Prepaid mobile Internet is the most expensive in the US

This is really frustrating for temporary visitors (even us Americans that live abroad but visit on occasion.) Here I can pay about $3 for a SIM card and $1&#x2F;day for a &quot;data package&quot;, all prepaid, and most of the world has similar options available.<p>When visiting the US, I&#x27;ve tried using some of the cheaper, less known providers that they sell in Best Buy (H2GO, Boost) and have never actually gotten data to work, just voice. The only thing that has worked for me is T-Mobile, for which I have to fork out $50 for a month, when I just want 4-5 days.

What percentage of subscribers to mobile internet in the USA use pre-paid services compared to contract? And what about the other countries where it&#x27;s cheaper?<p>Most pre-paid providers in the US go through a MVNO (basically a reseller) affiliated with Sprint. Therefore performance in most cases is terrible. I can burn up a Verizon or AT&amp;T-based mobile phone hotspot pretty quickly thanks to the high speed an low data cap (3-5GB).<p>There&#x27;s wifi everywhere, or I think there&#x27;d be a bigger push for this. I might only use 300mb of cellular data a month as long as I don&#x27;t stream or do something like an OS update on mobile.

There must be an issue with the methodology. It is hard to reconcile $85 for 500MB when Virgin Mobile and Straight Talk offer monthly plans for $35-$45&#x2F;month with a lot more than 500MB of data.<p>The mobile data situation for tourists is not good, but this chart and story don&#x27;t accurately represent the US market for mobile data.

&gt;and to the fact that it costs more to build a network than it does in small, densely populated European countries.<p>No. Finland has population density 16&#x2F;km^2, United States has 34.2&#x2F;km^2<p>It&#x27;s not ever correct for urban areas. Population density in Helsinki (urban area) is 1800&#x2F;km^2 spread out American city like LA has urban area density 3200&#x2F;km^2.<p>The number of cell towers is related to number of people using the services. If you have densely populated area you add them more close to each other because ether has bandwidth limits. The cost increases only if the population density is so low that towers are not utilized even when they are as sparsely placed as possible.<p>I could not find prepaid provider in Finland with strict limits for data transfer. For example in Saunalahti mobile prepaid 0.861 EUR&#x2F;MB (maximum cost is 1.9 EUR&#x2F;day, after that data transfer is free). In other words, you get unlimited data transfer for ~$57 per month.