US Broadband Connectivity: Higher Prices, Lower Speeds
2013-10-28 10:12 by Daniela
Tags: broadband
The Cost of Connectivity 2013 report being released today by the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute confirms the fact that home broadband in the US costs far more than elsewhere. The researchers ranked different cities in the world according to various criteria and U.S. cities don't fare very well across the board. The report reads:
"In larger US cities, we continue to observe higher prices for slower speeds. In the US for example, the best deal for a 150Mbps home broadband connection from cable and phone companies is $130/month, offered by Verizon FiOS in limited parts of New York City. By contrast, the international cities we surveyed offer comparable speeds for $77 or less per month, with most coming in at about $50/month. When it comes to mobile broadband, the cheapest price for around 2GB of data in the US ($30/month from T-Mobile) is twice as much as what users in London pay ($15/month from T-Mobile). It costs more to purchase 2GB of data in a US city than it does in any of the cities surveyed in Europe."
"Many American consumers take high prices and slow speeds to be a given, but our data demonstrates that it is possible to have faster, more affordable connectivity in cities of comparable density and size," the report concludes. "To an extent, the data speaks for itself: whether consumers are interested in triple-play packages or mobile broadband plans, they pay more money for lower speeds in the United States."
According to the report, there are differences even in the way carriers worldwide treat data caps. In the US, wireless providers are increasingly monetizing data caps by charging users for any data they use beyond their limit. Internationally,
"most providers throttle users instead of charging for data overages," the report said. "Last year, for example, Verizon switched from throttling to charging for data overages, leaving T-Mobile as the only US provider which throttles rather than charging steep overage fees."
Read more -here-
