[NikolaNovak]

Oh yes; in North America the data pricing is far inferior - and in Canada it's particularly atrocious.

It's partially the population distribution; we have a paltry 35mil people in the 2nd geographically largest land area in the world. Now, much of the population is clustered, but still - infrastructure is spread out, expensive, and the cost gets passed down. Plus the competition is sparse and companies like their profit if they can get it.

In short, none of us would historically dream of downloading large stuff through mobile data. My data roaming is permanently off, and I only download through wifi. Some people even have phones with no data plans, or a paltry 50MB. 1GB was considered extra large data plan until recently.

(As a tangent, it's also been a historically painful process just to get started here too; in Europe, I'd land, go to the nearest shop, get a SIM card for $20, and I'm off to the races. In Canada, you need to sign a long term contract with 3 years of obligations, go through a credit check, give ethem all sorts of personal info, and pretty much blood and DNA samples... ;-( )

It's a discrepancy people have been waking up to last couple of years and starting to exert pressure, so it's getting better - but very very very slowly.

[VBprogrammer]

I spent 3 hours of our 3 week trip around Canada trying to work out why the data, and even phone, plans where so bloody expensive. I was sure I was missing something until about the 4th phone shop where someone understood the background of why I thought I should be able to pick up a couple of gigs of data and some phone calls for about £20.

Turns out it would have been a waste of money anyway. Turns out 90% we went with the motorhome you couldn't even get an FM radio signal :)

[skohan]

As an American traveling abroad for the first time was eye-opening. Even in the developing world (heck especially in the developing world) it is easy and inexpensive to get a sim card plus data. North Americans should be in the streets demanding regulation of telecoms.

[espes]

What are you talking about? The United States is one of the only countries in the world where it's possible to walk into a store and walk out with an unlimited prepaid sim, and the only others have a much higher population density.

[skohan]

Which carrier? Maybe this has changed but it was not the case when I was living there 7 years ago.

[jalgos_eminator]

And you get 4g nearly everywhere! It blew my American mind to pieces. I would intentionally check my phone on random gravel roads in the mountains and there was almost always 4g. We even had a hiking guide take a phone call on a mountain pass.

[komali2]

Nothing made me a more "woke" American than my first trip abroad.

I wish there was some way I could share the privilege I had to do so with more people here.

[Scoundreller]

> infrastructure is spread, expensive, and the cost gets passed down.

The overwhelming profitability of Canadian télécoms suggests some other factors are at play.

The initial infrastructure build may be expensive, but it is in other countries too. Canada at least allows telcos to throw up a big ugly tower wherever they please. Try finding one in Paris. The marginal costs of bandwidth are practically zero. Yet we still see vast portions of the population on 1 or 2gb plans.

There’s massive amounts of excess OTA capacity, but enabling it may cause grandma to cancel their home internet, and we can’t be having that.

My beef is how app developers just assume I have massive amounts of data to spare.

The NPR app decided to pre-fetch 500mb over data when I turned it on for a 30 minute car ride while trying to preserve data.

The economist apps just plain fail to background download over wifi.

[ghaff]

Easy with the grandma comments. [BTW, for anyone objecting to this comment, I don't really think generational warfare contributes to the quality of discussion.]

Part of testing really needs to be over bandwidth constrained networks. Just because it seems great on some dev's gigabit connection doesn't mean it actually is great.

[frosted-flakes]

It's not generational warfare, it's recognising that there are a lot of people paying a lot of money for home Internet service when a cellular data plan would be good enough if it was priced fairly. Most of those people are older.

[ghaff]

>It's not generational warfare

It's stereotyping. How would you and others feel if I were to rephrase that to something along the lines of "Almost no one really needs wired Internet except for all those teens and twenty-somethings who do nothing but watch video on their phones 20 hours a day"?

A lot of older people have a heck of a lot more hands-on experience with using computers than those whose experience is mostly limited to smartphones and tablets.

My overall point is that broad brush generalizations about age groups are often not useful.

[reificator]

> How would you and others feel if I were to rephrase that to something along the lines of "Almost no one really needs wired Internet except for all those teens and twenty-somethings who do nothing but watch video on their phones 20 hours a day"?

Entirely neutral emotionally and in agreement.

Demographics who grew up with the internet use it more and for higher bandwidth things. Seems pretty intuitive and non offensive to me.

My grandfather in particular has had home computers since the 70s. There are exceptions. But that doesn't invalidate the point being made. My mother for instance, is slightly ahead of the average for her age technologically. (In some ways at least.). But she's literally done exactly what the post that started this describes. When I moved out and stopped paying the internet bill a few months later, she had no interest in starting her own. Hasn't had anything but mobile since.

[ghaff]

I don't actually disagree with the general premise. I'm fairly certain that older people do not, as a whole, use as much Internet bandwidth as younger people--if only because they don't have the habit of watching YouTube a lot, may very well still have cable TV, etc.

I would just prefer that discussions here avoided casual stereotypes about "grandmas" or, for that matter, Millennials. A comment along the lines of "Many casual Internet users--which includes quite a few older people--don't need wired Internet if they have or could get good mobile service" would be totally unobjectionable.

[dgjrhgi]

Lack of competition and excessive lobbying by cellular companies is major reason behind the high mobile data cost in US. Lobbying by corporations have screwed up people of US in many areas and is no where near being challenged or controlled.

[irrational]

My coworker was just telling me about some of his Canadian relatives. Their is a very fast fiber optic cable that was installed along the road in front of their driveway. Unfortunately their driveway is many miles long (which is apparently very common in the rural part of Canada they live in) and they would have to pay to run a line from the street to their house. So, they make do without.

[Scoundreller]

I would’ve just had them install it at the road and then run my own wireless link. Or if unable, run a line on the poles (probably owned by the landowner). Or even SDSL if they can access a spare telephone line loop.

[spinach]

It's possible to easily get a sim card and make calls - you just need to get a pay as you go one. I have a tablet with apps, and then my phone is a 'dumb phone' which I bought at a 7-11. I didn't have to sign anything, I just bought the phone, the sim card and then some time. And you top up the money every so often.