Broadband Prices: Fibre Optic Networks Have the Best Speeds at the Lowest Prices
According to a BBC article on global broadband prices, countries that had switched to fibre networks had the best speeds at the lowest prices.
Japan has the cheapest price for broadband per Mbps at $0.22. The most expensive is Turkey at $81.13. In the US, the cheapest megabit per second broadband connection is $3.18 while in the UK it is $3.62.
Data is based on the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report. The OECD represents 30 of the leading democratic economics, from Australia to the US, France to Japan.
Cheapest Entry Level Broadband Per Month:
- Sweden $10.79
- Denmark $11.11
- Switzerland $12.53
- US $15.93
- France $16.36
- Netherlands $16.85
- New Zealand $16.86
- Italy $17.63
- Ireland $18.18
- Finland $19.49
*Source: OECD. Figures for October 2006
Read more about Global Broadband Prices Revealed.
July 17th, 2007 at 22:12
I think Australia would be in the top ten by now as Dodo offer 2GB ADSL2+ for just $9.95 AU per month.
That’s about $7.80 or something in US currency.
But of course there quite a few catches.
1) 1GB of the included data is off-peak use only
2) There is an excess data charge of $180 per Gigabyte (but this caps at $69.95 so not too bad)
3) Both upload and download data is included, whereas usually upload data does not count.
There is actually even a free ADSL2+ plan they offer! (check here)
You only get 150MB but still for just checking emails and stuff this would be great. The $180 per GB penalty is still used but it caps at $29.95 per month.
An added bonus of these plans is that you get a static IP.
July 18th, 2007 at 12:08
I agree. The source data was kinda old (October, 2006). I’m curious as to how you are charged for bandwidth use in Australia. How would you know if you’ve exceeded “data” (as in excess data charge)? On another note, you’re downstream would be 2,048 Mbps?
Upload data hurts a lot too, especially if you’re the file sharer type (and especially BT).
July 18th, 2007 at 14:46
This is one of my golden geek dream. To have a fibre optic connection, I just hate broadband monopoly in Malaysia. DSL sucks dude.
July 18th, 2007 at 16:12
Yes that’s why I said they should be in the top 10 “by now”.
I assume that you live in the US and don’t have excess data charges (which is a surprise to me)
In Australia some ISPs charge money once you go over your quota (usually these ISPs are the ones which advertise and suck in people).
It is a common trick to squeeze money out of unsuspecting people.
Most people don’t know how much data they have used, however most ISPs have a bandwidth meter in the member’s homepage (I personally use a firefox extension to tell me how much I’ve used which updates automatically).
You know that you have exceeded your bandwidth because the speed is reduced to the speed of dial-up (sometimes half the speed of dial-up). This is know as “shaping”.
Usually you cannot download much after you are shaped, but some ISPs charge huge prices of $180GB per GB extra and so you can still end up paying $10 extra just for downloading 80MB when you are shaped.
Usually they make this sound small by saying it is only 15 cents per MB extra in small print.
Most good ISPs however do not have excess costs and simply shape your speeds for the remainder of the month.
In relation to your other question the download speed for ADSL2+ is 24Mbps and the upload speed is 1Mbps. When you are shaped this is drastically reduced. I don’t think we’ll be seeing 2Gbps speeds for a while lol
If you are lucky and live right next to the exchange than you can expect to download a 700MB aXXo Movie in about 5 minutes.
July 19th, 2007 at 2:19
@Syaf,
My country is located just above yours. I would want a fibre optic infrastructure here too. Charges are still quite expensive for me. Our current package is 384Kbps for US $20 (including the phone line subscription). This may be cheap to you, but not for me.
@Mitchell,
I understand. Wow, I didn’t know they do that in DSL subscriptions. In the US, I know ISP’s charge excess usage but that is for a dial-up subscription. NNTP (newsgroup, usenet) usage also has a limit of about 1 or 2 GB per month.
24Mbps is a lot! An aXXo movie in 5 minutes? Wow! I can finish all his releases in a day. Haha! It’s just too bad you can’t setup a server with that kind of connection. It would have been ideal for an FTP server or one that’s used in IRC (DCC), or even BT.
What does that 2GB quota mean? Is that on a per day basis? The limit isn’t download (and upload) friendly, IMO.
July 19th, 2007 at 15:08
We wish it was 2GB a day, its monthly! very little so you wouldnt be able to finish all of axxos movies, maybe 3. For dodo thee limit i think now is download and upload. my ISP charges me $60 a month for 12gb at 1.5Mbps, but now companys like TPG are offering 150GB (40GB peak, 110GB offpeak) for only $70 at up to 24Mbps..Hope that answers your questions
July 19th, 2007 at 15:29
Here we have quite the opposite, all dial-up plans here now have unlimited downloads.
The theoretical speed of ADSL2+ is 3 Megabytes per second. Most people however only reach a percentage of that speed because they are a few km away from the exchange. A 700MB file would take no longer than 12 minutes (about 1 megabyte per second) even if you are a long way away from the exchange. It’s a pity we have monthly download quotas.
Over here in Australia 2GB is quite a decent amount, as most people usually only have 600MB plans on average. Also the quota is how much you can download in one month.
Australia’s best value plan is probably TPG’s new 150GB “Super” ADSL2+ plan. It’s quite good for only $69.95.
