How affordable is broadband?

There are approximately 20 countries where, despite having broadband prices below five percent of their average income, broadband is still unaffordable for the bottom 40 percent (see, for example, China). In fact, only 29 countries out of the 75 studied can claim under this analysis that broadband is affordable for the 100 percent of their population. It is also interesting to note that there are 14 countries where the monthly price of broadband is more than 100 percent of the average monthly income.

Moreover, there are 39 countries with an estimated aggregated population of more than 840 million people that have broadband prices higher than five percent of monthly income for all deciles – that is, unaffordable for close to 100 percent of the population (see, for example, Iraq above). Taking into account this analysis by deciles and applying it to all the countries, an estimated 3.5 billion people do not have access to affordable fixed broadband. The analysis shows that almost 3.5 billion people are being left without affordable broadband, spread all over the world. Further analysis at the country level should be carried out to determine the different options to make broadband more affordable.