US consumers pay more compared to Europe for mobile data

Perhaps everything's bigger in America, as the old saw goes, but when it comes to mobile phone calls and data usage, US consumers are certainly paying big, sometimes nearly as 20 times as much as Europeans.

If you live in France, you can pay as little as 20 euros ($21.50) per month for a monthly package featuring 50 gigabytes of data, unlimited domestic and international calls to over 100 countries and unlimited text messages.

In the United States, that much data could cost you $390 per month from one national operator.

While the above comparison may be the extreme, it dovetails with an International Telecommunications Union report last year which found US data to be up to 19.5 times more expensive than in Europe when corrected for purchasing power of consumers.

The result is that while US companies may be the pioneers with online video streaming services like Netflix and Hulu, Americans have been asked to pay much more for what it takes to use them on a smartphone, which is rapidly becoming a popular platform for catching the latest episode of your TV show.