Here are the countries with the most and least affordable internet

[midian182]

In brief: It’s fair to say that in most countries today, internet access is an essential utility in the same category as water and electricity. But broadband doesn’t cost the same amount everywhere, and in some developing countries where earnings are low, it’s hundreds of times more expensive than the average monthly wage.

NetCredit, a Chicago-based online lender, used World Bank data to come up with the average monthly wage in every country in the world. It then used Cable.co.uk’s worldwide broadband price research to work out how much of an average salary you would need to spend in each country for broadband.

Sitting at the bottom of the table is Yemen. The county has been embroiled in a civil war for years, which has contributed to a broadband package costing $2,466 per month, or 2,792.56 percent of the average $88.33 wage.

For the most affordable broadband deal, nowhere can beat Monaco. Its $34.49 subscription is just 0.68 percent of the average $5,043.69 monthly wage.

When it comes to the price of internet services measured against speed, Romania is the world’s cheapest at $0.13 per Mbps. Not surprisingly, Yemen is bottom of the pile again, with a price of $3,768.65 per Mbps.

In the US, where NetCredit places the average wage at $4,000 per month, the company has worked out the cost of a 10Mbps broadband line as being $7.01 per month, which is just 0.16 percent of the average income. Using the same metric, Canada’s internet is 0.22 percent of the average wage, while the least affordable country in North America is Haiti, where a $216 per month cost is 60.28 percent of the average wage.

While the majority of countries pay only a small percentage of their average wage to get broadband, developing countries and those affected by war are all at a disadvantage when it comes to value; a result of low wages and a lack of reliable broadband infrastructure.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/87758-here-countries-most-least-affordable-internet.html

 

[Gomos]

A map with 200 arrows is not the best way to display this information...

 

[Eldritch]

USA - $7 Constant whining.

China - $150 for same connection. Not even a peep. Heck, they even spend that extremely costly bandwidth to praise the great leader. So patriotic!

Just a reminder to folks that maybe China isn't all that wonderful.

 

[m4a4]

10MBPS or 10MBps (implying bytes as shown in the graphs) is 8x different than 10Mbps (bits).

Like, couldn't they at least label the graph properly if it is actually supposed to be bits?

 

[Carlos GarPov]

The data shown has got a lot of flaws and therefore it is not correct. I live in Nicaragua and I pay U$ 54 (US dollars after taxes) for a 50mbs internet connection. An average 10mbs connection goes around 30 bucks or less.

I'm gonna post right here the major internet providers' contacts, so you might check upon the real facts!
Claro Nicaragua: (505) 1800-0000. Tigo Nicaragua (505) 8888 0999 (this one is a business whatsapp chat number)

 

[Puiu]

I don't know if 10Mbps connections are even a thing anymore in Romania.

In most cities you can buy 100-300Mbps for 7.5$, 500Mbps for 8.5$ and 1Gbps for less than 10$. (no data caps or hidden fees)

 

[noel24]

Averages doesn't work too well for bigger countries with spread population. Of course Monaco will be top of the charts here, They can be served by single cable from some French telecom, 300 yards from Their border.

Recently my suplier upgraded Me from 100Mb/s WiFi shared across few neighbours (40Mbs on a good night) to a 300Mbit optical fiber cable, for a $1 more, so I pay $14,2/month - city south of Poland, 100K inhabitants. Villages probably have to buy mobile, close to $50 for unlimited 50Mbs 4G, so the average for Poland above seems fair.

 

[goldman]

Those values are kinda strange...
right now I'm in argentina, paying approx 1300 AR$(14,9 U$S official, 8,2 U$S unofficial) for 100Mbps(bits) with no data caps.

 

[MaestroIT]

I doubt it's accurary: they say in my country it cost around $100/10mbps line, but in reality I pay like $50 for a 30mbps vdsl line including the phone line contract.

Update: ok ok, it is calculated in relation to the average wage, so it is not $100 but the equivalent of 100$ to the salary of whatever it is...

 

[Reehahs]

Useless graph.

Median wage would be better metric to use than average wage, the latter is easily skewed with just a few big earners.

 

[S_Brideau]

Where the hell in Canada can you get an internet connection for $6.63? I thought the lowest plans, like the 5Mb/s ones were $25. As a Canadian, I'm paying my 100Mb/s connection $104/month...

 

[Endymio]

The data shown has got a lot of flaws and therefore it is not correct. I live in Nicaragua and I pay U$ 54

You misunderstood the article and the graph. The posted figures are adjusted by the average salary in each nation. Areas with lower average salaries will thus have their rate adjusted to a higher value.

