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.

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

[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.

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.

Re:ADSL is cheap in Western Canada..

[m0rph3us0]

yeah, i'm on shaw average speed is about 3.7Mbps, so I feel the extra money is worth it.

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.

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

[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

[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

Re:Location, Location, Location

[Lewisham]

This doesn't explain the poor broadband pricing in the UK.

Our broadband is so expensive/poor because BT have a monopoly, and generally appear to sit around twiddling their thumbs as opposed to doing anything. They literally seem to own everything, and the idea of competition is just that. You get billed by someone else, but BT runs the whole show, and it's up to them how much they're going to charge and how shoddy their DSL supply is.

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

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 lo

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.

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

[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 shoul

You're lucky

[Rotiahn]

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

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.

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)

New York Region

[leibnizme]

A monthly Internet access bill for cable runs $44.95 here in Poughkeepsie, New York. That includes a discount for having a cable TV subscription. Being 90 minutes from NYC certainly doesn't drive our costs down... From talking to people at work, the average DSL price is around $39 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

[jo_ham]

I'm using NTL's 600/128 cable package because it's the only option in my area and it's pretty good for 25 quid a month.

BT isn't the only DSL provider, although most require that you have a BT landline to use them.

Thus: cost of BT line 29 per quarter, plus cost of DSL provider. Note that BT's own costs don't include line rental - it's extra.

I paid 23 per month ($30) for 512/256 DSL in London from Pipex [pipex.net], who were extremely good to me. I'd have used them in a heartbeat if my new house was in a DSL-capable a

Re:In the UK

[26199]

Hmm, I thought all the other DSL 'providers' were just resellers for BT?

Re:In the UK

[jo_ham]

If they were then either BT really overcharges its customers for the service, or Pipex was taking huge losses.

You did need a BT line to use the service, and BT owns all the exchanges and all the DSLAMs and so on. I think they're prohibited from keeping competition out of contention by leveraging their hardware monopoly though.

Re:In the UK

[grahamsz]

The majority of the DSL providers aren't quite BT resellers but the last mile is operated by BT so you have to put up with their problems.

There are a few like ednet who take advantage of local loop unbundling to put their own systems in BT's exchanges - allowing them to offer SDSL and similar.

Slashdot and the UK pound sign

[jo_ham]

Ok, so it seems /. won't display the UK pound sign.

All the numbers in that post without a $ in front of them are in GBP.

Currently you can get about $1.60 per pound.

If Bush keeps fucking with the economy, we might get $2 to the pound, which will be good for me since it would make my Apple purchases even cheaper. Well, the ones I can bring back on the plane that is.

Re:Slashdot and the UK pound sign

[26199]

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

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)

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.

Here's a site

[tyrani]

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

It depends on the service...

[bc90021]

...for instance, I pay much more than most people, as I require SDSL for hosting. In fact, on the occasions that I tell people what I pay, the shock on their face is priceless. However, when I explain to them that their cable upload speed is 96k, and that mine is 8.5 times that, it makes a little more sense to them.

Cable around here (NY suburbs) runs about $40-$50 per month, and ADSL is about the same. SDSL can run from that to $399, and a T1 costs about $500 a month.

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.

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.

Northern Virginia

[theNote]

Cox Cable
3mbps
$50

Re:Northern Virginia

[frdmfghtr]

Comcast is similar here in Alexandria, VA...I pay about $45/month for a 2Mbps cable connection including cable modem rental.

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

[TC (WC)]

Hrm... aren't there third party DSL providers in your area? I mean, they all end up going through Telus at some point, since they own the phone lines, but there are definitely third party providers.

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.

UK Mainland

[Scooter]

22 pcm (about $35 US)for DSL with Force9/Plusnet. This includes hosting as many domains as I want, web space (inc PHP, MySQL) a fax->email number and some other bits and bobs.

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 [www.shaw.ca]
MTS DSL [mts.mb.ca]

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.

Re:New Zealand

[houseofmore]

Ya... but it's 26c out with an offshore seabreeze. What the hell are you doing infront of your PC? Shit, what the hell am I.

to the beach bro..

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.

$24???

[lone_marauder]

The prices in Eastern Canada are ridiculous comparing to some states, around $24 US for DSL or cable.

