Australia has "most expensive" mobile broadband says OECD

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 11 August 2009 17:11

IT Industry - Strategy

The OECD has just released its mammoth "Communications Outlook for 2009" and it shows Australia as one of the most expensive countries for communications services in the OECD, in particular, Australia is the most expensive country for high usage mobile broadband.

The OECD looked at average prices across countries for a low-use mobile broadband subscription (20MB to 1000MB per month), medium usage (2GB to 6GB) and for high usage (6GB to 20GB). The comparisons were made in September 2008.

For high usage the OECD found that "The average mobile broadband price across the 20 offers in the group is $US44 [purchasing power parity adjusted] per month. Ireland has the least expensive subscriptions at the higher data caps than other countries in the OECD at $US20 PPP per month. The price in the most expensive surveyed market, Australia, has an average price of $US62 for this data range and is more than three times the price of similar connections in Ireland."

The average price per month for a low-use subscription was $US25
across the 17 offers in the category. The least expensive connections were in Sweden ($US11) and the most expensive in Spain ($US33). Australia was in second place at $US27.

For medium usage the average prices was $US33 per month. Again, Sweden has the least expensive at $US11 while Australia and Norway were the most expensive at over $US43 per month.

Across all communications services, the OECD found Australians to be amongst the biggest spenders in the OECD. In 2007 average communications revenue per inhabitant in Australia was just under $US1600, a figure exceeded by only Switzerland and Iceland.

Australia also continues to rank at the top end of the range for the price of fixed line services. For the OECD defined fixed line service basket for small office/home office at August 2008 only Poland, the Slovak Republic the Czech Republic and Mexico were more expensive than the $US800 per annum cost in Australia (at purchasing power parity). For SMEs Australia was again in fifth place with an annual cost of $US30,000, a figure exceeded only by the Slovak and Czech Republics, the UK and Mexico.

Australia also stood out for its price hikes in the cost of cable broadband service, with the OECD reporting that "The price of the surveyed cable offer in Australia rose the most over the three years at roughly 14 percent per year, although speeds and data caps increased at the same time."

Fixed line broadband prices were also high with Australia ranking fourth after Poland, Austria and Mexico for the average monthly price of very low speed (256k - 2Mbps) broadband services at $US39 per month (PPP adjusted). In the 2.5Mbps - 10Mbps range Australia fared only marginally better being in fifth place at $US52 per month. At 12Mbps-32Mbps Australia did better ranking ninth most expensive at $US62 per month.

The 352 page report is available for download, price $US75. It "presents the most recent comparable data on the performance of the communication sector in OECD countries and on their policy frameworks." The data provided map the eight years of competition for many OECD countries that fully opened their market to competition in 1998.

The 2009 edition analyses the communications sector over the years following the 'dot com bubble" crisis and explores future developments. The Outlook provides an extensive range of indicators for the development of different communications networks and compares performance indicators such as revenue, investment, employment and prices for service throughout the OECD area.