Minister blames expensive mobile data on Czech consumers

Czechs are by far not the richest European nation, but they're forced to pay exorbitant prices for mobile data in comparison to other countries. Novinky.cz writes that Czech consumers pay $6.50 for a single gigabyte of data, whereas in Spain and the Netherlands, they pay just over $5. But even this is expensive compared to Great Britain, Finland, Sweden and Austria where customers pay $1 or less. Even worse, while unlimited data is available for less tha €30 in ten European countries, Czechs have to pay €26 in order to download just 3 gigabytes of data. When confronted with such figures, finance minister Marta Novaková made the remarkable statement that it's the Czechs own fault, because they don't use enough data. If they did, she argued, the wireless operators would be able to charge less, but for the time being they have to cover the costs of their investments into the development of their networks.