I guess ridiculous depends on your point of view. It costs $60 get in on the ground floor of dsl/cable in the SouthEast U.S., at least from an ISP with a decent AUP.

Re:$24???

[oogoliegoogolie]

Yah I don't know what prices the original poster was looking at, but broadband prices in Canada are comparable to what is the US and often cheaper. In Ontario I pay $45 for cable internet with speeds often aproaching 3Mb/sec. That's about $35 US, and that's about the normal price across Canada, unless you live in the bush.

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.

Prices in OH

[rekkanoryo]

I live in Jefferson County, Ohio (USA). In my particular area, SBC is the provider for phone and DSL services, and Comcast (or "CommieCrap" as it's so hatefully known here) is the cable provider. SBC has various prices for DSL, but currently I could get 384k DSL for $27/month for 12 months by signing a contract. The representatives on the phone tell me I can keep renewing this contract indefinitely (if you don't renew, the price jumps to $40/month). CommieCrap wants $45/month for 3.0Mbps downstream, 128

NOVA....

[utlemming]

In Northern VA you can get Cox Communication for $39 for 3Mbit downstream and 720K upstream cable. If you are not a Cox Cable customer then you get to pay $49 a month. If you want 4MBytes then you will fork out $79 or $99 depending on the upload package you want. You are limited to 30G down a month and 300MB up a month. So for the most part is a great connection. I have been able to download like a freaking fool and have never hit my 30G per month -- since I am not doing file sharing. But I have gathered qu

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 [cablecom.ch], Currency conversion [yahoo.com].

consider yourself lucky

[bain]

ADSL (512 down 128 up) in South Africa costs are $50 give or take a few at current exchange rates. Just having a 64k line from point a to b no internet costs is about $10 here (it's called diginet, not sure whats it's called elsewhere)

I'm sure that beats you're worst pricing hands down

the Netherlands...

[JaredOfEuropa]

Plenty of choice here. Dial-up can be had for free :)

Consumer ADSL ranges from 19 Euro/month for 384/128 kb/s (down/up), to 80 Euro/month for 8Mb/1Mb on a 100GB/month limit (I've actually exceeded it a few times).

There are many, many providers, each offering varying rates, download limits, policies, quality, and facilities (web hosting, usenet, etc.). Even better: they are engaged in a price war at the moment.

Re:the Netherlands...

[Psychic Burrito]

Dial-up can be had for free :)

What do you mean with that? Do you have to pay phone costs for each minute or is it absolutely, completely free?

Re:the Netherlands...

[Erik Hensema]

And since the dollar is worth shit these days, the prices in dollars are relatively high. $25 to $100.

Keep voting Bush, it's very good for our import :-) (yet not so great for our export)

Dallas area

[LinuxInDallas]

My comcast cable internet service is about $45 a month. DSL was $40 when I had it around two years ago. You can get DSL for around $35 these days although I think it's capped at 256k down, 128k up.

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 fi

Netherlands ADSL

[MooCows]

E60 for high quality 8mbits downstream and 1mbit upstream ADSL (250GB/month datalimit)

Cheapest is 512/512 kbit for around E20 per month.

I'm not complaining :)

Shaw Cable in Edmonton, AB, CA

[Dixie_Flatline]

I pay about $45/month. That's for cable access. When I lived in a different part of town, getting 600kps down was pretty trivial, and I occasionally saw speeds touching 10MBit/s down. Where I am now, I 'only' get around 400kps down on a good day. I seem to be able to transfer about 80kps up.

Rolla, Missouri - Fidelity Networks

[nneul]

I'm paying $90/mo for 512 Kbps up / 512 Kbps down. The speed is generally quite solid. I believe the normal consumer packages are cheaper, but I wanted the decent upload speed. I believe $90/mo will get you 1.5Mbps/128Kbps. Sprint offers DSL in the area, but good luck finding out what the speed is.

Vancouver ,B.C.

[Quirk]

$40.00/mo.

Sweden

[matoh]

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

Re:Sweden - Cable by Chello.

[axafluff]

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

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... :-)

24$ US = 36$ Canadian

[Stone316]

Hate to tell you bud, but your not paying too much for your highspeed connection. In Ottawa i'm paying 37$ a month. (I'm too lazy to look up the exchange rate but 24$US is probably closer to 32$)

Downtown NYC cable

[shawkin]

$45 per month for consistent 3meg up and 500k down. To put this in context, I pay about $4,850 per month for rent and $525 per month for one parking space.

