Price comparisons – India, US and NZ
One of the many interesting discussions that Phil and I had during my last US trip was the prices of a lot of stuff in New Zealand, US and India. He points in one of his post about the cell-phone rates in NZ which is US $0.30 per minute on the same network and US $1 per minute on a different network. Now, this is a loot – totally insane! I don’t think that I paid prices like this even when I had my first cell phone in India 4 years back and also paid much lower prices while I used to be in the US.
Next thing I did was to compare the gas (Petrol) prices at the 3 locations. All the figures are in USD (currency) and gallons (quantity) assuming the following:
1 Gallon = 3.785 liters
1 NZD = 0.70 USD
1 USD = 43.00 INR
1 Gallon Gas price in:
United States: 2.9 USD (highest octane value, and this is one of the most expensive they have had)
New Zealand: 4.05 USD
India: 3.7 USD
I know that there are a lot of things way cheaper in New Zealand as compared to India – things which are still considered luxury in India. But I am really surprised looking at the cell-phone and the gas prices.
That’s a shocker, I knew gas prices were out of control in NZ – but this confirms it. Too much tax in NZ, that’s our problem. Well we get a chance to fix that in the upcoming elections, hopefully…
Here’s the actual pricing plan I’m on – “motormouth prepay”:
http://www.vodafone.co.nz/pricing_plans/motormouth_plans.jsp?item=motormouth
If I was on the contract plan, it would be a bit cheaper – $40 (US$28) for 200 minutes, so US$0.14 per minute (if I used them all). I spend less than $40 monthly anyway, though, so it wouldn’t be a saving for me.
Here are all their other plans:
http://www.vodafone.co.nz/pricing_plans/personal.jsp?item=personal
I think the “motormouth on account” plan is the cheapest overall, except that it only gives you cheap calls to other Vodafone mobiles – it’s the “network lock in” plan
It looks like the other main NZ mobile provider’s charges are exactly the same:
https://www.telecom.co.nz/content/0,3900,201309-201933,00.html
Sometimes i feel its v unfair that people in india have to pay such high prices for cars and petrol. First the government does not provide good road and public transportation,,then above it all, taxes high these on cars and petrol. Y??
Man what country are you living in man?
Man in india the maximum it costs to call international from mobile is Rs6(Equals NZ 20 Cents) per min nowadays, In NZ it is 89 cents (Equals Rs. 25)
Everything is so Damn expensive in NZ