Broadband pricing study shows vast disparity worldwide

[TooNice]

I feel this is more a report on cost-of-living in various countries. How do these prices compare with average incomes? Things are reasonably expensive in the UK because running costs of staff is also reasonably high.

Well, I am presently in a country that is near at the bottom of the chart in both of speed and cost, and I can assure you that it is not scaled according to average income (a fraction of UK average).

To give you an idea of how expensive it is, the "top of the range" 20Mbit/4Mbit (with a line stability ranging from "passable" to "over 40% packet loss level of usable") would cost 244 pound per month. 33.50 pound get you the basic 1MBit/724Kbit package.

Mind you, I am not saying that cost of labour has no impact at all, I think that it might play a big role in countries with relatively mature net infrastructure (regardless of whether the country is classed as developed or developing), but outside that, it is a different story.

[cheesemp]

Wanting static IP, no filtering or shaping, no contention problems and competent support staff tends to push the price up. Having to bundle in calls and line rental muddies the actual amount I am paying but it is certainly a bit more than mentioned here.

Yes but how many average punters want (or even know) all that! I'm certainly happy with our plusnet connection and we hammer it (watch more TV that way than we use an aerial and steam downloads). I think i'm paying about £18 a month for it with phone line... If the average punter is paying £30 then I still say a lot of people need to shop around - for more unusual use cases this won't apply.

[mtyson]

Update to this survey now published, shows UK slipping down the rankings from 61st to 71st place.