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.

South Florida

[digitalhermit]

Prices range from $29 for DSL Lite (capped, dynamic IP) to about $79 at the top end of the home offering (multiple users, static IP, better downloads, multiple emails). I use the $59 offering which is the cheapest one with static IP that I found at the time. Nothing prevents the $29 offering from being shared, but this service seems to be targeted at mostly non-technical folks.

$53

[herrvinny]

From Comcast, Woodridge, Illinois (Suburb of Chicago. Mapquest it if you want a map). I also get regular cable included.

Rogers: good potential speed for the price, at lea

[JonathanF]

3 Mbps up and 384 Kbps down in theory, though I think my modem or local node are messed up in recent months as the bandwidth fluctuates a lot. However, the potential to go that fast for what I pay ($45 Canadian a month for Rogers Hi-Speed) would make most American geeks cry.

For reference: I'm located in Ottawa, Canada

50 bucks/mo. including tier 2 cable. 1Mbps

[gelfling]

Earthlink/Time Warner. $50/mo. inc tier 2 cable TV. Free cable modem, unlimited number of end points. Speed is rock solid 1Mbps in either direction.

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.

Alaska

[core plexus]

In The Valley we have DSL from our member-owned cooperative, and it's about $49.99/month for the first 11 gigs. Dialup is $20, or free sometimes during a promo from some other phone company. I don't know what cable is, since we don't have cable way out here, and I am happy with DSL.

-cp-

Alaska Bugs Sweat Gold Nuggets [alaska-freegold.com]

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Southeastern MA

[Magus311X]

3Mbps down, 300kbps up. $45/mo.

This is Comcast cable. It's $2-3/mo cheaper if you provide your modem, and about $12 more if you're not a cable TV subscriber with them. Service is pretty good.

DSL is similarly priced.

----- ----- ----- -----

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

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.

JENS Monopoly

[Bios_Hakr]

About 4 years ago, JENS signed a contract with AAFES to provide service to military stations in Japan. I live in Northwest Tokyo and paid, for 3 years, $40/month for 90 hours of dialup service. Going over that limit was very expensive. A lot of 'power users' had several accounts and switched between them every two weeks.

Finally, after twy years of bitching, JENS upgraded to DSL. We now pay $60/month for 1.5mbps down and who knows how much up. Actually, the upstream doesn't matter at all. Why? No glo

Mediacom

[Verteiron]

Mediacom spans IL, eastern IA, and parts of MO and WI. Their cable internet access rates are actually some of the highest in the country for the service they offer. $55/month for 1.5Mb down/128Kb up. If you get other cable service from them it's something like $45/month + the rest of the bill. If you're a business, you'll pay $100 minimum for the exact same service and bandwidth.

In western IL/eastern IA there is also DSL available from McLeodUSA and Qwest. Rates and speeds are pretty comparable: About $40/

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.

It's about monopolies

[wazzzup]

I just cancelled my cable modem and cable t.v. and I'm going back to dialup [shudder]. Time Warner raised our monthly rates $20/mo. for cable t.v and modem for a total of over $120/mo. I'm talking what they call basic cable (no movie channels) and consumer level broadband. They're the only game in town, they've got a monopoly and I can no longer justify supporting it. The real kick in the pants is that my parents, 50 miles away, have 2 companies in their area that offer cable t.v. and broadband. They g

Norway

[halftrack]

Here's a list [telepriser.no] that I believe is complete. It contains both broadband, DSL and dial-up prices. The first column is the ISP and subscription type, then there's the one-time connection fee, the next is the monthly fee, then there's a billing fee, start fee, running fee (per minute) and then there's a fee for getting nessecary equipment (mostly for ISDN.) All prices are in NOK. (1U$D ~ 6.8NOK)

The list's from the Norwegian Post and Telecommunication Authority which all norwegian telecom operators are required t

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 [grenouille.com] 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 [www.free.fr] 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.

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 :)

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 [xtra.co.nz]
Business: http://www.xtra.co.nz/products/0,,5804,00.html [xtra.co.nz]

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" [telecom.co.nz]. Thanks for selling us out, New Zealand government - the NZ telco market is Pwn3d.