Bah! Stop whining about no unlimited 3G. In my view, this is a GOOD thing because Wireless/3G is simply not going to handle the loads that "unlimited" plans would cause, which would cause problems for everyone on the network. Just look at how many BSNL users are reporting really slow speeds on 3G compared to those getting half-decent speeds (2+mbit/s).
With regards to pricing, you have it pretty sweet in India - I would jump for joy at these prices if they were available here - anything 3GB and above is quite good value as compared to some of the data-plans with your
ADSL providers, and even compared to the likes of some wireless providers such as Tikona.
Comparing the cheapest network in NZ, we pay minimum NZ$20/GB (if we're in the right city), otherwise rest of the country that network piggybacks on Vodafone, which takes the price to NZ$6/50MB (so NZ$120/GB).
Currently, NZD$1 = Rs34, so we're looking at:
50MB = Rs204
which puts the price of 1GB = Rs4080 (on this network if you are not in their "broadband zone"). Within their "broadband zone", 1GB = Rs680 (where available)
That said, depending on how you buy, 4GB can be had for "as little as" NZ$72/Rs2500 on Vodafone (using USB stick). Mobile plans are atrocious - a plan with 1GB runs at about Rs8500 per month, although they're starting to offer some deals on data now - seems to have come about since I called them out on their pricing in the NZ media about a month ago, but I can't take credit for that.
My point is... we've had nationwide 3G in NZ on both major networks (Telecom NZ and Vodafone) for over 5 years already and we're still getting milked dry! If consumers here could get 21GB of data - whether on 3G or on landline - for Rs2100 (NZ$62) we would be absolutely delighted.
---------- Post added at 03:44 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:38 PM ----------
And to make things worse - the wholesale prices are about the same as India (potentially even a little cheaper) and the cost of the spectrum per subscriber was about half compared to India.
The main difference between here and India is our mobile termination rates - but that applies only to voice, not to data.
I know how much Vodafone NZ pays per GB, yet they still charge these outrageous fees for delivery - it's more expensive to get data on wireless (3G or otherwise) than wired, but even that's pretty outrageous (largest ISP here has 10GB plan for something like NZ$60/Rs2000 per month and after that amount, speed drops to 64k, which renders it unusable!!)
It may sound ridiculous, but if I don't manage to do it myself, I'd like to see Airtel/Reliance/
Tata come to NZ and significantly undercut the competition.