{"id":11969,"date":"2010-03-31T17:14:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-31T15:14:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-03-31T17:14:00","modified_gmt":"2010-03-31T15:14:00","slug":"global-mobile-data-costs-compared","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/broadband\/11969-global-mobile-data-costs-compared.html","title":{"rendered":"Global mobile data costs compared"},"content":{"rendered":"

South Africans have become used to the pricing of R2 per megabyte for mobile data (3G\/HSDPA in high-end devices or even GPRS\/EDGE in feature phones). Mobile operators will offer 100 reasons, including “benchmark” studies, why the average rate paid by consumers is lower. The chief argument is that users buy data bundles, where rates are effectively lower than R2\/MB.<\/p>\n

But how does an average rate of R2 per MB compare to some other major mobile internet markets globally?<\/p>\n

Opera’s State of the Mobile Web report<\/a>, which measures usage on mobile browser Opera Mini, suggests that South Africans pay relatively lower rates per megabyte than users in other markets.<\/p>\n

Average monthly data costs in the top 10 countries<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Country<\/strong><\/td>\nCost per MB (local currency)<\/strong><\/td>\nCost per MB (USD)<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
India<\/td>\n5.70 INR<\/td>\n0.12<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Ukraine<\/td>\n1.40 UAH<\/td>\n0.17<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Russia<\/td>\n6.50 RUB<\/td>\n0.22<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
South Africa<\/td>\n2 ZAR<\/td>\n0.27<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Indonesia<\/td>\n4,096 IDR<\/td>\n0.43<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Vietnam<\/td>\n10978 VND<\/td>\n0.61<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Nigeria<\/td>\n154.78 NGN<\/td>\n1.02<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
China<\/td>\n10.24 CNY<\/td>\n1.50<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
United Kingdom<\/td>\n1.02 GBP<\/td>\n1.68<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
United States<\/td>\n2 USD<\/td>\n2.00<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n

Some may argue that because of data bundle rate, even the R2 is too high. Opera Mini users would tend to primarily be ad hoc prepaid data users, so one could argue R2 is a fair reflection of the average market price. Of course, the comparison does not take into account purchasing power parity – it’s a simple currency conversion.<\/p>\n

The average Opera Mini user in South Africa generates 318 page views (impressions) per month and consumes 4MB of data. Opera’s page-view growth for February (year-on-year) was 199.4%, while its unique-user growth is 148.7%.<\/p>\n

The South African market is the sixth-largest worldwide (after Russia, Indonesia, India, China and Ukraine) when measured by Opera Mini usage. Nigeria has caught up rapidly with year-on-year user growth of 1 082% (page views up 638%) and is in seventh place globally.<\/p>\n

Opera says that in February, “people browsing with Opera Mini in the top 10 countries (according to unique users) spent approximately $103.8m, based on their usage and the average cost of browsing in each country. That figure translates to approximately 1.2bn dollars per year. Using $1 per megabyte as a global average, Opera Mini users generate nearly $4bn for operators worldwide each year.”<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Country<\/strong><\/td>\nData\/user<\/strong><\/td>\nData cost<\/strong><\/td>\nExpenditure\/user<\/strong><\/td>\nRevenue\/user\/year<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
United States<\/td>\n6<\/td>\n2<\/td>\n12.20<\/td>\n146.40<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
United Kingdom<\/td>\n5<\/td>\n1.68<\/td>\n8.50<\/td>\n102.00<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Nigeria<\/td>\n5<\/td>\n1.02<\/td>\n5.38<\/td>\n64.56<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
China<\/td>\n2<\/td>\n1.5<\/td>\n3.48<\/td>\n41.76<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Vietnam<\/td>\n5<\/td>\n0.61<\/td>\n2.84<\/td>\n34.08<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Ukraine<\/td>\n13<\/td>\n0.17<\/td>\n2.25<\/td>\n27.00<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Indonesia<\/td>\n5<\/td>\n0.43<\/td>\n2.20<\/td>\n26.40<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Russia<\/td>\n8<\/td>\n0.22<\/td>\n1.79<\/td>\n21.48<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
South Africa<\/td>\n4<\/td>\n0.27<\/td>\n0.96<\/td>\n11.52<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
India<\/td>\n6<\/td>\n0.12<\/td>\n0.73<\/td>\n8.76<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n

Note: These estimates do not take into account pricing for users who have unlimited-use data plans.<\/em><\/p>\n

Top 10 sites in South Africa (unique users, February 2010):<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. facebook.com<\/li>\n
  2. google.com<\/li>\n
  3. mxit.com<\/li>\n
  4. wikipedia.org<\/li>\n
  5. my.opera.com<\/li>\n
  6. zamob.com<\/li>\n
  7. yahoo.com<\/li>\n
  8. getjar.com<\/li>\n
  9. peperonity.com<\/li>\n
  10. twitter.com<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Worldwide mobile data costs<\/strong><\/a> << discussion<\/p>\n

    Moneyweb<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Is R2 per megabyte we pay for mobile data from Vodacom, MTN and Cell C expensive or cheap? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-broadband"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11969"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11969\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}