The Markup has taken a look at cell phone plans around the world – and the results are not great for Americans or Canadians.
Analyzing data from numerous sources, the comparisons show that counties like South Korea and Norway have faster and cheaper access. Link in the show notes for comparison.
While talking about cell phone carriers, T-Mobile has announced their Project 10Million, which offers free wireless hotspots, 100GB per year of data, and access to at-cost laptops and tablets, all focused on underserved student households to bring the internet at no cost.
Why do we care?
I’m following up to last Friday here on two threads. First, I want to acknowledge T-Mobile’s generosity here. From reporting in the summer, about 16.9 million US students lack home internet access, and 3.6 million households lack a computer, impacting 7.3 million students. We have a long way to go. It shouldn’t take giveaways to fix this problem.
Second, let’s look at what we’re getting here – the US is paying more and getting less for service. Service providers care because to build cloud enabled systems, you need the core infrastructure to build upon, and for all the promises of the technology, Americans are not getting that.
Yet we pay more. Ask the hard question of “why”.
Source: The Markup
Source: T-Mobile
Source: Education Dive