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 December 2024. To put them into perspective, we are comparing the trends to September 2024.
The complete tariff data is available within Point Topic’s European Broadband Statistics 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 December 2024, copper-based residential broadband tariffs were the cheapest ($50 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 have decreased in cost at the close of the quarter. Cable saw the largest decrease in average pricing coming down by nearly 13%. At the close of Q4 2024, the average monthly cost for connections using cable technology decreased to $63 PPP from $72 PPP. However, worth noting is that the average download speed for cable-based packages also decreased during the quarter coming in at 608 Mbps compared to 801 Mbps at the end of September. This can be attributed to there being a proliferation of cable-based bundled services, i.e. broadband and TV or broadband, TV, and VoIP. There were nearly double the amount of bundled services being offered by suppliers during the quarter to secure the ‘seasonal’ TV subscribers whilst trying to shore up their ARPUs.
Full fibre-based tariffs offered the highest average download speed at 724 Mbps, however, this is down slightly compared to 803 Mbps in the previous quarter. Again, this is due to a larger number of tariffs being offered, with greater mid-tier choices available than in Q3 2024.
On the positive side, the cost for tariffs based on full fibre technology decreased by 5% q-o-q with the average monthly charge coming in at around $69 PPP compared with $73 PPP in Q3.
At the close of 2024, the average downstream bandwidth in Europe, regardless of technology, was 645 Mbps down 9% from 707 Mbps in the previous quarter. As previously mentioned, having more bundled cable and sub 1 Gbps full fibre packages available during Q4 has brought the overall speed down, but has provided consumers with more options and affordability.
As FTTP and Docsis3.1 availability across Europe is becoming more widespread, we recorded 302 residential gigabit tariffs (with downstream bandwidth of at least 900 Mbps) in Q4 2024. This is up from 231 ultrafast tariffs on offer in the previous quarter. More notable was the 21% increase in the number of tariffs being offered in the 2 Gbps – 10 Gbps speed range. In Q4 we recorded 64 >2 Gbps residential packages on offer compared to 53 in Q3.
These speeds certainly do not make up the majority of tariffs on offer, however, it demonstrates the growing trend by ISPs to offer greater speeds to the growing number of consumers that have gotten to grips with the full fibre technology and its advantages of scalability.
Figure 1 below provides a comparative overview of average speed and monthly cost by technology for Q3 2024 and Q4 2024.
3.2 Business broadband packages
Businesses aiming to change or access broadband connectivity during Q4 would have been feeling the sting as the average price for all technologies increased by 11% q-o-q. The average monthly cost for business broadband services, regardless of the technology, increased to $146 PPP during the quarter, up from $132 PPP.
Copper-based services pricing bucked the trend as its monthly average came down $82 PPP compared with $104 PPP in Q3 2024. ISPs are offering lower downstream speeds for these services with the average speed decreasing from 38 Mbps to 29 Mbps.
The largest increase in pricing during the quarter was for fibre-based services as the average cost increased to $149 PPP or by a whopping 32%. The increased overhead costs, inflation, and challenging headwinds are clearly being passed on to the consumers by ISPs and this trend is likely to continue, however not to such a degree as ARPUs start to bolster revenues and ISPs bring their prices in line to remain competitive.
Cable broadband tariffs increased to $102 PPP from $91 PPP q-o-q. The average bandwidth being offered via cable therefore went down by 12%, from 714 Mbps to 631 Mbps.
At the regional level, there were large differences in the average download speed and average monthly subscription in Eastern Europe and Western Europe. Similar to residential services there were significantly more tariffs on offer in Western European countries (621 in total) compared to Eastern Europe (116 in total). The average monthly subscription cost for Western Europe was $156 PPP compared to $94 PPP in the eastern region. The average download speed was slightly higher in Western Europe – 716 Mbps compared to 636 Mbps in Eastern Europe (Figure 2).
During the quarter, Western Europe saw an 18% decrease in the average speed, compared to Eastern Europe’s 4% increase. In the same period, the average subscription increased by 12% in the more saturated markets of Western Europe compared to a decrease of 12% in Eastern Europe.
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 Cyprus, Denmark, Italy, Hungary, Latvia, Spain and the UK (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, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Lithuania, and Netherlands 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, Q4 2024. Source: Point Topic.
[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.
The complete tariff data is available within Point Topic’s European Broadband Statistics subscription service. We provide access to the raw data, as well as charts and tables for the tariffs offered.
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