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

[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.

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

[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

[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.

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)

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

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.

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

[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.

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

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 :)