I'm also using Beautiful Widgets. I use the stock "Power Control" widget for most of those, but I also have some Multicon icons loaded with Beautiful Widgets. The Beautiful Widgets Home and Smaller Home is what I got it for.
I read an article 2 or 3 months ago that addresses how Americans pay through the nose for data. Apparently, data over here is exponentially more expensive than in Europe or South America. Wonder why. iirc, the comparison was made with only the private sector, though it's been a while and I don't remember specifics.
Well, here's an article from Wired with pretty charts that are pretty alarming if you are in the US. (
American iPad Users Pay Among the Highest for Data Worldwide) But when you get to the details of how it was all put together it paints a little different picture. The company who did the charts, Tableau Software out of Seattle, have their own dog in the fight, and more than anything this is a PR piece for an agenda, one of trying to get US carriers to lower the price of data plans. Good luck with that.
Since that article came out people all over the world have offered up in countless Web forums their two cents on what they are paying locally, and it's a very different picture indeed. The chart compares in some cases similar plans, but in most cases they are dissimilar plans. The fact is that most people worldwide use less than 2GB per month. If you compare similar plans then the average monthly fee in the US is similar to if not cheaper than data plans in other countries, with Australia’s “cheaper” plan being $89-$134, Canada’s $33, and Ireland’s $26, for example, all with higher initial purchase prices. Most plans under $25 cost more per gigabyte than the $25 US plan.
I have relatives in Germany, all of whom have data plans. The chart says O2 in Germany is $1.09 per GB, yet Germany has these three plans available: 200mb for 10 euro. 15 euro for 1 gig. And 25 euro for 5 gig. That's
plus the 19% VAT they have over there, too. When it's converted and all is said and done, the 5GB plan in Germany isn't $1.09 per GB, but is $12.63, just about what we pay here.
The cost of 2GB with no commitment in the US is $25, or $12.50 a GB, which is where that number came from. Again, the chart is supposed to be comparing iPad plans, but when you start looking at th individual plans for data you can see just a snotload of problems.
In Japan, it's $50 per GB for a no-commit plan, and the cheapest plan with a commitment ends up being more than $8 per GB. Not exactly the rage-inducing $1.12 per GB the chart is indicating.
Even here, equivalent Broadband Data for Verizon at $59.99 per month is $11.99 per GB, and that's an expensive data plan. For a Droid with a $30 unlimited plan, assuming a maximum of 30GB like they did for the charts, that's a buck a GB. Apples to oranges somewhat, since the chart is for iPad plans, and if you got anywhere near 30GB on an unlimited data plan Verizon would be all over it, but the equivalent data plans around the world aren't that far off. Some are cheaper, but not all that many, and the five most expensive data plans are in Europe.
Another large factor is geography and where the people are. In Europe, because the countries are much smaller, the infrastructure demands are far less. Also, there are many dense cities in Europe where free WiFi is ubiquitous, so the demand for wireless data, and thus the infrastructure required to supply it, is diminished greatly. In some cases that means cheaper data, but in the case of France where socialism runs rampant and free markets do not exist, they have the highest there is.
So it's not as bad as many people make it out to be or think it is. Still, we pay about twice what we should for mobile broadband, but so do most everyone else.
