Broadband cheap in Britain claims Oftel

By Alun Williams

Posted on 5 Jun 2003 at 16:25

Britain is one of the cheapest places in the world for broadband services, according to a new survey from Oftel.

The figures show a six per cent drop in broadband prices in the last six months and show Britain standing at the cheaper end of the global spectrum, or at least a relatively small sample of it. 'Oftel's research shows that UK residential consumers pay less for their broadband services than people in France, Germany and the US,' said Peter Waller, Deputy Director General of Telecommunications. 'Only Sweden offers slightly cheaper service than the UK.'

Oftel attributes our relative success to the UK's competitive broadband market. As the regulator for this market, however you might expect Oftel to says this. It believes price cuts are triggering new demand with the take up for broadband running at a rate of up to 35,000 new subscribers a week

You can read the full figures on the Oftel Web site.

Oftel has based its findings on the average of the two cheapest deals available from service providers in a country (with prices including the monthly subscription, as well as set up costs spread over three years). There are two sets of results: an 'entry level' with a minimum requirement for 128Kbit/sec and a standard residential broadband service, with a minimum requirement for 257kbit/s. For the former, when the value of cable modems are included in the deal, the UK is the joint cheapest in the survey at £20 per month, with Sweden costing £20, France £22, Germany £26 and US £31.

When it comes to the price index for (downstream) bandwidth for standard residential broadband the situation changes slightly. Sweden is cheapest at an equivalent of £23 per month (for 506Kbits/sec), the UK achieves £26 per month (512Kbits/sec), France £26 with a higher weighting (512Kbits/sec), the US £31 (384Kbits/sec) and Germany £31 with a higher weighting (768Kbits/sec).

The report is meant to be an international benchmarking study of Internet access covering both basic dial-up access and broadband (DSL or cable modem). Covering services available in France, Germany, Sweden, United Kingdom and the US (various states), it is a snapshot of prices as at 13th February 2003.