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.

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.

New Zealand Prices

[Anonymous Coward]

128Kbit ADSL, limited to 10GB international and usually unlimited national is around $60 NZ / month. Thats about $90 USD I believe.

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.

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.

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

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.

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: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.

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.

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?

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.

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: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 [ca.gov] office, and find out if that is acceptable grounds for filing a complaint.

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

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:Location, Location, Location

[RobinH]

Most Canadians live close to an American border.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. I'm sick of hearing this stupid "fact" repeated like it's gospel. The people who came to North America a few hundred years ago settled mostly along waterways, especially the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence seaway. Also, they settled along the coasts. In modern times, most people still live in the same areas that were first colonized.

About half the people in Canada live in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. None of these are bordertowns, but all of them were population centres before the United States and Canada existed.

If Canadians were flocking towards the U.S. border, then why is the largest border city in Canada (Windsor, Ontario) only 200,000 people? Also, why does practically nobody live next to the border with Alaska? People live where they live because it follows early settlement patterns.

You can say that most Canadians live within 3 hours of the United States, but I ask you this, don't most Americans live along the outside of the U.S.? Is that because they're all trying to get away from the centre? I doubt it.

Anyway, go on with what you were saying...

Tanzania

[beeblebrox87]

I live in Arusha, Tanzania. There are three major internet providers in town, each of which buys a satellite uplink. My provider [nexusdigital.co.tz] 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 [bol.co.tz] uses Navini [navini.com] 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.

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: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.

Mexico fees

[KamuZ]

Well, in Mexico for example with MegaRed [megared.com.mx] 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 [prodigy.com.mx] 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)

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.