RE: Hive PPP Index — Life is EXPENSIVE! (an Inquiry by @livinguktaiwan)

Hi @livinguktaiwan, thanks for stopping by!

Yes, I know what a stone is! My late stepfather was English, and I spent three years at boarding school in the UK (5th, L6th and U6th forms) to finish off my lower education. Of course, that was a long time ago (late 1970's) and I know things have changed a lot since then!

As for the phone plan thing, I would speculate there are several reasons. For one, public wifi is not nearly as widespread in the States as in Europe, and a lot of ostensibly *"public" wifi is usually behind some kind of paywall. Many folks end up using their phones to create mobile hotspots so they can work on their laptops during lunch or other times away from their offices. Also, the sheer size of the country and lack of public transportation is often overlooked. Many people spend upwards of 90 minutes in their cars each way every day, and stream music and news on their phones while commuting.

Looking at our monthly data usage (from our Internet bill), we use in the range of 800-1500GB per month, all told.

It used to be a lot less when we had something called the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) which was available to people below a certain income level, but the government subsidy funding for it was lost in April of 2024, and our Internet+phone went from about $77/month to the current $260-ish, as a result.