Greentext

I may as well call you fixating on the promotional pricing nit a redirection from you being unable to admit you were wrong about what the average cost of cellular and Internet in the US is.

It was an edit, so understandable that you missed it, but I did add to my last comment that fwiw I did agree with you that we should also look at averages.

If we're being crystal clear, you also called it a promotion, their website called it a promotion and made it explicit that they were discounting the Internet plan and that the introductory rate expired.

Let's play a game. Can you tell me what their non-promotional rate for internet is? If it's within the $40-$50 range I provided, you'll owe me a dollar?

So here are my thoughts on averages - the article you linked arrived at its number by looking at the average price of plans offered. IMO that doesn't capture "affordability", because it doesn't make sense that adding Kanye Wests new ISP offering a 5gbps gold-plated modem equipment rental tier for $2k/month should impact "affordability". What would really be helpful is the the average, most affordable internet plans offered around the nation. I couldn't find that, though as a close second I did find surveys suggesting that the average American pays $89(again, there's a difference between average plan offered and average amount paid), which blows my mind.

That got me thinking, what does the average American pay for cell phone service? Most reporting I found covers what the average bill is, which ignores number of lines - a crucial statistic. However, this article refers to a JD power report saying the average cell bill is $144. Hard to contextualize this without knowing how many lines that sum represents.

Earlier, you asked if I think the vast majority of Americans are picking more expensive choices for no reason. I actually do - and I have two pieces of evidence that led me to that conclusion.

1. The average price paid for internet ($89, according to the study I linked) is higher than the average cost of internet plans offered ($60s-70, I think, based on the article you linked). This suggests that the average American is heavy on consumption and makes the choice to go with the more expensive plans even though cheaper plans are offered.
2. This second point is, to me, the most telling data point. In the cell phone service article, we were unsure about how many lines the average of $144 represented. However in the same breath. JD power also said that by switching to an MVNO, the average bill was halved - going down to $77, presumably a study done under the same conditions as their previous, name-brand carrier study. Here we have clear insight. The name-brand carriers and MVNOs have exactly the same availability - MVNOs literally run on the same networks. In theory there's some issues like you might get deprioritized if there's a lot of network traffic, but that rarely happens, and I'm sure most Americans couldn't even tell you what deprioritized means. I'm going to suggest that MVNOs offer basically equivalent service to the brand name carriers. If they do, then why are Americans paying double for the brand-name carriers? I'd suggest it generally falls down to incumbent advantage. People not doing their homework on what carrier to use, or not wanting to make the switch due to potential hassle.

So yeah, I think people do pay more than they could, for no reason. So while the average costs might be high, that is at least partially due to overconsumption or market inefficiencies, and not necessarily due to lack of affordability. This is why when answering someone asking about affordability, it's good to share cheap, nationwide plans in addition to the average costs for said items.