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

Paying More For Choices

[Oculus Habent]

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.

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:Paying More For Choices

[hummer357]

Well,

over here in Belgium, I don't think that we can complain:

dsl costs 40 euro's, and is 3Mbit down, 128k up
cable is slightly cheaper, but is 10Mbit down, 128k up.

currently, we're at over 1.2 million broadband lines, of which there's about 800.000 dsl. and that's on a population of 10 million.
there are more dsl lines because of less installation hassles: cable requires new equipment in the house (with scary drilling and such), for dsl, all you have to do is place some filters on the phone sockets.

yes. we're number 3 in the world ;-)
(for penetration and density of installed lines, compared to the population)

and it gets even better!

sometime later this year, we're getting lines which will probably be 15Mbit downstream/5Mbit upstream, but only slightly more expensive than standard dsl or cable, and with optional video-on-demand, dvb and other nice stuff.

bye,

h357

Re:Paying More For Choices

[Aphexian]

your price will not go down.

Don't you mean your princesses will not go down?

Re:Paying More For Choices

[Guy Harris]

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).

So in what locales do people have the government-subsidized, no choice broadband to which you're referring? (Please supply references to back up any assertions that broadband in those locales is subsidized.)

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.

Re:Paying More For Choices

[rickbrodie]

I can bearly afford DSL on my geak's salary

This spelling thing on slashdot is getting beyond a joke. Now we can't even spell geek for god's sake.

Bonus points for correct use of apostrophe though.

*Jaw drops at ceaseless wonders*

Re:Paying More For Choices

[cdltbz]

>over here in Belgium, I don't think that we can
>complain:

> dsl costs 40 euro's, and is 3Mbit down, 128k up

We can't complain, but it's now even cheaper than that : http://www.adsl2fit.be/ now offers 8Mbit down/512Kbit up for 60 euros a month, or 4 Mbit down/512kbit up for 35 euros a month.

(1 euro approximatelly equals 1 US dollar)

DC Area

[npistentis]

We pay 45 for a cable modem, dsl is 35... which i find completely absurd.

ADSL is cheap in Western Canada..

[PFAK]

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.

Location, Location, Location

[jonman_d]

Don't forget, location matters. Everyone always talks about how cheap (compared to the United States) broadband is in Japan, for example. Well, of course it is! In Japan, everything is closer together, meaning less line required to get broadband into the home, meaning less costs for the company, meaning lower prices.

The same goes from state-to-state, and area-to-area. Areas with higher population density will generally have less expessive broadband than areas where the population is spread out.

Re:Location, Location, Location

[jonman_d]

The thing is, in the United States, even if you have someone where like New York City, which is very densely populated, you still have to lay pipe connecting these big cities across the country. If you've ever looked at a map of the major United States backbones, you'll see how insanely long these pipes need to be - they have to travel for hundreds of miles, and much of the time they're going through sparcely populated land, where no profit can be made.

In Japan, South Korea, et. al, there aren't as many long-and-profitless pipes.

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:Location, Location, Location

[ergo98]

The Canadian government subsidizes broadband, making it less expensive

The Canadian government has initiatives to bring broadband out to rural areas (i.e. way up North). They don't subsidize broadband for the vast majority of Canadians (who are those living in fairly urban settings). Cogeco isn't getting a cheque from the government for my broadband.

Canadian citizens have to pay taxes to support their socialist government

Right...socialist. And of course where you live every road is a pay road, every service is a user-pay (fire call -- pay up. Need police services? Better have your chequebook!), and the government is minimalist -- anything else is socialist.

Re:Location, Location, Location

[Dixie_Flatline]

Actually, a minor nitpick: the buying power of the Canadian dollar is actually HIGHER in many cases than that of the US dollar.

"What?" I hear you say. The thing is this: many things aren't sold by value, they're sold by pricepoint. That is, they're sold by how much the seller thinks they can convince people to pay. People like certain numbers for whatever reason, and don't like others. However, these pricepoints are just about the same in the US and Canada. I've seen CDs in the states that cost the same as in Canada, but in US dollars. Same with DVDs, and some commodity electronics. Often, the Canadian price seems higher, but works out to about the same thing.

The Canadian dollar has massive purchasing power, as long as you stay in Canada.

