Tableau Software has created an interactive table/graph that examines data rates for the iPad, carrier-by-carrier. The results are interesting. As you might expect, data rates from AT&T in the US are near the top of the list, but those unlucky souls in France have to pay twice what AT&T users do. Residents of Singapore may not be allowed to chew gum, but they can pay as little as $.51 per Gigabyte for wireless data.
…on whether you just take out a data plan or bundle it with other stuff. For Australia those charges are “from” amounts, you get it at that rate if you take out one of their high end accounts where you’re buying lots of data up front. If you’re usage is light and you also need a fixed broadband service for home or the office there are some carriers offering free 3G SIMs with 1Gb or 2Gb per month as part of their DSL plans.
You can chew gum in Singapore. You just have to show an ID and not be a minor to buy it.
I am pretty sure that the chewing gum you are talking about is with nicotine (for weaning off smoking).
What is the matter with non-Singaporeans and chewing gum? It may sound outrageous to outsiders, but Singaporeans have become used to not having chewing gum, and it is not like we won’t ever get to chew — Singaporeans go on overseas holidays frequently and will usually satisfy their curiosities then.
EDIT: Back on topic, it is very cheap and easy to provide any service in Singapore due to its minuscule size. Hence it is not surprising, this result.
Edited 2010-08-02 06:09 UTC
I just got myself a data plan on my phone, N900, for 4.95€ a month. It’s 384kbit/s which translates to 46.875kilobytes/s, and it has no upload or download limits. Plans like these are the norm here, I am not aware of a single consumer-oriented plan which has a varying monthly fee based on the amount of data transferred.
As such in theory I’d be able to download 2812.5kilobytes/minute (2.74658203125megabytes/min), 164.794921875megabytes/hour, 3955.078125megabytes/day and 118652.34375megabytes/month (~116gigabytes/month). That’d be 4.95€ / 116Gb = 0,0426724137931034€/Gb.
Google says that “0.0426 Euros = 0.0557208 U.S. dollars” so we’re sitting there with Singapore assuming we are using the full bandwidth all the time. Of course regular consumer usage patterns are much more random, with peaks of activity and lots of idle time, so the actual cost is something else and I don’t have the means to measure it. Nevertheless, they seem to also talking about the minimum cost of dollars per gigabyte so my calculation should be valid in this context.
Damn I’m glad to live here.
EDIT: Thought to add that there are actually even cheaper plans, like f.ex. 15Mbit/s for 13.90€/month, with no upload or download limits. Calculate yourselves if you wish to know what that’d cost per gigabyte
Edited 2010-08-02 10:04 UTC