Study Ranks UK 71st Cheapest in the World for Fixed Broadband

A new study from Cable.co.uk has examined 3,095 fixed broadband ISP packages from 206 countries to create a global pricing comparison, which reveals that the UK ranks just 71st cheapest overall with an average monthly cost of $35.71 (£27.45) and we drop to 82nd when ranked by average cost per megabit of speed ($1.07).

The research, which used data gathered between 28th November 2019 and 8th January 2020, appears to highlight a continuing decline in the United Kingdom’s global ranking. For example, back in 2018 the same report placed the UK in 61st ($39.58 USD) position for average monthly package cost and 54th position for cost per megabit ($1.19).

On the flip side the UK still manages to come out as the 6th cheapest out of 29 countries in Western Europe, topped by only Italy, France, Germany, Andorra and Monaco. But once again if we were to order this group by cost per megabit of broadband speed then the UK would rank just 19th out of 29 countries.

The above result largely highlights the fact that most of Europe is now well ahead of the UK in deployments of gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) technology (here), although Virgin Media’s roll-out of 1Gbps DOCSIS 3.1 technology (here) and the rapid growth in full fibre coverage may yet have a positive impact upon our ranking in future updates.

The study also notes that global broadband speeds have accelerated by 20.65% on average between 2018 and 2019, meanwhile the average price of a broadband package has fallen between the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2020 by almost one fifth (19.97%).

The Big Caveats

However it’s important to reflect that the core ranking of this study doesn’t tell the whole story. For example, war torn Syria comes out as the top cheapest with an average monthly package cost of $6.60, but then most of their broadband (where it still works) seems to be via ADSL and the collapse of the Syrian Pound has had a huge impact when converted into USD. On a cost per megabit measure ($3.30), Syria is ranked just 126th overall.

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

The application of PPP is important because there can be huge differences between countries in terms of things like taxation, infrastructure standards, size of the state and monthly salaries. So you might well pay significantly less for a 100Mbps service in, for example, the Ukraine but that’s not strictly a fair apples-to-apples comparison. Now on to the results.