World’s cheapest internet revealed … and it’s an unlikely winner

We all wish our internet bills were cheaper, but according to a global comparison, the cheapest connection could come at a hefty price.

Getting the cheapest internet in the world could come with a hefty price, as a UK comparison site reveals the average cost of getting online around the world.

Cable.co.uk released its roundup of fixed-line broadband internet pricing around the world on Tuesday, and the cheapest internet comes from a surprising source.

While Australia came quite respectably close to the middle of the pack (our internet is the 113th cheapest at an average of $70.32 a month, though our average income is significantly higher than most other countries on the list), the cheapest place to get online comes with its own set of problems.

In Syria, a broadband internet connection will cost you $9.60, making it the cheapest on Earth.

While this is a hell of a deal, it does come with the cost of living in an active war zone in a politically fraught region often disrupted by interstate and intrastate conflict.

Compounding things, Syria’s currency is in free fall, having halved in value over the past year.

This makes it difficult for Syrians to get online, as does the UN estimate that more than 80 per cent of them live below the poverty line.

A map of internet by price shows the cheapest internet is primarily in the old Soviet Union regions, but this doesn't mean it's good quality or even affordable for the people who live there.

As you’d expect, it’s also not the best connection in the world.
Infrastructure is lacking in areas, and the places you can find a connection are hardly fast, with an average download speed of 7.31Mbps making it the 165th fastest.

Australia is sandwiched between India and Peru at 68th with an average speed of 41.78Mbps, according to Ookla Speedtest Global Index, which ranks internet speed around the world monthly.

India is the 15th most expensive and Peru the 44th with prices of $18.76 and $38.06 respectively.

Slightly more hospitable countries like Ukraine and Russia perform better than Syria too, with cheap internet at decent speeds.

Ukraine has the second cheapest internet, costing $9.66 a month on average for a 49.55Mbps connection.

A faster 61.71Mbps connection in Russia will only cost you $10.69, the third cheapest.

This could explain that country’s deft ability to influence global discourse using its “troll army” to promote propaganda, which many other countries also do to varying levels of success.

Russia is also in the process of building its own internal internet walled off from the world wide web, which it recently began testing.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told state media it was a defensive play “aimed only at preventing adverse consequences of global disconnection from the global network, which is largely controlled from abroad”.

“This is the point, this is what sovereignty is,” Mr Putin said, “to have our resources that can be turned on so that we would not be cut from the internet.”

The cheapest internet is in Syria of all places (prices are in $US).

Perhaps the best balance of price and performance comes from Romania, which ranks fourth for the cheapest and fastest internet.

An average monthly package price of $11.85 and an average download speed of 144.92Mbps is available, largely through a fibre network like the kind Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN) was originally intended to be.

Quite unlike Australia’s NBN, Romania’s internet infrastructure was largely developed by hyper-local “neighbourhood ISPs” (internet service providers), rather than a large-scale rollout by a nationally focused entity.

While it has a similar but slightly lower population than Australia, Romania’s landmass is significantly smaller, which also makes it easier to deliver and maintain quality internet.

Belarus rounded out the top five cheapest nations, with an average connection cost of $14.36 a month for an average speed of 50.39Mbps.

The most expensive nations were all in Africa, with the exception of the British territory of the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean, fourth most expensive with an average price of $450.98.

The high cost in Africa is due to several factors including lack of infrastructure, political tension and conflict, and lack of available customers to take advantage of economies of scale.

Burundi ($412.79), Mauritania ($1010.60), Yemen ($3588.70), and Eritrea ($3879.05) were the most expensive.

Africa’s cheapest internet was in Egypt, costing $20.10 a month for a 26.52Mbps connection.

Twenty-eight countries were excluded from the roundup, the majority of which were also in Africa and left out for not offering enough packages or speed data.

Venezuela was excluded due to hyperinflation brought on by its ongoing political crisis.

The most expensive nations to connect are underdeveloped countries with little infrastructure.

Cable.co.uk consumer telecoms analyst Dan Howdle said access and available markets were a major factor in the prices offered.

“The countries with slow, patchy broadband infrastructure that supplies only a fraction of the population tend to be the most expensive,” he said.

“Likewise, those with exceptional, often full-fibre infrastructure supplying the majority of the population tend to be the cheapest, if not in absolute terms, certainly on a cost-per-megabit basis.”

Australian consumer comparison site Finder runs its own comparison tool for local internet plans.

The site’s editor-in-chief Angus Kidman told news.com.au while the data was interesting, it was mostly worthless.

“If you’re buying fixed broadband you’re buying it in the country you live in … it’s not going to help you get a better internet service at all,” he said.

He also said raw numbers were not enough to determine how accessible connections were to the wide population.

“The thing that’s missing is: It’s not very meaningful to talk about the cost of broadband if you don’t talk about how much money people have. As a proportion of income, I suspect you’d find there’s an awful lot of similarity going on.”

NBN contractor Foxcomm install fibre to the node technology in Newcastle in 2015.

Mr Kidman said land size and population were key factors in the rankings.

“The big advantage comes for countries who are geographically small with large populations,” he said.

Countries like South Korea and Singapore, with some of the highest population densities in the world and relatively strong economies, both have high-quality internet at reasonable prices.

South Korea is ranked 41st on cost at $37.10 a month and fifth on speed with an average download rate of 144.41Mbps.

Singapore is 96th on affordability at $63.68 a month but is the world’s fastest with average download speeds of 200.12 Mbps.

New Zealand, as is common, ranked lower than Australia on affordability costing $78.51 a month, but our across-the-ditch neighbours get more for their money, with an average download speed of 103.38 Mbps putting it in the top-25 fastest nations.

But Australia is a big nation with a very small population density.

Mr Kidman said Australia’s best comparison would be a country like Canada, which has a similar population density and standard of living.

In that comparison Australia is resoundingly beaten.

Canada is the 69th most expensive country with an average cost of $50.69 and average speed of 121.51Mbps.

The data could also contain some key insights when it comes to development of infrastructure by noting which technologies were embraced by which nations for what benefit.

“What it does highlight is different countries make different decisions about rollouts and they impact on the price,” Mr Kidman said. “There are choices that can be made … Australia is going to keep facing these conversations about what our broadband should look like, it doesn’t stop when the NBN finishes rolling out in June this year.”

Mr Kidman said regional and remote areas with difficult geography and low populations were always going to be served by satellite, which presents a challenge for the network in a clustered nation like Australia with vast distances between the places where most people live.

“It’s the decisions you make for the big population centres that impact a far greater number of people. You need to deal with both of those pieces,” he said.

Are you surprised by the results? Let us know in the comments below.