Study Ranks UK 61st Cheapest in the World for Broadband Internet

A new study from research group M-Lab and Cable.co.uk has examined ISPs and 3,303 packages from 195 countries across the world to produce a comparison of fixed line broadband prices, which reveals that the average monthly cost of internet access is cheapest in the Ukraine ($5 USD), while the UK ranks only 61st ($39.58).

However it’s important to reflect that the core ranking of this study doesn’t tell the whole story and the research wisely reflects this. For example, Iran is ranked as the 3rd cheapest ($8.20) but it’s also a market that is dominated by older style slow copper ADSL lines and if the table were re-ordered by “Cost per Megabit of Download Speed” then they would drop all the way down to 90th position.

Similarly the United Kingdom may look a little poor in 61st place and granted we could be doing a lot better, but our global ranking is still up from 65th last year and if the table were re-ordered to look at ‘cost per megabit‘ then we’d rise to 54th position. On top of that the UK is also the 5th cheapest of 29 countries in Western Europe, topped by only Italy, France, Germany and Monaco.

On the other hand if we rank the states of Western Europe by ‘cost per megabit‘ then the UK really suffers and is ranked 21st out of the 29. One of the reasons for this is due to our notoriously weak position in “ultrafast broadband” (100Mbps+) coverage, particularly with respect to “full fibre” (FTTP) networks (see here for context). But there’s a catch here too because the UK has a stronger level of “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) availability than most of Western Europe, thanks to wide coverage of FTTC (VDSL2) services.

Now spare a thought for the poor folk living in the most expensive country of the world – Mauritania – where the average monthly cost of a broadband package is an eye watering $768.16, while the ‘cost per megabit‘ shows little improvement on $127.15. Ouch!

Dan Howdle, Cable’s Consumer Telecoms Analyst, said:

“Despite many countries providing faster access year-on-year, and the price of broadband fluctuating – sometimes wildly – from country to country, on average the price of broadband worldwide remains largely unchanged, falling just 1.64% since the fourth quarter of 2017.

In our worldwide broadband speed comparison, released earlier this year, similar disparities were apparent to those seen here. The countries with slow, patchy broadband infrastructure that connects only a fraction of the population also tend to be the most expensive. Likewise, those with exceptional, often full-fibre infrastructure supplying the majority of the population tend to be the cheapest, if not in absolute terms, on a cost-per-megabit basis.

The United States is a point of particular interest in the data. As arguably the world’s most technologically advanced Western nation, its broadband is shockingly expensive compared to much of the world. In fact, it costs seven times as much to get a broadband deal in the United States as it does to get one in Russia, and over 64% more than it does in China.

As for the UK, with a healthy, open marketplace offering very cheap broadband deals to everyone, and so-called ‘superfast’ speeds available to around 96% of homes, the UK is doing rather well globally, sitting in the top third of cheapest countries, and coming in a respectable fifth cheapest of the 29 countries in Western Europe.”

We’ve pasted a shortened summary of the results below and it’s worth noting that the study excludes 4G mobile, wireless and satellite services in order to focus on fixed line connectivity. But rather bizarrely they’ve also decided that “dial-up” connections should be included under the “broadband” title, even though they’re narrowband in nature. We would have preferred a stronger definition of “broadband” to be used.

Research like this also cannot easily reflect the often complex differences between packages, such as any value-added extras (static IP addresses, different router quality, anti-virus controls etc.). Doing a true apples-to-apples comparison would be nightmarishly difficult, but it would be interesting to see what happens to the results if each country were weighted to reflect cost using Purchasing Power Parity (PPP).