Getty Europe’s great data divide Not all countries are created equal when it comes to mobile data usage in the European Union.

A mere €35 highlights the digital divide between mobile phone consumers in Scandinavia and the Baltic countries and the rest of the European Union.

Finnish telecoms consultancy Rewheel crunched the numbers on how much 4G data a customer could get a month for €35 on a mobile phone plan with at least 1,000 minutes of talk time and unlimited text messages.

At No. 1 is Finland, where consumers get 50 gigabytes of data a month. Tech-savvy Estonia came in second with 40 gigabytes. There was a five-way tie for third: France, Denmark, Latvia, Sweden and the UK offer 20 gigabytes.

Rewheel didn't find any plans offering data that met its requirements for talk time in Belgium, Greece, Cyprus, Malta and Bulgaria.

Joining them at the bottom end of the scale was Germany, where customers pay €35 for a single gigabyte. Upping spending to €60 still only buys five gigabytes there.

Why do consumers in Germany get so much less mobile data than elsewhere in the EU?

"The demand for mobile Internet in Germany is much lower, which means that the data volume being used lies clearly behind other EU countries," said Jürgen Grützner, chair of VATM, a German phone association.

"In Scandinavia [the expansion of mobile networks] has been subsidized. In Germany we have no subsidies, which means that the mobile operators need to pay the network expansion by themselves, consequently reflecting in higher prices for the customers," he added.

Germany was one of first countries to sell the 4G spectrum, so they have the network. But that spectrum is not used, it is just sitting there — Pal Zarandy

Rewheel's data reveals that, on average, Germans used 410 megabytes per month last year (up from just 280 megabytes per month the year before). The Finns, by comparison, gobbled up 5.1 gigabytes versus 2.89 gigabytes.

"Germany was one of first countries to sell the 4G spectrum, so they have the network. But that spectrum is not used, it is just sitting there," said Pal Zarandy, a Rewheel senior partner.

The reason the spectrum isn't being utilized, he explained, is because telecoms operators in Germany allow customers to use their own video-streaming services and affiliated apps without counting that data against monthly limits. The practice is known as zero rating.

At the same time, the high cost deters many consumers from using data-thirsty rival services.

"If you have a lot of data you don't care about zero rating," Zarandy said. "But if you have half a gigabyte or even two gigabytes you can't stream video. You hit your monthly cap in half an hour. Zero rating in those countries makes a huge difference."

Additional reporting by Hans Von Der Burchard.