1 Introduction
Point Topic tracks the quarterly changes in the standalone and bundled broadband tariffs provided by European[1] fixed line residential and business operators. This report presents the latest tariff benchmarks at the end of September 2024. To put them into perspective, we are comparing the trends to June 2024.
The complete tariff data is available within Point Topic’s European Broadband Operators and Tariffs (EuroBOT) subscription service. We provide access to the raw data, as well as charts and tables for the tariffs offered.
2 What we measure
The tariff database covers all major fixed broadband operators across the EU, UK, Norway, Iceland and Switzerland. In total, we track more than 200 operators from 31 countries.
Standalone and bundled
We report tariffs where broadband is offered as the only service (standalone) and tariffs where broadband is offered with other services such as TV and telephony (bundled).
Residential and business
We report both business and residential broadband tariffs.
Technologies
Within this report we look at differences between the three major fixed broadband technologies – copper, cable and fibre. The full tariff database also includes some wireless and mobile broadband tariffs.
Changes to reporting
We have excluded all tariffs which report a monthly subscription charge higher than $5,000 PPP (purchasing power parity) or which report no monthly subscription charge.
This change does not affect the full tariff database but only this analysis.
3 Europe-wide tariffs and bandwidths
We have compared the average subscription charges and corresponding bandwidths for different broadband technologies across Europe. All prices are quoted in US dollars at PPP (purchasing power parity) rates to allow easier comparison.
3.1 Residential broadband packages
As of the end of September 2024, copper-based residential broadband tariffs were the cheapest ($49 PPP) but they also offered the lowest average download speed and remained unchanged from the previous quarter at 16 Mbps.
The average monthly tariffs for cable and fibre reached near parity at the close of the quarter with both technologies decreasing in costs around 1% on average during the quarter with full fibre becoming the most expensive on offer at $72.72 PPP and cable coming in at $72.15 PPP. Fibre-based tariffs offered a higher average download speed at 803 Mbps, compared to 803 Mbps over cable.
At the close of Q3 2024, the average tariffs based on fibre technology decreased by 0.8% and 1.1% respectively for cable, while the average download speeds went up by 24.4% for cable and 21.4% for fibre.
In Q3 2024, the average downstream bandwidth in Europe, regardless of technology, was 707 Mbps, up a very notable 30% from 544 Mbps in the previous quarter. As FTTP and Docsis3.1 availability across Europe is becoming more widespread, we recorded 231 residential gigabit tariffs (with downstream bandwidth of at least 900 Mbps) in Q3 2024, though this number was down slightly from 241 such tariffs in the previous quarter. This will be due to operators streamlining speed tiers, especially in their full fibre broadband offerings.
Figure 1 below provides a comparative overview of average speed and monthly cost by technology for Q2 2024 and Q3 2024.
In three months to the end of Q3 2024, the combined average cost per Mbps on broadband packages provided over the three technologies reduced to $0.10 PPP (Figure 2). In terms of the cost per Mbps, copper remains by far the most expensive technology at $2.96 PPP which is down 14.4% compared to the previous quarter’s $3.46 PPP. We recorded 56 copper-based residential broadband tariffs this quarter compared to 73 in Q2 2024, marking the sea-change from legacy copper-based networks to fibre. In comparison, we tracked 68 cable broadband tariffs (pre-dominantly being offered by Eastern European ISPs), and 591 fibre broadband tariffs at the close of September 2024.
3.2 Business broadband packages
The largest change in the average business tariff during the quarter was for cable-based services and during the quarter the average monthly charge for this technology decreased by nearly 11% going from $101.39 PPP to $90.76 PPP.
Although cable broadband tariffs decreased during the quarter the technology is not being as widely offered as fibre-based packages as we recorded 25 cable-based business tariffs compared to 28 in Q2 2024. The average bandwidth being offered via cable went up by 29%, average cable broadband speeds increased to 714 Mbps from 553 Mbps in the previous quarter.
Between Q2 and Q3 2024, the combined average download speed for all technologies increased by 24.4% and stood at 827 Mbps (Figure 2).
4 Country ranking tables
Ranking countries using the average cost of broadband subscriptions is a straightforward idea but the variation in entry level versus median and average costs can be significant. To help provide an easy way of comparing directly we have taken the PPP data on the entry level, median and average tariffs, produced rankings and then compared the variance (Table 1).
We have included a ‘variance’ column to indicate how different ranks for the different metrics are spread. So we see that, for example, the wide spread in Austria, Bulgaria, Italy, and Latvia (big differences in entry level, average and median tariffs) is represented by high variance of the rankings. At the other end of the scale countries such as Czech Republic, Lithuania, and Poland rank rather consistently. However, it should be noted that this is only one set of metrics measuring one aspect of the broadband markets so conclusions should not be drawn in isolation.
Table 1. Country ranking by median residential broadband tariffs, Q3 2024. Source: Point Topic.
The full data set used for this report can be accessed by purchasing our EuroBOT product.
[1] Until Q4 2022, we tracked tariffs in countries across all continents on a biannual basis (every second quarter). From Q2 2023, we pared down our global tariff reporting to include 31 countries in Europe, with regional focuses on Eastern and Western Europe and as such have been updating the European tariff benchmark report on a quarterly basis.
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