[The Register] Broadband prices fall in Europe

damien

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/23/broadband_report/

Broadband prices fall in Europe
By Tim Richardson

The cost of broadband in Europe has fallen by almost a quarter since the beginning of the year, according to London-based consultancy Broad Group.

Its European Broadband Pricing Report surveyed 109 operators peddling 455 tariff packages in 36 countries. The average monthly price for 512k and 1Mb services fell 23 per cent since January while the cost of a 2Mb line fell 24 per cent.

"The report details the decrease of broadband prices in Europe - approximately 23 per cent across the three main speeds - but draws attention to the diversity of emerging and mature broadband markets in terms of price of broadband packages stratified by speed," said the blurb accompanying the report.

While the cost of broadband is falling, the amount of cash UK households are splashing out on telecoms has risen by around 20 per cent between 2001 and 2003, according to communications regulator Ofcom.

It reckons punters coughed up £13bn on telecoms in 2003 - up from £11.6bn in 2001 - with most of this increase spent on mobile phones and net access. The percentage of UK homes now with net access has grown from four in ten to more than half over the last two years with more than a third of these using broadband.

eircomtribunal

damien.m wrote:

The percentage of UK homes now with net access has grown from four in ten to more than half over the last two years with more than a third of these using broadband.

Eircom said in yesterday's press release that we will overtake the UK for broadband penetration. I suppose with these statements they(Eircom, DCMNR and ComReg) always mean "provided the other party stays at its current level."

Here's how we stand now:
We have 1 289 000 households (last CSO figures, we have indeed some more currently – does anyone know the up-to date figure? Did the CSO publish a household figure when they told us we were now over 4 million people?)
Half of it would be 644 500 households with net;
A third of this with broadband would be 214 833 with broadband.
That's if we had the UK up-take.

We do not have anything like 215 000 households with broadband, indeed according to Eircom's figures we have 66 000 domestic broadband users (two thirds of the 100 000 dsl connections, we'd have to add some for cable and wireless domestic bb users):
We have roughly 1/3 of the UK household broadband penetration.
What an achievement! Congrats to ComReg, DCMNR and Eircom.

P.