Re:Location, Location, Location

[3NO]

That's true of very remote places, but I'm living in a town of 70k about an hour's drive from Toronto. (Guelph).

Guelph is not rural, but not densely urban either. However, I pay as much or as little as any other DSL subscriber in southern ontario.

Broadband is not subsidised around here, but there is competition. _Capitalist_ _competition_! The market, remember that thing?

The reason we have this competition is because our regulatory environment is, dare I say it, better than that of the US. You should blame Mr. Powel Jr. and the FCC if you think your broadband prices are too high.

Re:Location, Location, Location

[afp.matt]

This _should_ mean that the UK is insanely chep for this kind of infrastructure, at least in England. Major cities are very close compared to in the US. There probably aren't many pipes longer than 30/40 miles in middle-south England, and even Scotland has nowhere near the USAian distances. It doesn't seem to make any difference though. True, there are few places without mobile phone reception, but there's still plenty of villages without DSL - see ADSL guide for some stats. The prices are high too, BT own most of the pipes and ISPs pay loads (50 at least) to activate a connection to BT. The bigger one's have a "free" activation fee, but you'll pay GBP26-29 a month for 512-256, smaller local ISPs will pass on the activation fee and charge between 17 and 27 or so. I can't wait for an increase in the download speed though... pity the poor souls on dial-up

Re:Location, Location, Location

[gujo-odori]

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.

Re:Location, Location, Location

[kir]

That sounds great, but explain why I have these options available (yes, I live in Japan)?

1.5, 8, 12, 24-26, or 40-45Mbps ADSL: 4000-10000 yen
varying cable speed: 4000-10000 yen
100Mbps FTTH: 4500-9000 yen
wireless: my god... I should be glowing there is so much wireless here.

I've heard your argument about Japan and its cheap internet access time and again, but I'm not sold on it. Internet access used to be very expensive here. It wasn't until GOJ told NTT to play nice and ADSL took off that prices became excellent.

I've lived in Tokyo prefecture. I now live in Saitama. I've friends in Chiba, Osaka, and Aomori (country people talk different!). We've all no less than 4 ADSL loop providers available to choose from and who knows how many ISPs. Competition really is a great thing.

Re:Location, Location, Location

[smartin]

You are so very right (or at least you used to be before the CDN$ started to rise). I'm a Canadian living in the states and have always loved going home because things in Canada are so much cheaper. Case in point, a shirt at the Gap (or where ever) is $29 in Canadan and $29 in the states. Why? because it's what poeple will pay.

It doesn't always work out that way, the worse case is that you will pay the same price after exchange.

Unfortunately there is one other thing that you have to consider. The fucking GST, (and PST) so something must be 7-15% cheaper in Canada before it's a bargin.

Re:Location, Location, Location

[Dark Nexus]

The Canadian government subsidizes broadband, making it less expensive

Partially right, ONLY partially right, and a very, very misleading statement.

The Canadian government started an initiative to make sure that all households in Canada *could* have high speed internet access "by 2004" (this isn't even close to actually happening, from what I've seen).

It was SUGGESTED that the Canadian Government foot the bill, back in 2002. It seems to have gone to the provincial level since then, and there IS being money given to build infrastructure. For example, $55M over 3 years in Ontario, only for northern and rural communities. Yeah, that's HEAVY funding there...

This essentially brings the cost of subscribing to broadband in a small community in line with metro centres where the infrastructure already exists.

This means that if you live in even a remotely sizeable city (100K+ population), you'll never see this affect the cost of broadband access. Probably not even anywhere with 10K+ population, if it's not too far from a larger city.

And if you do live somewhere that it will affect the cost in, it'll only affect installation cost.

The Canadian Government does not and never has subsidized the operating costs involved with broadband internet. Same goes for all provincial governments, to my knowledge.

You're lucky

[Rotiahn]

Its $60 here for a cable modem. Probably has something to do with DSL not being available? :-P

Vancouver Area Here

[Nexzus]

Telus Basic residential DSL. 150K down, 50K up. $34.95 Canadian per month. (Plus basic phone line, $22 Cdn per month)

upstate New York

[plnrtrvlr]

$44 a month for Road-Runner and $48 for DSL from Citizens Telecom.... I'd say that aren't even using vaseline.

