
A random sampling of internet service prices around the world - sT370ma2
https://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/world-internet-prices.html
======
EB-Barrington
Data point from Ukraine (Kyiv):

Unlimited data mobile 4G costs 100UAH per month (~9 EUR / ~$11 USD). Fast
enough that a 300GB backup/recovery is no problem.

Home internet I don't actually pay for (I live in a rental), but the current
plan costs the owner 200 UAH per month (~6 EUR / ~$7 USD), "gigabit port",
unlimited data (realistic speed is up to 250 up/down).

Pretty sure there is some kind of "combo deal" for both, and I think the home
internet price includes TV.

At these low prices, I'm not really interested in shopping around or checking
the details of what I'm actually paying for - it's all incredibly cheap and
fast enough.

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wastedhours
For fast and cheap you can't overlook Romania, in the cities I've been in, the
speed has been exceptional and reliable (which is more than I can say for most
British internet, excluding the FTTH our current flat has).

E.g. [https://www.digiromania.ro/servicii/internet/internet-
fix/fi...](https://www.digiromania.ro/servicii/internet/internet-
fix/fiberlink-1000)

~~~
tn890
I have that subscription. 8.3 Euros/9.6USD per month for 1000/500 FTTH.
Reliability is stellar.

I’ve had this package for 6 years at least, in 3 different cities. It’s been
the same everywhere.

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elipsey
Wow, where exactly can I get those prices? I'm in downtown SF and it's $80 not
including tax for 200x20 cable. I also don't have the rental fee because I
argued with them through three hours and two of my own modems until they
finally auth'd my MAC address.

This is the best/cheapest connection I have had; my last connection in NY was
20x5 for $96/mo, also with my own modem. The cable company often tries to sell
me a contract TV plan, in exchange for a small temporary package discount, but
I un-want TV, so this is not appealing. Also, I hear that in some countries
you can't advertise prices that omit tax and surcharges, but here you can.

So I think the US prices in the table are basically fake, where the real
prices are about ~2x in my experiance. Just curious whether the prices in
other countries are real.

Like can you really get internet for the equivalent of 30-40USD/mo?

~~~
112012123
Depends heavily on your building. At my last downtown SF building, I paid
~$40/month for a symmetric gigabit fiber line.

~~~
elipsey
lol i'm moving soon, which building?

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jwalton
> The only types of Internet service plans shown in the table are DSL and
> fiber optic cable plans. Since cheapskatesguide.org is about finding the
> best deals, I excluded from consideration categories of Internet services
> that I feel are not good deals.

Do you guys have especially rubbish cable internet in the US? Or especially
amazing DSL? Cable is much better where I am in Into than DSL.

~~~
chrismeller
The overwhelming number of people I know in the US (including my mother) are
all cable.

DSL was only ever in the 3mbps down range, but cable easily hits the 100
range.

~~~
eikenberry
(US, PacNW) I used DSL whenever available due to it's reliability compared to
cable. With cable I'd have outages at least a few times a year (for up to a
week) and with DSL I'd have outages once every few years (never more than a
day). I always just figured the phone company was used to high uptime
requirements (critical communications infrastructure) while cable was not
(optional entertainment).

When I last had DSL (2016) I had 40mbs down/5mbs up. Now I have fiber at 1gbs
symmetrical for $65/mo.

------
speedgoose
In France, Free just announced up to 5000mbs down and 700mbs up for 40€.
Orange has 2000mbs down and 600mbs up for 50€, and may have better peering in
general.

~~~
ClumsyPilot
Is that really 2 gigabit down? Insane! You have to buy some serious gear to
even be able to use that!

~~~
lostlogin
And when you have that gear, what is it used for? Obviously businesses can,
but a home user? Even with an appetite for movies etc you would have filled
your drives in no time.

~~~
simplyinfinity
I do full disk image backups of my half full 1TB OS drive to a HDD every day,
and upload archive to remote storage every few nights, so about 1-2 TB a week
of uploads. Then i have my other HDDs backed up once a week, so about 10-20gb
of changes a month.

