Switzerland here The price of broadband averages a bit less than 50.- SFr, which is about $40. Regarding the cable / DSL split, it’s about even, with slightly more DSL users.

The company situation is a little confusing though. There’s the Swisscom who owns all the phone cables of the country, various other providers who sell phone and DSL services (often not even coupled) over Swisscom’s lines. And then there are a few cable providers, mainly one, cablecom - and thus pretty much everybody who has cable internet is connected with cablecom (who monopolizes the TV sector pretty much as well).

cablecom then isn’t known for great service and signal quality, although personally I never had any real problems with them. And they also offer VoIP phone services with regular phones over their lines. They started into the market quite early in comparison to close neighbours, germany for example is just getting started with the whole cable-internet and cable-phone thing.

Interested to read from other countries

Here in south east Finland (and 5 miles from Russian border) 1M/512k costs 30 Brussels roubles. (1 Brussels rouble ~ 1.2$)
2M/512k would be 47 and 8M/1M 59 but very few could actually have such speed because telephone network hubs are positioned far away from each others and not even basing to geography so 2M is practical upperlimit to most.
In cities where competition works that 8M/1M would be under 40.

But then major part of country outside cities doen’t have ADSL available, propably I wouldn’t have ADSL without province wide official project for getting broadband available to everyone.

Five years ago cable connections were favoured in those areas where they were available (cities) but after little more users joined popularity of those dropped because they have shared bandwidth. So now those are in small minority.

PS. Remember to tell speed, some have classified even P.O.S. 128kbps as broadband.

In the UK, I would say that cable broadband is the most common option for high speed connections. Costs £25 a month - $44.
Ross

Yep, sorry about the speed. I was talking about a 600 down / 100 up connection - however, with cable (as we know), those speeds tend to be somewhat theoretical since nodes are organized in subnets…

Here in Calgary (and in major Canadian cities in general) broadband cable runs about $43 USD for a 7.0 Mbit downstream connection (1.0 Mbit upstream), with 50 GB assured traffic (they get on your ass if you interfere with services, otherwise).

I’m feelin lucky.

Just signed up to Tiscali 14,99 about $27 for 1Mb however my machine seems to be connected at 2.2Mbs.
I’m not complaining,I’m sure theres a logical explanation.
I don’t know about elswhere but in the UK you need to be careful many offers are limited download ie 6 Gb a month or whatever.
regards

Les, you make me cry. Here in New Zealand, where monopolies still exist in all but name, I get a measly 250 k/s (THEORETICAL) for about 50$ US per month.

But thats not all. After downloading a gigabyte per month (read: about the 6th of the month), it’s throttled down to 6 k - typical good dial-up. And the ‘competition’ to the local Telecom is as bad.

This is very interesting indeed and, Ingolfson, I feel your pain, buddy, I feel your pain.

Here in the States I wouldn’t be surprised to see the jump to 10Mbps in the not too distant future. There’s a few places around the country where they’re already offering such speeds thanks to pilot tests of Fiber To The Home, but even standard cable modem service can offer those speeds by dedicating another channel to the pipe. Comcast *shudder* is thinking of offering 10Mbps soon and technically already does with their business class service.

ok i get 8mb for £27.99 from wanadoo which considering i have 6 pcs running from it isnt to bad..my dad who uses his pc less has the same service but he pays £14.99 for less usage..
only downfall is the 30gb download restriction..

kent! when i signed yp for the 1mg what usaly happends is they often upgrade u automaticaly. so when 4 or 8mg gets set u probably be uprgraded to that

They claim to provide 1 MB/s with their more expensive service. But thats about 70$ and gets throttled down after 10 gig.

Oh well, that WOULD be too much for my uses.

But its depressing right now. Since I use maybe 2-3 gigabytes of downstream capacity-month, everything crawls… Feels worse than ISDN.

Ah well, as they say here, when its about money: “So whats the high cost of living now?”

UK here - I pay £14.99 per month for 2MB ADSL from PlusNet, with no restrictions on usage bar speed restrictions on Usenet and P2P services at peak times. 2MB is the fastest I can get without going for cable or waiting for a phone line upgrade (which is due later this year I think). That should bring it up to 8MB. We share the connection across 4 computers and it’s more than satisfactory.