Median wage would be better metric to use than average wage, the latter is easily skewed with just a few big earners.

True-- to a degree. The choice of CTM depends on the metric you're trying to express. If you're wanting to focus on affordability, rather than efficiency, then yes median is more appropriate. I don't think it will change the relative rankings much overall, though, except for a few nations near the top of the GINI index.

 

[madboyv1]

It's interesting to see the mins and maxes in in what people pay, but yeah I'm gonna jump on the bandwagon say that these infographics are absolutely terrible ha ha ha. They don't use the same color scaling (or even a good scaling for that matter), and are just an absolute mess to look at. Like, the US's $7.01/mo doesn't look at all worse than Tanzania's $414.64/mo, but that's a huge difference. Same with the percentage of monthly income, the US's .16% is nearly two orders of magnitude smaller than Bermuds's 11.11% but no difference in color scaling. Percentage of monthly income is honestly a better metric than cost per month anyways, which would have made the world wide map a lot more interesting in my opinion. Netcredit did a terrible job

 

[FF222]

Their methodology and base data is all flawed, the graph is useless. They did the comparison by contrasting how much a Mbps of internet connection would cost you compared to the average income.

However, they calculated the cost of internet connection by looking at the average internet subscription bandwidth divided by the median internet subscription price - which is just an utterly flawed way to determine the average cost of internet connections. Because for ex. the cost of a 1 Gbps connection is usually not 100x, but actually usually less than 10x that of a 10 Mbps connection; and you can't do meaningful calculations by dividing averages with mean values anyway.

This skewed all their numbers and made them useless for any practical comparison.

 

[Endymio]

...
and you can't do meaningful calculations by dividing averages with mean values anyway.

An average and a mean are the same thing. You may have meant median. But even in this case, while you can't meaningfully take the mean of a group of medians, you certainly can construct a ratio from a mean and median.. For instance, dividing the median family excess income by the average price of a movie ticket = how many such tickets can a "normal" family purchase.

 

[nismo91]

41USD for 10Mbps connection in Indonesia? I paid 28$ for 100Mbps and I can still find cheaper options from the competitor.

Also it is hard to believe that it costs more than $150 for a mere 10Mbps connection in China.

Go home NetCredit. You're drunk.

 

[Jpe1701]

I always take the opportunity on articles like this to make sure I complain about the state of internet in the US. I live in rural New England. The only service available is 4Mbps dsl for $45 a month. Now I don't have school aged kids in the house but the others in the area have to have their kids take turns using the internet to do their work because they don't have enough bandwidth. When any of us have games downloading we have to throttle them way down so that we can still use the internet. I've had the new assassin's creed game downloading since the day it released and it finished today only to need the new released update to play so now I have to wait more. Lol. Okay I'm done complaining now.

 

[RedGuard]

I don't know if 10Mbps connections are even a thing anymore in Romania.

Both my mother and mother-in-law are still on 10 mbps. They are afraid of letting the men installing the cables into the house and don't really care about Internet anyway. It just makes visiting them a pain especially when they ask me to "fix" their computers.

 

[No Longer Human]

Where the hell in Canada can you get an internet connection for $6.63? I thought the lowest plans, like the 5Mb/s ones were $25. As a Canadian, I'm paying my 100Mb/s connection $104/month...

City of over a million in Western Canada. Only options are Shaw or Telus. I have Shaw 70 Mbit, their second lowest tier for $95.55/month and it does have a data cap. That's with the 5% 'goods and services tax (GST) included.

 

[Caliburman]

I'm Canadian, and I have no idea where they are getting those prices from. Our prices are substantially more than that.

 

[Endymio]

I'm Canadian, and I have no idea where they are getting those prices from. Our prices are substantially more than that.

I suppose the article should be rewritten for clarity, as most people aren't realizing those are wage-adjusted numbers. In nations with high average monthly incomes, like Canada, they're adjusted downwards.

 

[duckofdeath]

Not surprised to see Ireland being expensive for consumers. Everything here is set up to appease Big Corp.
Oh well, at least we've got great

 

[duckofdeath]

connectivity.

(Sorry, the connection dropped again.)

 

[sauri]

Paying $6.45/month (490 rub) in Moscow, Russia for 500/500, no caps. It's worse of course further away from the capital.

 

[Endymio]

Paying $6.45/month (490 rub) in Moscow, Russia for 500/500, no caps. It's worse of course further away from the capital.

That's a bit of an understatement, isn't it? Rural broadband is nearly nonexistent, unless things have changed recently.