In the UK

[26199]

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 ;-)

Re:In the UK

[samjam]

The 25GBP price
600kbits; 25GBP/month = 46USD/month

Is I believe dependant on receiving an extra service, either telephone or cable-tv from NTL.
Certainly the same applies to telewest area but I believe that NTL and Telewest are now merged.

I had to pay 30GBP per month for the 600K service because I didn't want another service.

ALSO: NTL, at least around the Leicester area seem to block by default many ports; someone I know had to run VNC server on an unusually low port in order to be able to get incoming connections.

Also, not all ADSL are the same; a few offer fixed IP addresses, and some dont put any kind of artificial restriction on service use. Telewest on the other hand prohibited running public servers or using the connection for VPN in to corporate network when I last heard.

Sam

Re:In the UK

[grahamsz]

Other options round here - of course none *actually* here.

BT (Wireless)

11Mbit shared

Similar to their ADSL pricing I believe - though it's only in trial.

Telewest/Blueyonder (Cable)

1Mbit/256kbit = $64 (GBP 35)

Scottish Hydro (IPoverPower)

2Mbit/2Mbit = $55 USD/month (GBP 30)

Ednet (SDSL)

2.3Mbit/2.3Mbit = $550 (GBP 299)

Here's a site

[tyrani]

http://www.broadbandreports.com/ It has prices and speed statistics from people who test their machines.

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.

Re:Ireland

[jawtheshark]

Because it is how it has always been working. You pay for usage. Besides, why would you think you are entitled to free local calls? You use their infrastructure whilst calling, you are using a service, you pay for it.

I do remember though that in my country local calls tended to be a about 0,13Euro per hour. Nearly as good as free. The drawback was that after an hour of calling your line got disconnected and you needed to call again. This was back in the 80ties.

Look, I can inverse your statement: "I cannot understand that a cellphone user has to pay for incoming calls in the US". That would be a lie of course because I know why this is so. You see, that is a direct consequence of having free local calls. US consumers were used to not paying for local calls and with the advent of cellphones it became impossible to see the difference between a local number and a cell. Somebody had to bear the costs and it were the cellphone users. (Why in the US they didn't allocate a specific block for cellphones is beyond me, but it might have technical reasons).

Of course you can say "Yes, but with my cellphone plan I get 300 free minutes a month, so I don't have to care about incoming calls". Really depends how much that base plan is. My cellphone bills average 5 to 10 Euro per month for low level usage. Why? Because I have a free base-pack and only pay for the calls I make (no, it's not a prepaid card, it's a real subscription and I have to pay them per month)

pricing

[ir0b0t]

The rural mountainous states in the US are less populated and tougher to cover with access. An analog to the Tennessee Valley Authority (rural electrification in the US) is needed to spread the cost for the public benefit of universal access. And before *that* can happen the political culture in the US probably needs to . . . er, change some.

landline requirement

[jchristopher]

Here in California, Verizon will not sell you DSL unless you also subscribe to voice service. I feel my DSL is fairly priced at $34 (for 768k service), but the requirement to have a voice line ($18 at least, if not more) makes it a much poorer value.

Is it like this everywhere? Anyway to get around this requirement? Like many folks, I use cellular exclusively, so it sucks to have to pay for a landline every month just to get broadband.

Re:landline requirement

[swordgeek]

That's illegal in Canada. The companies can offer promotions, but they can't refuse to sell you one type of service unbundled from another one. Here the broadband is either through Telus (phone) or Shaw (cable), and you need neither cable TV or a land line to get the internet service.

Re:landline requirement

[Jade E. 2]

Here in California, Verizon will not sell you DSL unless you also subscribe to voice service

That may be illegal, although I'm not sure what laws California has on forced bundling... If I were you I'd contact the California Public Utilities Commission's Public Advisor office, and find out if that is acceptable grounds for filing a complaint.

Central Canada

[shadowspark]

Here in Central Canada (Manitoba), Cable and DSL is $39.95-45.95 CDN. Which converted is around $30 or so US. However, if one wanted to sign up, it's approximately $29.99 CDN for the first 6-8 months. I know in the states, Comcast and other providers are offering broadband at $45.95 to 60.95 US for cable internet. Might be why we have a high ratio of broadband customers here in Canada versus in the states.

