Study of Fixed Broadband Tariffs Across Europe Sees UK Rank 12th
A new Point Topic study of all major standalone and bundled fixed broadband operators and their tariffs across the EU, UK, Norway, Iceland and Switzerland – reflecting a total of 31 countries and 200 operators – has revealed that the United Kingdom ranked a respectable 12th in the table (median average tariffs) and 4th for entry level package tariffs.
The report, which also compared the average subscription charges and corresponding bandwidths for different broadband technologies across Europe, presents the latest tariff benchmarks to the end of March 2025 and also compared them to the same sort of data gathered in December 2024. All prices are quoted in US dollars at PPP (purchasing power parity) rates.
The application of PPP is important because there can be huge differences between countries in terms of things like taxation, size of the state and monthly salaries (i.e. $1 will go many times further in some countries than others). But using PPP allows you to weight against this for a hopefully more balanced comparison.
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Overall, older copper-based residential broadband tariffs were found to still be the cheapest ($51 PPP or £41), but on the flip side they also offered the lowest average download speed of 22Mbps, which is up from the previous quarter’s 16Mbps. This helps to underline the importance of “value” to what you pay, which doesn’t really come across all that much in the ranking table itself.
The average monthly tariffs for cable-based (hybrid fibre coax) technologies increased by 2.7% to $65 PPP (£48) up from $63 PPP (£47) at the end of 2024. Fibre-based tariffs (FTTP/B) remained the most expensive of the technology accesses, yet its cost was relatively static at $69 PPP (£51) and you will of course get significantly faster speeds via full fibre lines.
Average cable-based tariff speeds dropped by nearly 11% to reach 544Mbps, although it’s worth noting that many of those providers (e.g. Virgin Media) are in the process of upgrading to faster full fibre networks. Speaking of which, full fibre-based tariffs offered the highest average download speed at 725Mbps, up ever so slightly from 724Mbps in the previous quarter.
However, as hinted above with that mention of “value“, it’s incredibly difficult to produce a true apples-to-apples price comparison between countries and packages because of how much each package can vary in terms of its various service features (e.g. the quality of router bundled, setup/install charges, service speeds, static or dynamic IP addresses, special offers/discounts etc.).
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Suffice to say that a table like this can’t reflect everything, although Romania is clearly the country to go for the cheapest fixed broadband tariffs, while Norway and Iceland are currently competing to be the most expensive countries.
ISPreview took a quick look at one ISP in Romania called Digi, which appears to be offering a gigabit (1Gbps) package for a standard price of 80 LEI (excluding discounts), which works out as just £13.25 per month. By comparison, the large Norwegian ISP Altibox appears to be offering the same broadband speed for the equivalent of around £100 per month.
Similar gigabit packages in the UK tend to hover around the £40-£50 mark, albeit with a few networks being a lot cheaper and some being a lot more expensive.
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Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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6Gb with Orange Poland, for just £14.50.
OMG …
A tariff is a tax. These are not tariffs, they are the price of the services
In British English it can also mean “a list of the fixed charges made by a business, especially for use of gas, electricity, or a mobile phone” etc.
Oh dear…
It’s a screwing whatever definition you use.
@DaveZ
How so? You think internet should be free? How about food and rent and power?
Any suggestions of how the people who work to provide these services get paid?
My friend Mr T of USA has a better understanding of the meaning of Tariff “we do not pay”
Digi did well in Hungary in the past, too. (Now the same company gobbled up Digi who also owns what used to be Vodafone Hungary which previously bought UPC Hungary from Liberty Global. Thanks to these “mergers” the prices are now significantly higher.)
Ahh, corporate enshitification, and of course at the expense of the customers…
It would be useful to have median values for other developed and near developed countries included as a benchmark to align this ranking to wider world.
Extra points for relating all charges to purchasing power parity (the less formal “big Mac” index may be a good choice for consumer facing costs; available from economist magazine website)
I know this isn’t about Russia, but would be interesting to know what is happening there with the internet.
It’s being censored.
Many more people are arrested online in the UK than in Russia. They are probably wondering the same about the UK
Russia has no firewall like China. You can freely ask them in a lot of online games. They love World of Tanks
Getting too off-topic here.
It does actually John. Given you didn’t seem aware of the British English use of the word ‘tariff’ which is odd for someone who allegedly lives in London this may well be wasted but a swift search for TSPU relating to Russia might be enlightening. I’m assuming you aren’t subject to the restrictions it provides so will be able to read the link. It’s apparently decentralised but is most definitely a ‘firewall’ under state control censoring the Internet funded by central government and blocking per their policy.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3517745.3561461
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-spend-over-half-billion-dollars-bolster-internet-censorship-system-2024-09-10/
You’re welcome. Sorry to detract from your comments with, well, facts.
Of course, the problem with any survey like this is that no context is ever given. It’s alright saying Norway is more expensive but what’s the average income in Norway relative to this country?
Mark, Digi’s standard price for 1gbps is 40 lei. The discount you mentioned takes it to 20 lei for a few months.