Personally I think mobile is tolerably (but not ideally) competitive. I think the costs are driven by the high costs of spectrum and marketing/customer acquisition. And the product is reasonably high-value, so prices _can_ be high.
A useful comparison is the cost of fixed wireless internet service vs mobile service. The price/GB of the former is usually far lower than the latter despite running on exactly the same infrastructure.
I merely point out that I struggle to believe that the physical infrastructure costs are large components of the cost of service. Unlike power delivery, where the physical distribution infrastructure seems to be the majority share. Or at least it is if my bill breakdown is to be believed.
> A useful comparison is the cost of fixed wireless internet service vs mobile service. The price/GB of the former is usually far lower than the latter despite running on exactly the same infrastructure.
Glad you brought this up, fixed wireless is my career so this is something I've thought about a lot over the last 15 years or so. I would argue that the difference in pricing between fixed wireless and mobile is actually almost entirely driven by the 'fixed' qualifier - it's just much easier and cheaper to deliver Internet service to a fixed point where you can put a high gain antenna (like a rooftop) than it is to deliver to a cell phone in someone's pocket inside a building.
Of course the next question is why don't the mobile operators do home service with a fixed antenna on the rooftop like fixed wireless operators do, but using their massive spectrum and tower footprint advantages? I don't really know the answer to that. There have been a lot of efforts to do this, actually - the earliest one I know of was Sprint putting up these diamond shape antennas on rooftops back in the late 90s / early 00s. I think at least part of it is that it's hard to have high-gain antennas on rooftops coexist with low-gain antennas in cell phone on the same medium, and another part is that it's hard to hire and train and manage folks to do the home installs. I do believe that part of the push to 5G is to enable this type of service, though.
A useful comparison is the cost of fixed wireless internet service vs mobile service. The price/GB of the former is usually far lower than the latter despite running on exactly the same infrastructure.
I merely point out that I struggle to believe that the physical infrastructure costs are large components of the cost of service. Unlike power delivery, where the physical distribution infrastructure seems to be the majority share. Or at least it is if my bill breakdown is to be believed.