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Broadband Pricing Across The World?
Freedom_Canadian writes "I was wondering if it would be possible to put up a world map with broadband internet pricing. The prices in Eastern Canada are ridiculous comparing to some states, around $24 US for DSL or cable. I would like to know who is getting screwed, and who are the lucky ones." What are the best and worst prices in your own area? Perhaps someone handy with graphics can collect some good data points from your comments and create such a beast.
Ah, the benefits of a free market. When your access is partially or fully government subsidized, it can be plenty cheaper. We aren't getting screwed necessarily; we are paying for choice (even if it doesn't exist in your area).
For my area, I get DSL for $40 (Verizon or the one Verizon reseller), dial-up for $15, or I can go for my own leased line. At work We could get Business Cable ($150+), dial-up $15, or (the chosen option) a fractional T1 from our telco. It's $300-something for 384k.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
I pay about $35/mo (CDN) for my 1.53mbps/640kbps ADSL in British Columbia with great upstream, low pings, and it's not even PPPoE.. which is just great.
I guess it depends what part of the world you live in, the cable here is great too.. capped at 8mbps/512kbps if you want Shaw, but it's a bit more pricy at around $45/mo unless you get the cable/TV bundle.
Free means no restrictions, ironic the FSF's GPL forces restrictions, isn't it? What's your definition of free?
Telus Basic residential DSL. 150K down, 50K up. $34.95 Canadian per month. (Plus basic phone line, $22 Cdn per month)
Karma: Can only be portioned out by the Cosmos.
In the UK there are basically two options:
NTL (cable)
150kbits; 18GBP/month = 33USD/month
600kbits; 25GBP/month = 46USD/month
1000kbits; 35GBP/month = 64USB/month
BT (ADSL)
500kbits; 23GBP/month = 42USD/month
In all cases upstream is worse than downstream; on NTL it's only 120kbits on the 600kbits option, I'm not sure about the others. With BT you get 250kbits upstream.
BT also supply office connections, you can look up the numbers for those if you're interested ;-)
http://www.broadbandreports.com/ It has prices and speed statistics from people who test their machines.
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Is there a psychological term related to getting your stories rejected on slashdot?
You're not being shafted, in New Zealand our ADSL cost NZ$70 a month, for 10gig of traffic, oh, and thats only 128kbps, or 256kbps cable for the same price, after that its 20cents a meg...
NZ$70 is about 35->40 USD
To be or not to be.-Shakespeare
To do is to be.-Nietzsche
To be is to do.-Sartre
Do be do be do.-Sinatra
Cable internet is available in my area as well. Prices range from 10EUR(12$) for 64/64 to 120EUR(150$) for 4096/1024.
10 Mbit/sec Ethernet through Bredbandsbolaget AB: SEK 320/month (~USD 45)
You're leaving out quite a few options:
For instance, I have Telewest Blueyonder Cable and get 512/128kbs for 25GBP/month.
There's a lot of ADSL companies and if you shop around you can get some quite good deals - I've seen 512kbs from as low as 19GBP/month, and 2Mb/s fo 29GBP/month.
Once you've done the GBP-$ conversion, a lot of these will look quite expensive, but that's quite a recent thing - a result of the dollar's fall in value. For instance, although I am paying the equivalent of $46/month now, back in september it was worth $38. These figures include our 17.5% VAT.
By the way, why the hell won't Slashdot display the symbol for Pounds Sterling? Grr.
Here in Brazil the prices are high. I pay R$120,00 reals (the brazilian currency, equivalent to US$40) for a 256k/256k cable modem service with several ports (http, ftp, telnet, ssh) closed for serving.
The 300k/300k DSL service arround the country are about that price too, and they are pretty restrictive (3gb down / mo.).
Looking at the minimum salary of Brazil (about US$90) you can conclude that this is really a high price: more than 50% of the paycheck that more than 70% of the Brazilians get.
Helsinki DSL
Sonera 1m/512k 61,99e/month
Saunalahti 256k/256k 35e/month
Saunalahti 1m/512k 54e/month (+8e for static IP)
Helsinki SHDSL
Nebula 2m/2m 225e/month
In the northern city of Oulu the local phone company OPOY offers outrageously cheap and fast ~10mbps connections. Ditto student housing all ove r the country.
These are private connections. Increasingly you get broadband as part of your housing, and it can be as low as 10e/month.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
At the moment I'm paying around 4000Yen (37 USD) for my ADSL connection a YahooBB, 26Mbit down - 1 Mbit up, connection. The speed/price is about average in Japan though of course we don't really get anywhere near that in real world speeds.
roll out of the 45Mbit/3Mbit service starts this month for a few hundred yen more.
I don't know what your experience in Japan is, but mine was as a network engineer at an ISP, and the local loop distances are really not significantly different than they are here. Moreover, those local loops have already been in the ground (or on the pole) for a long time; it's not like they have to run a new local loop to your house to install DSL. Finally, if you did have to run new local loops, even if the distance was shorter, I would expect the cost per kilometer to be higher in Japan, offsetting much or all of the distance savings.