The two most popular broadband providers in my area are:
Shaw Cable
MTS DSL

my $0.02

[tero]

I suppose this will be a bit silly thread, but here goes:

I live in Sweden and I'm on a 1Mb/8Mb DSL (no bandwidth limits and 1 static IP) and I'm paying 398 SEK ($55) a month.

New Zealand

[Nermal6693]

DSL's ridiculously expensive here in NZ. It's about US$40 per month for a 128/128 connection. The next step up is "full speed" - up to 8 Mb/s. This costs $35 per month I think, with a 500 MB data transfer limit. Go over that limit and it's around $0.14 per MB! See www.jetstream.co.nz for the full story. 1 NZD ~ 0.68 USD.

useless unless quality of service is also measured

[Stinking Pig]

which is why no one has done such a thing, because quality is very difficult to measure.

I pay about $10 a month more than the average DSL customer in my area, $20 a month more than the people who sign up with special promotions at cheap providers. I also get a static IP, zero guff about AUP, clean Ethernet rather than PPPoE, and direct access to the engineer who built and maintains the network (including after-hours). I wouldn't change and I recommend mom-n-pops to anyone who asks.

New Zealand prices

[olliej_nz]

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

Finnish cities

[TeknoHog]

I'm on 512/512 kbps ADSL provided by Sonera for 48 euros per month. My parents have roughly 1024/320 cable also by Sonera, for 49 euros. The same prices apply for most Finnish cities.

Most importantly, there are no caps and they don't seem to care about running servers.

Re:Finnish cities

[upside]

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.

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.

Here are the prizes for Switzerland

[Psychic Burrito]

I guess you're looking for the cheapest available prices, right?

OK:
500kBit/s: 45 CHF, $36.79
1MBit/s: 60 CHF, $49.06
2MBit/s: 75 CHF, $61.32

Source, Currency conversion.

Denmark

[TheViciousOverWind]

I'm using the Danish ADSL provider CyberCity, i have 3072 kb/s downstream / 768 kb/s upstream for about 150$/mo.

I think the smallest ADSL package is 256/128 and costs about 50$/mo.

Northeastern Pirkanmaa, Central Finland.

[Kassiopeia]

49 euros a month for DSL at 512/512 kbps, ~120 to open it in the first place. That's about average in Finland. I'm actually pretty lucky, as it's higher in areas where the only broadband provider is the local telephone company.

The differences areally in Finland can be big. In a small town you might get 256/256 for 69 euros a month, if you'll get any DSL at all. On the other hand, a student in Oulu can get a nice 8M/8M VDSL pipe for less than 40 euros.

Local telcos are what are keeping prices up in the first place. For the last few miles they own the lines and have a de facto monopoly, and they can charge an arm and a leg for it. No other ISP will want to offer me broadband, although I should feel lucky for having it in a town of 7000 - pretty small even by Finnish standards - in the first place. The situation in big cities is much better with multiple ISPs, but you might get in trouble in your flat if you'd have to pull wires there and the apartment council consists of mostly elderly people... One solution would be WLAN of course, but it hasn't really caught on.

The government has been trying to get it in control, with the aim being getting cable for 36 euros a month, but the only real solution I can see is the government subsidising cablework like has been done in Sweden and owning the infrastructure. But instead we're throwing money at digital television, which could be done through a fat pipe anyway.

A significant plus is that in Finland there aren't any transfer costs at all, just a monthly fee.

Prices in Germany

['gourne]

Here in southern Germany DSL 768/128 costs about 50$ (12EUR for having it/ 30EUR for using it with a flatrate).

Cable internet is available in my area as well. Prices range from 10EUR(12$) for 64/64 to 120EUR(150$) for 4096/1024.

Sweden

[matoh]

10 Mbit/sec Ethernet through Bredbandsbolaget AB: SEK 320/month (~USD 45)

bargaining

[drgroove]

Comcast wants $56 / month in my area, and they force their basic cable service on you with their broadband. If you don't want their illegally bundled product package, you can get just broadband for around $75/mo., which is totally idiotic. I filed a complaint w/ the FCC, which was followed up on by the FCC and Comcast, and in the end completely ignored by both parties. Comcast is allowed to illegally bundle their products according to the FCC. Yea FCC.

So, I took my complaint to one of Comcast's phone reps, who lowered my monthly broadband/cable charge to about $34/mo. Not quite sure how I talked her into doing that, but whatever a discount is a discount.

