Numbeo Ranks UK 39th in the World for Cost of Broadband Service

The latest data gathered by Numbeo, which is a crowd-sourced global database that examines the cost of living, has surveyed the cost of fixed broadband ISP provision across 109 countries and found that the United Kingdom ranked as the 39th most expensive country, with an average monthly cost of £30.87.

The most expensive country was found to be Ethiopia (£315.83), while the cheapest came out as the Ukraine (£4.49). However, when only looking across the whole of Europe, the UK fairs better and ranks a more respectable 9th out of 40 countries – the most expensive being Iceland (£51.11) and the cheapest again being the Ukraine.

Crucially, this study only gathered data from fixed broadband packages that offered unlimited usage and download speeds of 60Mbps or more, which is likely to skew against countries that have older and slower networks (i.e. slower and cheaper plans weren’t factored).

The next major consideration is that this research cannot easily reflect the other differences between packages and countries, such as any value-added extras (static IP addresses, different router quality, anti-virus controls, unlimited vs capped data allowances etc.) and doesn’t appear to factor the impact of 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 service in, for example, the Ukraine, but that’s not strictly a fair comparison vs what the local workforce can afford and the cost to build the network between countries etc.