It's really, really dumb, but video is actually far more bandwidth efficient than the alternative everyone uses, which are multi-MB GIF files. I don't know enough about the file format, but I suspect it would be difficult to download the first frame of a GIF then immediately stop downloading the rest of the file (which would probably be the best of both worlds).
It depends on where you are, I guess. I pay for data on my cell in France but the amount of data I am allowed each month before things start to slow down (100GB, up from 50GB a few months ago) means I never get close to getting throttled by auto-playing videos.
The French data plan even includes 25 GB of roaming which you can use in Germany, IIRC you can choose between Telekom or Vodafone network. Unfortunately, you still have to be in France most of the time, or they will cancel your contract.
Lucky you. I'm in France and I got 50 Mo before starting to pay for my data. Granted, I'm using the old 5€ offering from Orange (called Sosh), because I'm not using a lot of data (no video, very few pictures, some text) and I'm too lazy to change. Also I'm not sure my phone can support another mobile network.
Oh I'm pretty sure my phone support LTE, but I'm saying that the phone might be locked to a provider (Orange) and will reject any SIM not from it. Since the phone is originally from a company which has an exclusive contract with Orange for all mobile hardware and subscriptions, it is not surprising.
20 euros per month with "Free" (that's the name of the company) ISP.
"Free" has his share of problems, notably many people complain that the quality of their connection is strenuous at best, some people don't. It's a bit of gamble with them.
What can't be denied is that in France there was a before-Free and an after-Free. They introduced 20gb for 20E/month when everybody else was at 5gb for 50E/month (not the exact amounts, but it was that ballpark). The result is that the other ISP had to align themselves with Free, and now you have a lot of other similar offers to choose from. Yay Free.
Yes I think France had the same problem we have (and are gonna have again) in The Netherlands.
We used to have a lot of providers, that merged into three big ones (KPN, Vodafone, T-mobile). Despite them not colluding, they basically price-matched each other which meant we had some of the highest prices in Europe.
Then Tele2 came into the market as a new player.
Before Tele2 it wasn't uncommon to pay €20-30 for 2GB of data + 100 texts/minutes. Tele2 started with 25GB (don't know the texts/minutes) for €25, and now it is €25 for unlimited.
Plus there are many MNVOs offering even cheaper prices, and this all combined forces the big three to follow the market.
However, T-mobile is going to buy the Dutch part of Tele2, so now we will have 3 big players again, and it is almost certain prices will rise and innovation will slow. The EU even did research and concluded that for a healthy competitive telecommunications market you need at least 4 providers.
Edit/extra info:
We have a regulatory organisation (ACM) but they are utterly spineless. For example, in The Netherlands KPN used to be a state company, and when they were privatised they basically got the entire copper grid for pennies on the euro. Because of this the ACM later ordered that they must allow other companies to hire those lines. This is all good.
But then there is the cable grid, which was built by private companies and then in the end either owned by UPC or Ziggo (so duopoly on our cable grid). ACM then allowed those two to merge, resulting in Ziggo owning ~50% of the internet market in NL, and being a monopoly provider in a lot of parts in The Netherlands. You guessed it, they have raised prices 3-4x in the last few years, waiting times for calling customer service went from a few minutes to 20+ minutes.. etc.
For clarification: in NL due to lots of mergers (and because the companies are aware that landline internet will go the way of landline calling) most telecommunication companies are both landline and mobile providers. You have Vodafone-Ziggo, KPN and T-mobile.
I pay 12-15 pounds per month here in the UK, for unlimited calls and internet in the world. (I think in Europe I can call any european number for free, but in outside of it I might be limited to free calls to the UK only.)
France was even cheaper with the Free provider. They have 2 euros plans that are useful for most usages. (Internet cap is low but if you use more they charge you cheap fees.)
video also slurps battery which is the thing that gets me way more. it's basically saying to me "the things you wanted to do later today, like you know go home, they're not important". Love it when google takes every opportunity to make sure that GPS is still on.
I pay 5$ for three months unlimited LTE data on my phone here in India. They throttle me if I consume more than 1GB in a day. But that's enough for me to not worry about auto playing videos. But I really hate the audio. My point is that you don't have to be rich to not have to worry about mobile data now.
That's (a) a very good price, and (b) I suspect a lot of money, for people in India. You are not "rich" by western standards, but you may be by Indian ones... and anyway, the bottom line is that you are fortunate enough to afford high-quality, unlimited mobile data. I suspect there are plenty of people in the world who don't have unlimited data (e.g. I don't, not that I mind much).
The second point is that "data" is not everything. There's also the aspect of needlessly consuming the battery; and potentially loading the page slower, just to load the video ad first (especially frustrating when/if you're in an area with bad coverage).
I pay $1.20 a day for 20MB LTE and "unlimited" slow connection. 20MB is not even a writing error, usually the first thing that happens when i read news in the morning is a SMS that i went over my high speed limit.
This is in Switzerland, and i had similar bad offers in the Netherlands and Germany.
My point is, while most countries figured this out meanwhile. Some "wealthy" ones didnt.
I don't know about Switzerland, but in Germany the overnment sold the rights to the 3g frequency spectrum for insane prises (billions of euros). The companies are still trying to squeeze out a maximum ROI while they still (??) have exclusive rights to the spectrum.
15.99€ per month for unlimited LTE in France with 25 GB of roaming in EU+USA included. No binding contract duration, you can cancel with a month's notice.
Only catch is you have to also be subscribed to an ADSL line of the same provider, otherwise the mobile plan costs 19.99€ and gets throttled after 100 GB.