Re:Slashdot and the UK pound sign

[26199]

Er... according to xe.com: 1 GBP = 1.83650 USD

More options than that

[EnglishTim]

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.

Czech Republic

[fuxoft]

The cheapest UNLIMITED connection over here is using your mobile phone: About 30 US$ a month. The connection speed is 4kB/s (yes, 4 kilobytes per second) or less.

Standard dial-up connection is actually much more expensive because you have to pay per minute, there is no flat per-month tariff. If you want to be connected several hours each day, you'll easily pay over $400 (yes, four hundred) per month. The speed is 4 kB/s.

The cheapest DSL is about $40 a month. The speed less than 16 kb/s (the actual line speed is higher but there is 1:50 overbooking, which, according to Czech Telecom, is "normal") and you pay additional $15 for each 3 GB over the first 10 GB of traffic. Not very cool.

If you want real UNLIMITED ADSL connection and guaranteed speed of at least 16 kb/s, it will cost you about $800 a month.

Thank you very much. BTW, Bill Gates is coming over here this month to tell us how great it is to be on the Information Superhighway.

Re:Sweden - Cable by Chello.

[axafluff]

Cable at 640/256 for ~50 USD (at 7,17 SEK/USD). Switching soon.

John Smith was right all along.

[jhobbs]

I live in a city of 5 million and pay $60 a month for a cable modem. My mom lives in a upper class bedroom community of 15,000 and pays $45 a month for a cable modem. My dad lives in a small town of 2,000 and pays $28 a month for a cable modem.

Its all about what the market will bear. My cable modem cost %0.0167 what my rent does. My dad's is %0.0934 of his mortgage. He pays less than 1/2 what I pay because he lives in a small community that as a whole could not support a service that cost as much per month as a weeks groceries. I can swallow $60 a month becuase that's less that dinner for two at a local resturant.

Go read Wealth of Nations and come back tommorrow. As for you socialists out there, sorry about the taxes.

Telus ADSL in Vancouver

[AnimeFreak]

Home package: $35.00 CDN (plus GST/PST) ($27.50 USD) (21.50 EUR)

Package includes:
- 1.5 Mbit downstream
- 512 Kbit upstream
- 2 dynamic IPs
- 3 e-mail addresses

They don't care about the usage of broadband NAT setups either, and they're also pretty relaxed on broadband.

But not in Brazil

[gustgr]

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.

Norway (NextGenTel)

[gspr]

$58/month (NOK 399) for a 1000/384 kbps ADSL line (yes, 1000, they're all into using good looking base10 numbers here nowadays).
It might be a stiff price compared to the US, but at least there are no restrictions on the line. That is to say, there are no transfer limits, no rules against running servers, etc.

Sweden

[matoh]

I just saw that Bredbandsbolaget is going to offer 100Mbit/s (max 300 GB/month) to their customers this spring. Wonder what that is going to cost... :-)

The complete list of Swedish Broadband

[surstrmming]

Here's a complete list with prices of Swedish Broadband. Highlights: 26 mbit/s for 499 SEK/month (US$60) http://internetworld.idg.se/tjanster/bredband/

Broadband in Argentina

[Beuno]

Keeping in mind here 1u$s = $3 pesos (our currency), which practically means it's three times harder for us to buy things, my current broadband cable (512 down, 128 up) connection costs around 40u$s.

South Africa is truly screwed

[encrypted]

We pay R900 (about $140) for a 512/256 dsl package with a monthly limit of 3gb, so everyone else can stop complaining now.

France, vive la grenouille !

[guerby]

For now rates are the same in the whole country where DSL is available, some of the cheap offers are available only in the big cities. Everyone has to pay 13 euros/month for the phone line in addition to DSL costs, which are as follow:

• 128/64: 15-20 euros/month
• 512/128: 20-30 euros/month
• 1024-2048/128-256: 30-60 euros/month
• Cable is roughly the same price as DSL when available (very big cities only)
• No real offer above 2048
• One operator sells TV on the same DSL line too.

Euro is around 1.27 USD these days: historical high, going up, historical low is 0.82 USD IIRC.

The great thing about DSL in France is the Grenouille site where users report download/upload/ping per city per provider all the time (plus their horror stories), all french providers are covered it helps a lot when choosing a provider!

