Point Topic's latest study claims that consumers around the world are now getting a better deal on standalone broadband, with both improvements to service speed and lower pricing helping to steady an otherwise slow market.

DSL (ADSL, SDSL etc.) based broadband services have seen the largest fall in average price for a subscription, down from $66.75 (£41.73) in Q108 to $53.32 (£33.33) in Q3 (20% drop). For comparison the average cable subscription was down by just over 12% and FTTx by 6.5%:


Naturally ever increasing broadband speeds have also played a significant part, helping to reduce the price per megabit cost right across the board. Interestingly fibre optic technologies come out as being four times cheaper than cable and ten times cheaper than DSL in Q308:


The research suggests that fibre operators now have little reason to change their speed or pricing levels, although it has to be said that most of the world’s major rollouts of fibre are state funded. Future services in the UK will not be and as a result the average pricing may go up if others follow suit.