Now i started doing photography as a hobby, and boy, are those raw files
large. 24mb each. Last weekend i was on a short trip with friends, 75 GB of
raw photos and videos. Gotta back those up, the faster the better.

~~~
speedgoose
Why don't you synchronize the files instead of doing full image backups?

~~~
NullPrefix
Synchronization does not offer benefits of proper back up. Ransomware
propagates through sync

~~~
gowld
How so?

~~~
majormjr
If ransomware starts encrypting your files then the sync will just upload that
encrypted data.

~~~
speedgoose
How is it different to upload a disk image containing encrypted data?

You can also use versionning when you sync your files.

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Ecco
The data in there is incomplete at best. I have AT&T fiber in the US (line 3)
and it's around $80, definitely NOT $39.

~~~
the_pwner224
For all the big companies like ATT, Comcast, their internet prices are based
only on how much of a monopoly they have in the local area. When a qualified
competitor moves in (if they are even able to after well-funded resistance
from the big company) prices become much more competitive. Or at least that's
what I've heard many anecdotes of on the internet. Paying $140 for 300/25
internet + TV in Chicago, $10 difference between the 100/200/300/600/gigabit
tiers.

------
milankragujevic
A datapoint for Serbia: (prices are sampled per tier, there are more
combinations possible)

Telekom Srbija (incumbent national provider) (note: all prices with 24 month
contract, 6.48$/mo mandatory landline fee should be added, VAT is included) \-
20/4 Mbps on VDSL2 - 16.69$/mo \- 100/10 Mbps on VDSL2 - 23.58$/mo \- 200/80
Mbps on GPON - 33.40$/mo \- 1000/400 Mbps on GPON - 88.41$/mo

Orion telekom (alternative provider) (note: all prices with 24 month contract,
VAT is included) \- 10/1 Mbps on WISP/ADSL2+ - 14.73$/mo \- 100/10 Mbps on
VDSL2 - 18.66$/mo "Special" offer without contract for GPON: \- 200/10 Mbps -
9.83$/mo \- 500/20 Mbps - 14.74$/mo \- 1000/50 Mbps - 24.57$/mo

Average monthly wage is 589$, minimum is 294$, yearly minimum 3528$, average
7068$.

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BuildTheRobots
It doesn't seem to differentiate between FTTC and FTTP fibre which has
dramatic differences (74mbit vs gigabit), and most of the UK is still
currently stuck with FTTC.

~~~
tomalpha
One of my pet peeves is Fibre To The Cabinet being marketed as Fibre.

Yes there's a fibre optic cable in there somewhere, and it terminates a bit
closer to my home than old fashioned DSL, but it's still fundementally DSL.
It's just a slightly shorter length of copper wire.

~~~
samoa42
indeed hilarious.

then again there would be practically no fibre penetration without this "hack"
;-)

~~~
NullPrefix
If you install fibre between your computer and your router, which connects
through dial-up, does it counts as fibre internet? Demarcation line might come
into play, so you could sell that fibre to your neighbour and market it to him
as proper fibre, since it's all that he's seeing

~~~
samoa42
exactly :-D

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lacksconfidence
Could use another metric, "number of big macs" or whatever to help compare
what the amount of $ is worth in the local market.

~~~
brensmith
Agreed! Another metric to add might be $/Mb/Month. That way it's easy to
compare disparate speeds.

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njacobs5074
Surely there's another factor here, which is indexing that cost to the average
monthly income for the associated country.

~~~
tgvaughan
Definitely agree with this. Although doing anything else would be way harder
(impossible?), straight up comparison of prices after currency conversion is
really only of use to tourists.

------
bane
Notice the price in Japan, which is an island and so all in/out-bound traffic
has to go through undersea cables. Similar story for South Korea, which for
all purposes is also basically an island.

It's actually not even entirely uncommon for people to not have dedicated home
internet and just get unlimited, unmetered, mobile service and tether when at
home or use a wireless puck -- like bandwidth heavy users of streaming video.

