer large amounts of data, which brings down the price per gigabyte. Others with less advanced broadband networks are heavily reliant on mobile data and the economy dictates that prices must be low, as that’s what people can afford,” explains Howdle.

“At the more expensive end of the list, we have countries where often the infrastructure isn’t great but also where consumption is very small. People are often buying data packages of just a tens of megabytes at a time, making a gigabyte a relatively large and therefore expensive amount of data to buy,” he said.

Photo Credit: Hindustan Times

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