Global broadband is becoming faster, and on average prices are dropping

With global broadband speeds accelerating by 20.65% on average between 2018 and 2019, meanwhile the average price of a broadband package has fallen between the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2020 by almost one fifth (19.975%).

This makes perfect sense. Broadband is becoming cheaper, globally. Despite uncovering numerous examples where the broadband landscape of individual countries has shifted significantly (most often from ADSL to fibre or FTTH) during this period, providers cannot charge what users cannot pay. Typically, providers are upgrading or improving their networks to run faster and more efficiently. Pricing has therefore, in many cases, particularly those at the more expensive end, fallen, as these countries have the most room to offer better services more cheaply than they once did.

Connectivity continues to be at its most expensive in the developing and island nations of Africa, Asia, Oceania and Central and South America, with the Greenland, Mozambique, British Virgin Islands, Tanzania, Turkmenistan, Equatorial Guinea, Burundi, Mauritania, Yemen and Eritrea forming the ten most expensive countries in the world.

Typically, though not exclusively, where broadband is expensive, it is also slow and unreliable. The opposite is also largely true, although there are exceptions in both cases.

There were 28 countries or territories in total excluded from this study. The largest cluster of these appears in Central and West Africa, with Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Malawi, Rwanda, Sudan, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Chad, Uganda and Zambia all failing either to offer any qualifying broadband packages, or release pricing information upon request. A full list of excluded countries – including the reasoning behind exclusion – can be found in both the methodology document downloadable at the bottom of this page, and in the second tab of the results themselves.

The United Kingdom fares surprisingly well

Although the United Kingdom's global rank of 71st place may not seem all that impressive, the UK comes in sixth cheapest of 29 countries in Western Europe, topped by only Italy, France, Germany, Andorra and Monaco.

It must be said, though, that it does not fare so well on a cost-per-megabit basis. Cost per megabit factors the speeds offered to calculate exactly that: the amount each megabit costs on average. Here the UK came in 19th of 29 countries in Western Europe, with an average cost per megabit, per month of $1.07 – a far cry from Western European winner Andorra, with a cost per megabit of just $0.08.

While the UK is one of the cheapest countries in Western Europe in terms of average package price, it is far from fastest, coming in 34th fastest in the world in our most recent global broadband speed study, and 15th fastest in Western Europe.