Advantages:
* 40GB Onpeak downloads
* 110GB Offpeak downloads (Early Morning)
* 24576 / 1024 kbps speeds
* No excess data fees (Shaped to dial-up speeds)
* Static IP
* Servers allowed
* 20 Email Addresses with 30MB Webspace
* Free Spam & Virus filter
* Cheap calls to tech support
* TPG Runs some gaming servers of it’s own
Negatives:
* Transferring to another ISP is costly ($175)
* Data going through peering services is counted
* Rumored Poor tech support
July 20th, 2007 at 5:27
[...] had an interesting discussion earlier on countries that have the fastest bandwidth speeds. The data from the OECD however, wasn’t quite up to date. A report from Yahoo! News came up [...]
July 20th, 2007 at 6:11
@iPirate and Mitchell,
Yeah, thanks a lot! A 2 GB quota per month is just like browsing celeb pics for me.
The $70-package sounds like a good deal. I remembered back in February, I nearly had that amount of transferred data (both upload and download) in BT alone. I’m on a 384Kbps ADSL connection, by the way. The promo given by my ISP which is valid for a year is “Speed-on-Demand”- 384Kbps for 12 hours and 768Kbps for the other 12 hrs.
A couple more questions:
1. Do you have a lock-in period? Over here, ISP’s have lock-in periods ranging from 1-2 years. A termination fee of around US$60 is included in the contract if customer decides to terminate the service.
2. Do you pay a separate fee for tech support? Over here, tech support is free. We just dial an 800 number.
July 20th, 2007 at 8:06
I think sweden is way ahead of most countrys.
I got 24/1 Mbit for 57 USD, no limits at all I can use both my up/down stream as much as I want no caps or shaping. There is 10/10 (no limits or shaping) for even less if you live in any of the 40 largest citys in Sweden (Sweden is a small country) alot of us live in those citys I’m not :(.
We regularly see adds offering the same bw no caps going down in price but some operators got issues with up time thats why you pay 57 USD.
The new thing for us is 100/100 it’s a little more expensive but the speed is worth it. There are a alot of these alredy.
You might have heard of the 75 year old woman geting 40Gbps to here home to, she lives in sweden.
July 20th, 2007 at 8:17
Yup! See the trackback above. I just posted an article about it. I hope you can share your comments in that post in case you have some more info.
July 20th, 2007 at 15:51
Yes we have contracts, but usually you can cancel them. For doing this they will charge you a pretty high cancellation fee (mine is $300 I think).
The longer the contract, the less you pay of course. All ISPs are different, some ofter monthly contracts while others may other 6-Month, 12-Month and 24-Month contracts.
Tech support is free, however some ISPs will charge higher rates than others for the phone call. Most ISPs now however offer tech support for the price of a local call.
BTW if we managed to use up the whole 150GB in one month I think they would be checking into what we are downloading!
TPG originally designed the plan to look good on paper, but to limit people from actually downloading the whole 150GB. I know this because they (a representative) first suggested it on the Whirlpool Forums, and further tweaked it with replies from other forum users.
Whirlpool is the Worlds largest and most popular Australian Broadband website in the world. It’s forum is a great source of information and it has over 150,000 users. It also has an attractive website design and is frequented recommended by broadband and hardware enthusiasts.
July 20th, 2007 at 20:35
wait so if say i were to download 160gb of material i *accidently* found while searching for free movies and games . and i was not aware of its legality *cough* and downloaded it, could they check what i downloaded or is that breach of privacy?
July 21st, 2007 at 13:12
INAL, but I believe that they can monitor traffic going through their network if they have a good reason and explicitly do not share any information or use any information that is irreverent.
July 22nd, 2007 at 8:00
Thanks for your timely response, Mitchell.
I’m concerned with their privacy policy too. They’d check on you if you use too much bandwidth? I believe some ISP’s in the US do check on what their subscribers have downloaded. I read a post from the uTorrent forums 4 months ago about this. The poster was asking if he was being tracked since he just received an e-mail from his ISP telling him to delete the copyrighted material he downloaded or face the consequences. He claims to have downloaded it for backup purposes.
July 23rd, 2007 at 15:38
I recall now that ISPs usually only get concerned and start/want to monitor traffic when you are using so much bandwidth that it is affecting other people on the network.
But this is what I have heard on Whirlpool and so it could be wrong.
lol backups, that what I tell my dad when he asked what happened to all my DVDs a while ago.
“What happened to all of those DVDs you just bought?”
“Um..what? Oh yeah, I just used them to back up my hard drive in case I need to reformat :/”
“You used 50 DVDs?”
“Um..yeah, cause there is lots of stuff on my hard drive and I back up monthly”
In reality I was selling stuff to people, I’ve made $170 so far
But I did actually use a few for backing up.
September 16th, 2008 at 16:32
cool! Optic fiber is at wow! I feel 3.3 Fiber optics for broadband networks and MSO.. How to use dial-up internet on the same PC which is used for Broadband?
November 14th, 2008 at 21:39
Any information for Indian networks ? I am planning to have start up there - but not sure about internet cost ? Its big business hub I hope we will get competitive prices there.
March 12th, 2009 at 21:29
It’s in it’s infancy here in the UK - being priced at approx £60.00 which is about $100 at the moment.
March 18th, 2009 at 13:22
Thank you for another great article. Where else could anyone get that kind of information in such a perfect way of presentation.
April 9th, 2009 at 22:59
Thanks for a great article very helpful.
May 5th, 2009 at 2:05
This cable, made of optical fibre will provide much greater speeds, reducing drastically the costs of Internet connectivity. The amount paid for connectivity today may become much cheaper. This is a direct pointer to a serious economic development.
May 23rd, 2009 at 23:23
Most home users don’t even get the difference it is usually all about price and even with the old figures you can see why they should be concerned.