Your bills in India. As cheap as a as a haircut!

The voice and data rates in India are the most affordable in the world. Have telcos in India cracked some magical formula and can others catch up?

- PRATIMA HARIGUNANI

You must have picked your jaw from the floor in some store in a foreign country at some point in life, after hearing about the shockingly expensive data and calling rates there for the first time. You must have wondered why India is so low on its rates in comparison and whined a little less about call drops when back on your soil.

Well, it's kind of a jolt to many jaws. India keeps hovering around the fifth or third position on the ranks of the cheapest rates for 1 GB of data; the average cost is, often, somewhere between Rs 12-13 for 1 GB of data. The World Mobile Data Pricing Report 2022 put India amongst the top five countries with the cheapest mobile data plans. India (USD 0.17) is tucked comfortably between USD 0.04 for Israel and USD 41.06 for Saint Helena, a British Overseas Territory in the South Atlantic Ocean when we look at an average cost of 1GB of data.

Turns out that Sub-Saharan Africa is the fourth-most expensive region in the world for mobile data generally. The average price of 1GB of mobile data in all four North American countries goes past the global average of USD 2.59, making it the most expensive region overall-as picked in a recent Cable.co.uk report. India, again, was in the 'cheaper' league here at 0.16 USD for 1GB.

So, are we really that lucky? How? And how long will this gap between India and other countries persist? Let's do some hair-splitting.

CRACKING THE 'LOW-COST' MATHS