Tuesday, November 21st, 2017 (10:05 am) - Score 8,315

A new study has examined the price of fixed line broadband in 196 countries via 3,351 packages (conducted between 18th August and 12th October 2017), which reveals that the United Kingdom is only the 63rd cheapest (average of USD $40.62 a month overall or $1.01 per megabit of speed).

The research, which was jointly conducted by Cable.co.uk and BDRC Continental, found that Iran offers the world’s cheapest broadband, with an average monthly cost of $5.37. However, this should be factored against Iran’s average cost per month per megabit of speed being $4.58, which means that you’d pay quite a bit for faster connectivity but plenty of other country’s charge more.

Speaking of charging more, the most expensive country for broadband was found to be Burkina Faso, where the average monthly price is a staggering $961.14 and the cost per megabit of speed is $84.95! Take note that you may see some variations in the figures when others report on this study because the ranking uses real-time currency fluctuations, which will shift the figures about.

Happily the UK itself fairs better when compared exclusively with other countries in Western Europe, where Italy is the cheapest with an average package price of $28.89 per month, followed by Germany ($34.07), Denmark ($35.90) and France ($36.34). In this region the UK is 8th cheapest out of 28 countries.

Meanwhile, in North America, we find that Canada offers the cheapest broadband on average ($54.92), coming in 21 positions ahead of the United States globally ($66.17). Bermuda provides the most expensive packages in the region with an average price of $126.80 per month.

The data is very interesting and useful, although as usual we have to point out a few caveats. The first problem is that nobody appears to have defined what “broadband” should constitute in the research, which is quite important since otherwise you could easily have narrowband style speeds being included into the same service type. In the UK Ofcom defines standard broadband as starting at 2Mbps.

The next problem is that such analysis would struggle to accurately reflect the “value” aspect of each package, which is often dependent on the capabilities of a given service’s underlying technology and any included extras (e.g. routers, WiFi hotspot access, cloud storage, TV / video content etc.) or usage allowances. This is important because such features can have a huge impact on the price you pay.

The study could do with reflecting cost using Purchasing Power Parity, which is what Point Topic does. However, with all that in mind, here’s the table (correct for currency rates at the time of extraction):