From $ 1.27 to $ 1849: How Much Does it Cost to Use Internet Around the World in Comparison with Bulgaria?

Business | November 15, 2018, Thursday // 16:26|  views

Източник: pixabay

A new study from research group M-Laband Cable.co.uk has examined ISPs and 3,303 packages from 195 countries across the world to produce a comparison of fixed line broadband prices, which reveals that the average monthly cost of internet access is cheapest in the Ukraine ( USD), while the UK ranks only 61st (.58), according to ispreview.co.uk

However it’s important to reflect that the core ranking of this study doesn’t tell the whole story and the research wisely reflects this. For example, Iran is ranked as the 3rd cheapest (.20) but it’s also a market that is dominated by older style slow copper ADSL lines and if the table were re-ordered by “Cost per Megabit of Download Speed” then they would drop all the way down to 90th position.

Similarly the United Kingdom may look a little poor in 61st place and granted we could be doing a lot better, but our global ranking is still up from 65th last year and if the table were re-ordered to look at ‘cost per megabit‘ then we’d rise to 54th position. On top of that the UK is also the 5th cheapest of 29 countries in Western Europe, topped by only Italy, France, Germany and Monaco.

 On the other hand if we rank the states of Western Europe by ‘cost per megabit‘ then the UK really suffers and is ranked 21st out of the 29. One of the reasons for this is due to our notoriously weak position in “ultrafast broadband” (100Mbps+) coverage, particularly with respect to “full fibre” (FTTP) networks (see here for context). But there’s a catch here too because the UK has a stronger level of “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) availability than most of Western Europe, thanks to wide coverage of FTTC (VDSL2) services.



In this year's survey Bulgaria ranks 39th among all 195 countries surveyed. Our account is based on 17 different offers on the market, the cheapest package was 12 leva or 7,12 dollars, and the most expensive - for 151,80 leva or 90,13 dollars. Average country price of $ 30.27.

Now spare a thought for the poor folk living in the most expensive country of the world – Mauritania – where the average monthly cost of a broadband package is an eye watering 8.16, while the ‘cost per megabit‘ shows little improvement on 7.15. Ouch!
We’ve pasted a shortened summary of the results below and it’s worth noting that the study excludes 4G mobile, wireless and satellite services in order to focus on fixed line connectivity. But rather bizarrely they’ve also decided that “dial-up” connections should be included under the “broadband” title, even though they’re narrowband in nature. We would have preferred a stronger definition of “broadband” to be used.

Research like this also cannot easily reflect the often complex differences between packages, such as any value-added extras (static IP addresses, different router quality, anti-virus controls etc.). Doing a true apples-to-apples comparison would be nightmarishly difficult, but it would be interesting to see what happens to the results if each country were weighted to reflect cost using Purchasing Power Parity (PPP).

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Tags: Internet, price, packages, europe, wifi zones

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