Cheap broadband? Try south-east Asia

Newly published research from Point Topic says south-east Asia is the cheapest region in the world for broadband. The average monthly DSL rental price is just US$19 and that's less than half the cost of such connectivity in the rest of the Asia Pacific area and well below the price of broadband access everywhere else on earth as well.

Point Topic says the low price of broadband is mainly the result of what the company calls the "rather slow connection speed" of the DSL service offered by China Telecom. The average download speed in the south-east Asia region (and that includes the People's Republic of China) is 1,761kbps compared to the 7,738kbps for the greater Asia Pacific region overall.

Point Topic also found that western Europe and North America are close in terms of pricing. The average DSL service charge in Western Europe is $49.3 with a download speed of 4,172kbps, while the cost in North America is $48. The average price in eastern Europe is $39.8 for residential DSL services, that's about 19.2 per cent cheaper than the average charge in western Europe - but connectivity speed in eastern Europe is half of what it is in the west.

Looking elsewhere the report says, "With a relatively young and monopolistic market, where services are primarily being provided by the state-owned incumbents, the Latin and South American market has a relatively high service rental of $65.6 per month. Furthermore, due the under-developed broadband infrastructures, the average download speed of the service is much slower in Latin America than in any other region."

Then turning its attention to cable services, Point Topic reports that, "For cable modem services, the south-east Asia region has the cheapest residential cable modem service, priced at $15.8 per month."

Residential tariffs vary according to the speed of services and they can range from 192kbps to 2Mbps. The average downstream rate though is 656bps for residential grades and 480bps for business grades.

In summation Point Topic claims, "As a region leading FTTx deployment, the Asia Pacific has one of the lowest average price for residential FTTx services, priced at $37.8 and with download speeds of up to 100Mbps. Although eastern Europe has a still cheaper average price of $30.8 the services are primarily fibre-to-the-building (FTTB) where multiple users share a single fibre link. As a result the average service is slower at somewhere in the region of 40Mps."