DSL is more popular than cable here mainly because DSL reaches almost all homes with a phone line (i.e. just about everywhere) whereas cable tends to be focussed on urban areas. Cable does offer faster speeds.

The fastest consumer service you can get here is 24MB DSL in parts of London. It’s about £50/month I think.

the thing is do u need that speed?
i have 8mgs as i say i got 6 pcs..and the majority are used by the kids for online gaming eg..AA or UT..there is only so fast your pcs can go..all mine are upgraded every 6-12 months bareing in mind the need for the bestest connection, pcs and speed..but it realy doesnt make that much diffrence..its like a car as long as it goes from a-b who cares?
well not me..
just dont let my kids here me

Carol
Thanks for that.
It would seem logical that they would automatically upgrade,I’m just not aware if they have upgraded the package.
Their site doesn’t say anything.
We will wait and see what they charge us for,the confirmation letter clearly states 1Mbs

Here in Germany my provider is Arcor, and I pay 50 Euros/month (about 60 bucks) for a complete package including ISDN for telephony and ADSL for internet access with 6 mbit download and 600 kbit upload bandwidth (flat rate, so no download limits ).  Broadband cable is almost non-existent in Germany, since it’s usually more expensive, and less available (seems the cable companies were late in upgrading their infrastructure to handle bi-directional traffic).  Projects are now underway to build a country-wide fiber-optic network using ADSL2+ supporting speeds of 25 to 50 mbit.

ADSL is still ahead on TV/Cable access here in The Netherlands.
Prices are between 30 and 40 euro p/m for an average 1 - 2 Mbps connection.

Business ADSL 8 mbps is offered for 119 euro’s p/m, but Versatel is offering a 20Mbps for 50 Euro p/m to service their IP-TV premier league soccer broadcasts.

i get 10meg for £35 from NTL in the UK

Hi from Greece,

It seems we are the most expensive in Europe! That’s cool. I pay miserable aDSL connection 384/128 Kb/s 39 Euro ($46,50) a month. The funny thing is that the speed was never 384 promised, but rather something like 256K in average. The 1M connection is 82 Eur a month, which is $98. I suppose, you should be lucky if you get 512K in paractice, because they always have some technical problem or somthing… You can check the prices at http://www.forthnet.gr/templates/corporateProductsDetails2.aspx?c=10007713 . Don’t forget to add 19% VAT, and please ignore all items marked with *, because wherever you see * it means they are gonna trick you and steal more money from you!

I’m on AOL £17 for 1Mb, no limits.  2mb is offered at £25.  I went with AOL as other companies seemed to be notoriously unreliable (yes even against AOL), or the headline speed and Price were not connected- eg Up to 8 mb from £15 pcm (translation our slowest service is £15, you want 8mb then sell us your children).

What seems to limit me is the computer, not the connection. Of course prices this side of the pond will seem expensive as the USD is so weak at the moment.  £18=$31 =E26 £25=$43=E36

(my security word is Market- how does it know?)

Advertised speed is one thing, real effective speed is another, though. Cable internet in Belgium costs around 45€ for 10 Mbit down, 512Kbit up (Chello Brussels). I’ve never gotten over ~256KB/s out of it, though.

ADSL is probably cheaper, somewhere around ~30€, but then you have a pretty basic 2Mbit down, 1Mbit up. For 8Mbit and 12Mbit you pay around ~40-50€.

While cable is a bit more expensive, my experiences with different ADSL and cable providers have shown that cable is a more reliable medium, though that does not necessary fly for the ISP’s staff. In Belgium, cable operators have local monopolies, and that sometimes shows up pretty netgatively in the service and general knowledge of the staff.

I’m living in Helsinki, Finland now, and I have an ADSL connection for a bit less than 50€, 8Mbit down and 1Mbit up, static ip (something unaffordable in Belgium). I get around 860KB/s, which is pretty good.

Ofcourse you must take taxes and local monopolies in consideration in Europe. For instance, Finland and Belgium have the highest tax rate in Europe, 22% and 21% respectively.

I think prices in the US and Europe are pretty equal for residential lines these days, taking higher taxes in consideration ofcourse.