Laurent

Consider all the variables!

[jonbrewer]

Looking at the 2003 OECD Telecommunications Outlook, I can see that it's not a simple question of "how much does it cost?". The figures you have take into consideration are:

1. Monthly Charge
2. Mbytes included
3. Extra Mbytes
4. Downstream Bandwidth
5. Upstream Bandwidth

In the good old USA, nobody charges per megabyte. Then you just have price/bandwidth to compare. That goes the same for the following:

Denmark TDC, Finland Elisa, France France Telecom Wanadoo, Germany Deutsche Telecom, Italy Telecom Italia, Japan NTT, Korea Korea Telecom, Luxembourg P&T, Mexico Telmex, Netherlands KPN
Spain Telefonica, Sweden Telia, Turkey Turk Telekom, United Kingdom British Telecom, United States Verizon

Those who have traffic caps and "per megabyte" charges for overage are:

Australia Telstra - Big Pond, Austria Telekom Austria, Belgium Belgacom - Turbo Line,
Canada Bell Canada Sympatico, Ireland Eircom, Netherlands KPN, New Zealand Telecom NZ, Switzerland Swisscom, Portugal Portugal Telecom

If you want to compare across the board, you have to make some arbitrary decisions, like "how much traffic does the average user consume" and "what is the minimum downstream and upstream bandwidth requirement". Repeat, ARBITRARY. Many researchers with "an agenda" manipulate these figures to make their country/telecoms provider look good or bad. It's easy to do.

I'll say 2GB/month, and 384/128. YMMV. Now you can say "this is what it will cost".

So, the following is what I come up with using the OECD data, which was collected in 2002:

Canada Bell Canada Sympatico 22.28
Korea Korea Telecom 27.58
Portugal Portugal Telecom 37.16
Belgium Belgacom - Turbo Line 38.67
Sweden Telia 39.65
United States Verizon 39.95
Japan NTT 40.76
United Kingdom British Telecom 41.51
Germany Deutsche Telecom 44
France France Telecom Wanadoo 44.42
Italy Telecom Italia 48.85
Netherlands KPN 51.1
Switzerland Swisscom 52.78
Denmark TDC 57.28
Norway Telenor 59.22
Finland Elisa 60.64
Portugal Portugal Telecom 66.5
Poland TPSA 71.58
Mexico Telmex 92.72
Spain Telefonica 95.22
Ireland Eircom 105.32
Australia Telstra - Big Pond 121.67
New Zealand Telecom NZ 131.27
Hungary Matav 248.64
Iceland Iceland Telecom 280
Turkey Turk Telekom 285.98

Apologies that the lameness filters have prevented me from presenting these figures in a more readable way.

France: 29 / mo for 2Mbps

[Nicolas MONNET]

Through Free I get roughly 2MBps/400kbps, plus free national phone through ADSL, and ADSL TV (though I don't have a TV but it's included anyway).

There's no cap whatsoever, and in fact at some times I get up to 8Mbps download, like around 5AM. I also have a static IP for free. The main drawback is that it's not very reliable, mainly because of their homegrown set top box -- they had design their own since no OEM has an ADSL+TV+Phone set top box on their catalog. No setup fee. The only extra fee is when you cancel the line, costs you 100, decreases with time down to 0 after a couple years. Modem is free and included.

Quite a good deal.

Japan calling here

[blndcat]

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.

Facts

[upside]

Since some peeps mentioned the tech... I use Sonera 1m/512 DSL
- bridged ethernet
- dynamic IP (though it hasn't changed as I keep my firewall machine on constantly)
- no ports blocked any direction

Saunalahti blocks incoming SMTP but apparently you can get mail routed to you via their mail server, at least if you've bought static IP addresses.

I've never heard of bandwidth caps in Finland, though a cable modem operator took action over a year ago when some clients transferred some crazy amounts in a short period.

bull

[Sangui5]

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.

Not that cut and dried.

[BiggerIsBetter]

Here are the tables for Xtra, and part of New Zealand Telecom, part owned by Microsoft, and ADSL monopoly for most of the country.

