Recent Release | 30 Nov 2022

Unpacking the cost of mobile broadband across countries

Economic Consulting Team

Oxford Economics

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digital transformation around the globe with mobile technology emerging as a crucial engine of economic development. Interest in the affordability of mobile broadband has risen, as demonstrated by the number of studies that attempt to rank countries based on broadband prices alone.

These international price comparisons lack a holistic lens, and this Oxford Economics study demonstrates that pricing alone is a poor metric to understand mobile broadband and often leads to misleading conclusions. The analysis described in this report demonstrates the importance of contextualizing plan prices to the local macroeconomy and evaluating prices in relation to disposable income.

When accounting for household purchasing power, the United States ranks favorably against its peers for mobile broadband affordability and has made significant improvements in the last three years. Oxford Economics finds that the US consistently ranks in the most affordable half of its peer group, especially for entry-level mobile broadband plans, wherein the US ranks as the 3rd most affordable developed country for these types of packages.

Read the report

About the team

Our Economic Consulting team are world leaders in quantitative economic analysis, working with clients around the globe and across sectors to build models, forecast markets and evaluate interventions using state-of-the art techniques. Lead consultants on this project included: