Huge disparities in the cost of cellphone data

A little snippet on the average cost of 1GB of cellphone data in different countries in the Globe and Mail Report on Business (behind a paywall, so no point in posting a link) was enough to make me search for more information, which I found in a report on mobile data pricing in 233 countries.

And there it is in black and white: 1GB of data in Canada costs an average of US$5.94, slightly more than the USA's US$5.62. Seems like a lot, right? It's not the most expensive - that honour goes to St. Helena at US$41.06, but then St. Helena is a tiny speck in the middle of the Atlantic, many miles from anywhere. The Falkland Islands and São Tomé & Principe are not far behind, for similar reasons. Canada is not even the most expensive developed country: in South Korea 1GB of data costs US$12.55; in Switzerland, it's US$7.67; in New Zealand, it's US$6.72. But it's certainly up there.

For comparison, at the other end of the scale, 1GB of data in the UK costs US$0.79; in Australia, it's US$0.57; in China, it's US$0.41; France, US$0.23; India, US$0.17; Italy, US$0.12; and in Israel, US$0.04. That's right, 4c per gigabyte, about 150 times cheaper than in Canada.

So, how does all that work? Shouldn't Canada be more or less on a par with the UK, for example, or at least Australia? And what's with South Korea, a country that you think of as being very tech savvy and wired? Why is Italian data 64 times cheaper than (next door) Swiss data? And how can Israel do it for 4c, and how can Fiji, out in the middle of the Pacific, do it for 15c? 

Unfortunately, neither the article nor the website offers answers to any of these questions. But the raw data is certainly interesting and eye-opening.