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.

Comments

Ireland

[skaap]

Broadband is pretty new to Ireland, and is naturally quite expensive, although, where I live, in a small town, a local person has provided a cable internet service, until recently I was paying around 60euro per month for a service varying between 256k and 512k.
It's now up to 70euro a month, but my provider upgraded my link to nearly 3mbit/s.

I think i'm getting my moneys worth now.

China prices

[ThesQuid]

I pay $9/month for DSL access that sometimes gets up to 1.5Mb/sec. Have to put up with the Great Firewall of China though. Still last February, most of the sites they used to block were suddenly accessable.

Re:Paying More For Choices

[Forge]

In Jamaica DSL starts at US$ 93 for 128Kbps up 256Kbps down.

As long as you have anything resembling a monopoly on any critical aspect the prices will remain at such insane levels. I.e. All the undersea cables terminate in one place and that company also owns the only landline network. In fact they only started having competition in Cellular 2 years ago

Re:Location, Location, Location

[los furtive]

Uhm, that may be a great idea in theory, but at leaset in Canada major cities are much more separated than those in the US, and yet DSL Cable are both close to 50% cheaper. We also only have 1/10th the population, so our population density is waaay lower than the US. Oh, and did I mention that the Canadian dollar has less than 4/5 the purchasing power of the US dollar? Finally, for those who might argue otherwise, broadband isn't state subsidised in Canada.

With the above taken into consideration, NOW try to explain why broadband is so damn expensive in the US?

Re:Paying More For Choices

[Vaystrem]

I would like to put forward the example of Saskatchewan Canada, where I reside.

Population less of just a hair over a 1 million, square area of 651,900km. With our 2 biggest cities just over 200k population. Why does this matter?

The population density of Saskatchewan, and much of rural Canada, is very low and from what I can see it is very similar in density to rural American States.

Our telco (Sasktel) has committed to every town, with greater than 40 people in this province having access to ADSL. Several of the enlightened employees I have spoken too have commented on the deployment as well.

In addition our Telco (Sasktel - a government owned corporation 'crown corporation') also distributes Digital television via DSL - so these communities also will in the near term get access to this service as well.

But of course we must be paying an absolute fortune for this wonderful widely distributed service - right? Because we "pay for choice (even if it doesn't exist in your area)"

1.54 down / 384 up = $45.99 Canadian a month.
Which (with our current great exchange rate) would work out to about $36 American. Where our dollar traditionally resides it would work out to right around $30 American.

So even in a rural province - we have an extremely high level of access, and we don't pay through the nose for it.

And yes there are competitors so there is a free market in effect (in dense population areas) but for rural communities it takes a benevolent (i use that term with some sarcasm) organization to push access upward and outward.