Prices on broadband are falling pretty much everywhere says broadband research specialist Point Topic in its latest report, which paints a picture of increasing broadband speed for less money.
Of the three primary broadband technologies, DSL has seen the largest fall in average price for a subscription down from $66.75 in Q108 to $53.32 in Q3 across the world, this amounts to a 20% drop. In comparison average subscription prices for cable are down just over 12% and FTTx down by 6.5%.
And these figures were put together ignoring quad play offerings where one or more service is heavily discounted, taken from published pricing for standalone broadband services ‘ so the real fall is probably substantially larger.
Point Topic has calculated the average cost for a megabit (Mb) of bandwidth, and while DSL prices have seen the largest average falls in 2008 it is still the most expensive broadband option for the bandwidth on offer.
In the Middle East and Africa consumers are paying over $46/Mb which when compared to Western Europe at $6.23/Mb, which shows the huge variation between the markets. By comparison in EMEA broadband speeds are up an average of 13%.
North America and Canada which have a less competitive DSL market show only a small fall in average price and a correspondingly minor increase in speed since Q108.
Average DSL speeds on offer have been higher in Asia Pacific than North America since implementation but the gap has been closing. Even now though the average price per megabit is $16.10 in North America compared to $3.80 in Asia Pac, and that’s still more than double the European pricing, making the US the most expensive major country in which to buy DSL broadband.
The story is different in cable though. Implementation of DOCSIS 3.0 has gathered pace during 2008 in North America and Western Europe enabling cable operators to offer significantly higher speeds and the price per megabit on offer has improved.
In Q108 cable broadband was more expensive per megabit in Western Europe than in North America at $7.45/Mb and $5.80/Mb respectively. Operators in Europe have now brought this down to $4.80/Mb and $4.89/Mb respectively, more or less on a par. Eastern Europe showed an average reduction of 25% on prices for cable packages in the first three quarters of the year.