:-)
DSL prices in Japan can often be comparable or maybe a little more than what they may be in many areas of the United States, but the big difference is the speed you get in Japan for that price. Take a look at this:
http://www.gol.com/personal/ntt_adsl_e.html
Look at the line on the bottom of the pricing chart. You can get 40 megabit down DSL (Yes, 40!) for about 4000 yen/month. The exchange rate is about 107 yen to the dollar, so that's under 40 bucks, or looked at another way: it's $1 per megabit, how fast would you like to go?
Also, notice that the ISP fee is the same regardless of speed, and the telco fee varies by only 150 yen from the price of 1.5 meg service to the price of 40 meg service. I imagine that not many people in a 40 meg service area will go for the 1.5 meg service
This small price differences reflect the facts that in Japan:
1) The DSL market has actually grown competitive;
2) It doesn't really cost you, as a telco, any more to make the line go faster if it will support it. It doesn't cost you that much more as an ISP either, because even if I have a 40 mpbs down DSL line, when was the last time you saw an FTP server that would feed you at that rate?
Here in LA, I have 2 meg down business cable (no restrictions, global static IP), and I can get near wire speed from an FTP site with a big pipe.
In Japan, I had 100 megabits from my desk to our network core, with only two Cisco switches in between, yet the fastest downloads I ever saw were on the order of 8 mbps, from an FTP site that was both close (only a few hops away) and had massive bandwidth, the biggest pipes in the whole country. I expect high-speed users probably see similar performance, or maybe less, because they aren't plugged right into the network core over 100 megabit ethernet. So what good does 40 megabit DSL do you if no FTP site will serve you at more than 8 - 10 mbps, and there are very few even of those? Unless your provider runs a huge FTP mirror and it has huge bandwidth to the DSL network, you'll never realize anywhere near the potential of that pipe.
In Japan, you can also get 100 megabit fiber to the home for not too much more than I pay for my business cable. Here's a price list:
http://www.gol.com/personal/ntt_b_e.html
But again, what good does 100 megabit service do you if you can't pull at anywhere near that rate?
These highly competitive prices are despite the fact that nearly every aspect of running an ISP (or telco) in Japan is more costly than it is in the United States, and come from the fact that while it took a lot longer to get any kind of competition going in the telco market in Japan than it did here, they have at length done so. Best of all, the competition seems to be actually working as intended, whereas it has mostly failed here in the United States.
The cost of long-haul bandwidth, especially in the US, is insanely cheap. There are thousands upon thousands of miles of unlit fibre strung across the continent, available for purchase at fire-sale prices. Of course, nobody's buying because there is long-haul capacity to spare and then some. The cost to light it (end-point equipment) are fixed based on the endpoints, not on the length (although it is expensive). The cost to run it, while proportional to the length, is nothing compared to the cost of laying it in the first place, or lighting it once laid.
Most of the trouble with WorldCom was that they were lying about their network growth. In response, every other carrier was sinking vast sums of money into their networks, and every Tom, Dick, and Jane with VC and a backhoe was laying new long-haul fibre. At the same time, advances in technology was pushing the amount of data you could push through a strand throught the roof. All existing routes could be (and many were ) upgraded for just the cost of new end equipment--no new fibre necessary.
In the end, it became clear that this capacity wasn't being used. Most of the fibre laid was left unlit, because there were no buyers for the potential capacity. Much of it has been sold at bankruptcy auctions. If you find you need more network capacity from New York to Chicago, say, you have multiple cheap options. You can buy new endpoint equipment, thereby increasing how much you can shove through your existing fibre. You can buy already lit fibre cheap from small-time networks that are going under. You can buy unlit fibre from failed startups, and plug your endpoint equipment into it there. Finally, you can just ask Sprint or MCI their rates, which are insane for short distances, but if you can bring a connection to their point of presence, they'll dump your traffic in whatever city you like, cheap.
The density argument only works when you talk about the density of a city. Given the fibre is already a sunk cost, there is no technological reason for the cost/bandwidth disparity the US is observing.
Here in the Netherlands there is plenty of choice, especially since ADSL has become as widely available as cable. I recently switched from cable to ADSL because it simply was a better deal.
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:)
I used to pay 50 Euro (US$64) for 1.5 Mbps down / 128 Kbps up to Chello (cable provider which belongs to UPC) and never had any problems with them. However, running servers and connection sharing were not allowed and upload speed was lacking (especially when working from home). At the moment I have 8 Mbps down / 1 Mbps up for 65 Euro (US$83) with Demon and I have never been happier. Demon allows one to run their own servers (no support of course) and connect as many computers as you want.
Both providers have no fixed bandwith cap but an Acceptable/Fair Use Policy, although based on what I've read in newsgroups and web forums you're better off with Demon since they seem to allow more traffic. Some people claim to have as much traffic per month as I have in a year, but I digress
Since I share my connection with two friends who also live here I can split the costs, which makes it even better. And being able to download things quickly when you need them, be it new *BSD sources or a Linux iso makes me very happy