Home: http://jetstream.xtra.co.nz/chm/0,5123,203086-2023 43,00.html
Business: http://www.xtra.co.nz/products/0,,5804,00.html

Yes, it's a huge rip-off. But hey, it's OK because Telecom is owned wholly by owned subsidiaries of Ameritech and now "a variety of institutional investors". Thanks for selling us out, New Zealand government - the NZ telco market is Pwn3d.

re: Princesses

[Behrooz]

Means their princesses won't go down on him.

At least, they won't go down on him if he's not wealthy enough to ignore the cost of cable. But hell, anyone could have told him that...

Tanzania

[beeblebrox87]

I live in Arusha, Tanzania. There are three major internet providers in town, each of which buys a satellite uplink. My provider connects users by running cat5 cables through trees etc. with the occasional signal booster. Max bandwidth is around 320kbps, average is 40kbps. They charge $54 US a month.

The second major provider uses Navini wireless transmitters and receivers. I'm told that their users get around 500kbps max, 80kbps average. They charge ~$45 a month, but charge $550 for the navini receiver on signup.

The only thing I know about the third major provider is that they're not available in my part of town.

40Mbps ADSL for around $30

[ag0ny]

I'm in Japan. Since a few months ago, 40Mbps ADSL service is available at around 4000 yen/month ($30-$35). I'm using a dedicated optical fiber line at 100Mbps, and it costs around $150/month. A 100Mbps shared line costs around $100/month, if I recall correctly.

Ireland, up2&over $100 p/m

[zoney_ie]

You have to pay for phone line rental too - I think Eircom (Ex-State Telecoms monopoly) is something like 26 p/m for the phone connection. Chorus (the State's main cable/wireless TV) charge about half the amount on their wireless phone connections. So altogether it can cost over 75/$100 for 256kb down here in Ireland. Surely we're the most expensive State in the E.U. Broadband is only available in major cities and selected areas. Few areas have more than one provider (I know of only 4). The Irish govt./Eircom plans are to rollout to all towns over pop. 1000 next year. Businesses can get better deals - particularly if in an area with the competitors (E.G. Esat BT - Irish branch of BT - British Telecom, and UTV internet - Ulster Television - Northern Ireland's TV station). Broadband is offered mainly via telephone lines - though Chorus offered wireless broadband till the equipment supplier went bust.

Videotron

[gfilion]

Well, I'm in Quebec and I'm subscribing to Videotron's cable modem services. They have three plans:
1) 128 Kbps for CAN$25/month (modem included) It has a 1 GB/month up down limit.
2) 3 Mbps down / 15 Kbps up for CAN$35/month (modem not included) It has a 10 GB/month down and 5 GB/month up limit.
3) 4 Mbps down / 30 Kbps up for CAN$60/month (modem not included). No usage limit.

24$ in USA?

[nurb432]

THen why do i see it advertised for 50$ everywhere i look?

25$ would be nice.

For your 'chart' be sure to take into effect the different relative value of a 'dollar'...

Netherlands

[AlfaSprint]

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.

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 :)

prices in sweden, it's pretty cheap

[dinodipp]

Bredbandsbolaget LAN/ADSL 10/8 Mbit 320 skr = 40$ Bostream up to 26/Mbit 55$ as i said... pretty cheap =)

Mexico fees

[KamuZ]

Well, in Mexico for example with MegaRed for a home use we pay like 40us dlls for 384kbps using cable (well, they will change for the same price to 512kbps really soon). DSL in Mexico with Telmex we have to pay 54 us dlls for 256kbps (they will change that to 512kbps really soon too for the same price) In DSL we have no options, Telmex is a monopoly in our country, so no one can compete... Dialup is ile 17 us dlls for 56k, many ISPs do that now. But we have several problems, for example my Cable provider only lets you connect a PC to the cable, no problem sharing, but they limit your simultaneous connections, 30max, so if you share or use clients like BitTorrent, you suck up those connections and you can't connect :( Paying for commercial is like 60 us dlls for 512 or 100 us dlls for 1024 Of course there are other options but mostly local (local cable providers, local ISPs)

Prices in France

[gounthar]

for 512kbps (which is standard) you pay 20-30 Euros.
But one ISP provides 4Mbps for 30 Euros, including VoIP and Television over IP.

max-usage

[Njovich]

In holland most of the really cheap providers have a maximum usage of 150 to 500 MB / month. Unless we find a way to measure those kind of gotcha's, comparison seems impossible. And avarage wage in the area would be a factor to include too.