OECD Report: In US Broadband Is Really Expensive
OECD just released their telecommunications outlook report (PDF link), which is one monster of a document, that can take up an entire weekend. There will be a longer post sometime this weekend, but for now little nugget: US broadband in terms of prices is not exactly the cheapest, which is typically what you should expect when the market is a duoply.
Using the monthly subscriptions, the cheapest broadband plan, according to OECD is available in Sweden: $10.47 a month. US comes in fourth at about $15.93 a month, which is hardly a surprise given cheap DSL offers from Bell Operators. However, price per megabit per month is where US is woefully behind other countries. In Japan consumers pay 22 cents Mbps per month, which Americans pay $3.18, about 15 times that. US ranks #13 by prices.
The worst comparison is in the newest and shiniest broadband technology: Fiber. In Japan NTT residential connection (100 Mbps down/up) costs $49 a month. In US, Verizon FiOS (30 megabits down/5 megabits up) costs $191.20.
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