World Residential Broadband Tariffs Increase in Q2 2013 But UK Falls

Point Topic has today published their latest (Q2 2013) summary of global residential broadband prices across 90 countries and thousands of different tariffs, which found that the cost of high-speed internet access increased slightly during the quarter but the UK became even cheaper.

Overall the average monthly charge for residential broadband services was £50 ($74.60) during Q2, which is up slightly from $73.29 in Q1. But conversely the growing adoption of superfast fibre optic based broadband services has meant that the average global cost per Megabit is now £1.16 ($1.72), which is down from $2 over the same period (note: fibre connections charge just $0.97 per Megabit, while copper / ADSL is the most expensive at $5.03 and cable costs $1.44).

Elsewhere average bandwidth provided by residential broadband services was found to be 43.5Mbps (Megabits per second), which is up sharply from 36.3Mbps (again due to the growth in fibre connections). However it should be said that this reflects headline speeds and not real-world performance.

The following table shows how much broadband costs in each country (cheapest at the bottom and most expensive at the top), which reveals that the UK is among the cheapest with an average monthly price of $45 (down from $46 in Q1).

It should be noted that PPP stands for Purchasing Power Parity, which allows Point Topic to make direct comparisons of tariffs across the world by adjusting the local currency and exchange rate to make the buying power of $1 (PPP) in country A equal to $1 (PPP) in country B.