The last time we were in those areas, our AirBnBs also didn't have home
internet/Wifi. The hosts just provided a puck that we were allowed to take
with us wherever we went and just tether to it while in a backpack. Even
though we have Google Fi, it saved a ton on mobile data and offered full 4g
data speeds literally every place we went.

~~~
nroets
Here in South Africa, I pay $17 for 40 GB of 4g data. And I can transfer some
of that to another prepaid SIM.

That way, I kept one of my couch surfing online for a month. It hardly cost me
anything, but it was invaluable to him when he hitchhiked for a month.

------
hyko
Why is a “random sample” the right tool to determine Internet Service prices
around the world?

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namanaggarwal
I think this sampling is not good enough. Tikona is not even close to being a
major player in India. I am paying 3.5$/month for a 4G connection with 1.5 GB
data every day.

~~~
lostlogin
While that is a very good price, it is a limit that I would find it hard to
keep to having had an uncapped connection. I pay 14x that price but use
20-120x that data cap.

~~~
rudiv
You use 30-150GB a day on your cell phone? I had unlimited data for a long
time and realized I used little.more than half a gigabyte per day unless I was
away from home & office (in a different city etc.)

~~~
lostlogin
No, home connection. Sorry I assumed you meant that data was used for cell and
home usage.

------
alex_young
A year ago in southern Switzerland I was paying $40 for 10 GB symmetrical
fiber. There was a $30 option through another carrier, but you get what you
pay for right?

------
checkyoursudo
In northern Sweden, I get 30 down and I think like 3 or 5 up for approx. 35
USD/mo. I live in a very small town with only DSL available, or I guess 4G
modem with very low cap but I don't think I know anybody who uses that.

In the nearest city, I think some friends recently got set up with 300 down
for maybe 50-60 USD/mo.

For my family of 4, 30 down is okay most of the time. I don't have teenagers
yet though, so ...

~~~
runj__
Bahnhof has 10000 Mbit/s for 399SEK (45USD) in Stockholm. I doubt I would
really need it though.

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Jemm
Doesn't show data caps which are common in Canada.

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aflat
Why isn't Verizon on the list? And where can I sign up for Verison it seems
like a pretty good deal:

USA Verison - $39.99 200 Fiber

~~~
ninkendo
The idea that any particular internet service is available at some price/speed
in "The USA" is just wrong on the face of it. ISP availability varies on a
_house by house_ basis, let alone individual streets/towns/counties/states.

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gverrilla
It's not viable to look only at raw price, because these ISP are amongst the
most aggressive price marketing companies. They have bundles, they have 3, 4,
sometimes 6 months promotions for new users, they negotiate a lot, etc

------
chrismeller
You can get 500/500 fiber for like €35/m in Estonia (if you bundle with your
phone). Gigabit for the €50 range.

That sounds great, but considering the average salary is about €1500/m it’s
actually really shit.

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ex_amazon_sde
A cost / speed scatterplot would be nice.

Even better on a service like fast.com

~~~
nroets
And a second article for the price of mobile data

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larrysalibra
A data point from Hong Kong:

HK$138/m (US$17.80) for 1 gigabit (symmetric) fiber HK$160/m (US$20.64) for
unlimited LTE deprioritized after 20gb

~~~
mrslave
Imagine how slow that will be after it's great firewalled. No wonder there's
protests in the streets!

~~~
lostlogin
Maybe - the UK seems to be going to give residency to millions of Hong King
residents. Even if a small percentage of them take that offer up, that could
be a decent population drop.

[https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/uk-chinas-
sec...](https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/uk-chinas-security-law-
violates-hong-kong-agreement-71550723)

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NicoJuicy
Belgium: 40€ / month ( Scarlet: cheapest for internet ( unlimited) + digital
tv)

Most expensive ~100€/month ( Telenet: internet + TV )

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yboris
USA suburb in New Jersey: $80/month for cable internet 5Mbps.

No alternatives - unless you call $70/month DSL a competitor.

~~~
KoftaBob
Where in NJ is this? That's gotta be at least semi-rural. The NJ suburbs near
NYC have Verizon Fios 200mbps for $40/m.

~~~
yboris
Central Jersey - 40 miles away from NYC.

No Fios available :(

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miguelrochefort
Canada tops the chart, as expected.

