Internet and phone plans

Okay, shall twist the internet pricing knife a abit?

I used to love the mobile data plans they offered here. They were something like 70 cents per month, and any data cost around 1€ per MB or so (can't remember exactly). Those were perfect for most services that used very little data - think like reporting, alarm systems and so on. I don't think I ever went past 1€ a month with those plans.

Unfortunately those plans no longer exist. They were replaced with fixed cost plans (I would've opted out if it were possible); now it's about 3€ per month, with unlimited data throttled to 256kbps max. Not too bad, but still almost four (or three, depending the reference value) times what it used to be.

Okay, how something faster then? My operator, Elisa, has this pretty nice 3G module/WLAN adapter that costs me about 15€ a month. Unlimited (yes, really unlimited) data, at max 3G speeds (apparently maxing out at around 21Mbps). And it works perfectly at my cottage, in middle of friggin' nowhere, allowing me to stream TV shows and whatnot, to the tune of about 15GB a weekend (or so the module says).

They also are running series of ads at the moment that are making fun of some American cliches and mobile pricing policies. Youtube link to said ads. I have to admit, they are pretty fun.

Home internet? Well, it isn't fiber, unfortunately, but DSL. At the moment it rates about 14Mbps down and 0.7Mbps up. Enough for my needs, really, and is of course unlimited. I have no idea how much data I actually use monthly but I'm sure it's a lot, well past 100GB. Re-install a few games? Damn, that's easily 20 or 30 or even 40GB a pop these days... And it comes with TIVO-like service too, where I can store about 4TB of TV (albeit it's on their servers, but I don't really mind - TV shows aren't that important to me). Total cost: about 40€ a  month.

My personal phone then. Well, let's just say that its data is unlimited too, and their minimum invoice-able amount is 10€. So I pay my just-over 10€ bill every three to four months. And it works literally anywhere, no matter how remote and middle of nowhere in Finland I am. Not necessarily at 3G speeds, mind you, but it's been long time since I've experienced actual "no service" notification.

Before anyone can yell about how Finland is smaller than, say, US: It's not land area that you should look at, it's population density. And there Finland and US are fairly close. And yet US manages to offer so much worse service than our operators here...

Okay, I'll just stop here. But hopefully someone out there learns that networks can actually work better and starts asking the right questions...