[eggie]

witty_username may have been exaggerating, but it's worth pointing out that this is substantially cheaper than prepaid internet access is available in the US. I pay $10/GB/week, which works out to something like $30/GB as I'm not trying to finish the GB/week allotment. This may be somewhat unusual in the US, and I'm assuming you prepay for a set amount of data, rather than data/time.

Anyway, I came to posit a different question. How much would it cost if it were a nonprofit that provides the internet access? What kind of margins are made on top of the prepaid data plans we're using?

[mkagenius]

If you compare Airtel (Private) vs BSNL[1] (government) one, the pricing is almost same.

In poorer regions Indian government tries to subsidise it as well, and ends up with loses every year (barring 2015), so I guess we can approximate it to a non-profit org?

1. http://bsnl.in/opencms/bsnl/BSNL/services/mobile/3g_prepaid_...

[witty_username]

Sorry, I mean their DC<->internet price. Most of the bandwidth costs are in the last mile connectivity. In any case they are paying for mobile towers; I am just saying that the incremental cost of providing full internet access is not very large. But you are right my figures are wrong.