At $0.09/GB, India’s data plans cheapest

Chennai: India continues its run as the market with the cheapest mobile data services worldwide. Moreover, India has also lowered the average cost of 1GB of data by about 65% since November 2018, as operators offer large-sized plans.

At Rs 6.7 ($0.09) per gigabyte (GB), the average cost of mobile data in India is cheapest in the world, according to a report by UK-based price comparison firm Cable.co.uk. This is also about 65% cheaper compared to Rs 18.5 ($0.3) per GB, which was the cost of data in India in 2018, according to the study.

Meanwhile, 1GB of data costs an average $8 in the US and $1.4 in the UK. The global average cost of data stood at just over $5 per GB.


The dip in cost is despite the recent hike in tariffs by telecom operators to combat financial stress as the data packages offered by Indian telcos are larger compared to global benchmarks. India, for instance, is offering plans with caps in the hundreds of gigabytes, or even completely unlimited, the study said.

“Generally, providers (in India) are offering larger data packages than they were the time before (when we last measured),” Cable.co.uk consumer telecoms analyst Dan Howdle told TOI.

The most expensive place in the world to buy mobile data is the island of Saint Helena, where the average cost of 1GB is $52.5 — 583 times as much as in India.