Broadband bang per buck: How your country rates on speed versus cost

Fast affordable broadband is one of the essentials of modern life. Like an effective education system, if a country does not ensure its citizens have universal access, the future will invariably be compromised for all concerned. Hence the latest comparative country data from Cable.co.uk paints an interesting picture of which countries are doing it right, and those where short term gain for the telcos has prevailed.

A report from the Commission on Science and Technology for Development of the United Nations Economic and Social Council claimed broadband offered far more significant socioeconomic impacts than earlier technological leaps such as telephony and narrowband or low-speed datacommunications, and that "the digital divide is increasinglybecoming a knowledge divide."

The report states "the scope of information and of technical andsocioeconomic know-how of educational, scientific, health and political resources availableto one segment of society (via broadband) is virtually infinite, while the remainder of the population (without broadband) remains excluded from the information society."

On a macro level, broadband's positive economic benefits cannot be ignored. A World Bank study in 2009 found that for each 10 percent increase in broadband penetration, there was a 1.38 percent increase in gross domestic product (GDP), for both developing and developed countries.

Hence the latest data available from British broadband, TV and phone comparison site Cable.co.uk should be interesting food for thought for governments, businesses, organizations and individuals.

Broadband Speed – country by country

The data below was gathered over the year to May 10, 2017 and was compiled by Cable.co.uk from more than 63 million broadband speed tests conducted by M-Lab, a partnership between New America's Open Technology Institute, Google Open Source Research, Princeton University's PlanetLab, and other supporting partners.

Singapore's feat in topping this list isn't surprising, but the size of its lead over every other country should be emphasized. Singapore's average broadband speed is double that of eighth-placed Belgium, and near triple that of 21st-placed United States.

Given the number of countries on the list, Singapore's 37 percent speed margin over second-placed Sweden is an outlier, and goes some way to explaining why start-up companies across Asia are clamoring to build their headquarters there.

At the opposite end of the scale, some developed countries should be downright ashamed of their efforts, and the farcical incompetence of Australia's National Broadband Network (NBN) must be mentioned.

The largest infrastructure project in Australia's history, NBN at one stage aimed to deliver 1 Gbit/s and although it still isn't complete, Australia's 7.7 Mbps puts it in 55th place, well behind Kenya, Thailand, Bulgaria and Moldova and narrowly ahead of Mexico, Greece and Macedonia. Singapore's average download speed is sevenfold that of Australia, where the Government's stated initiative was to become a global leader in this very metric.

Broadband Cost - country by country

The data below was gathered during the period August 11, 2017 to October 12, 2017 from 3,351 individual broadband packages by the UK's largest independent research consultancy, BDRC Continental, and subsequently analyzed by Cable.co.uk.

In light of overwhelming evidence that affordable broadband connectivity is crucial to a country's competitiveness, regardless of its state of technological development as a nation, you'd think that the governments of developed countries might be paying attention and preventing telcos from price-gouging, but sadly not.

The average price of broadband connectivity in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States seems to have been based on the time-honored "whatever the market can afford."

Conversely, six of the 10 cheapest countries in the world for broadband connectivity can be found in the former USSR, including Russia itself. Affordable broadband is one of the cheapest economy superchargers available.

Broadband bang-per-buck - country by country

The data below was calculated by dividing the speed data by the cost data to achieve a speed/cost ratio for each country, and it offers a clear indication of which governments have recognized the benefits of embracing the digital age.

Note that the data sets which make up the above table don't match up perfectly and we have only included countries where both sets of data are available.

Source: Cable.co.uk