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by vault_ 4567 days ago
It'd be interesting to look at how much of the 20-24 demographic is college students. In the US at least it's pretty normal for parents to pay for their children's phone bills while their in college[1]. Since about half of the 20-24 demographic is likely in college (in the US at least), I'm not too surprised to see that about half of the people in the US have their phone bill payed by their parent.

I'd be interested to see the demographic breakdown as high school, college, or not in school. I think it would offer more insight into a trend.

[1] This is anecdotal. I'm in college currently and most of the people I know are on family plans.
1 comments
Hansi 4567 days ago
I don't get why that should be normal even if in college? I'd guess that 95-100% of my university class mates paid their own bills when I was in that age group in Iceland.

Personally I've been paying my own bill since I got my first mobile at 14 in 1999...

But I do wonder if this does actually include PayAndGo correctly?

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Crito 4567 days ago
In the US, family plans are often more economical so teenagers keep them when they go to college. I believe many people work out deals with their parents so that they pay for part of the bill.

If it were cheaper to get their own plan, most probably would.

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Hansi 4567 days ago
I guess you might be right. I may be too used to the Icelandic mentality where if they'd notice something like that they'd think "Let's just allow for a sub-subscriber plan and charge them an extra 10% for a 'related plan' but with the same rates but different billing. They get there separation of concerns and we get a 10% extra."
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jpwright 4567 days ago
That may have something to do with college (at least public universities) being free in Iceland and outrageously expensive in the United States.
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Hansi 4567 days ago
That's a good point, I didn't go to a public one but even then the fees were easily covered by working full time during summer and part time along side uni: http://en.ru.is/studies/tuition-fees/ (~1500USD).

Unfortunately my MSc in the UK wasn't that cheap like that; ~26K GBP (42 USD) still paid my own mobile bill then.

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