Across the OECD countries there is a 14:1 range from highest to lowest MBB price per GB.
Mobile Broadband price data shows that the price per GB of post-paid MBB services is declining at an average rate of 10% per year. However, there is still a huge variation in prices from USD $1 per GB in Poland to well over $13 per GB in Colombia, Germany and Chile.
Strategy Analytics has released the latest update of the OECD Mobile Broadband Price Benchmarking System which analyses over 100 providers across 36 countries, and includes over 2,600 SIM-only, modem, laptop and tablet plans. Other key findings from the report include:
-
SIM-only plans account for 38% of all plans in this update, and 80% of the plans are post-paid.
-
Over 84% of all plans are now 4G/LTE.
-
Since 2011, the size of the largest post-paid data allowances for MBB has increased five times, from a maximum of 200 GB in 2011 to a maximum of 1000 GB in 2016.
-
Data value has improved over the last 6 years with the average price per GB falling 39% against the 2011 index of 100.
The cost of data varies significantly by country, however. The figure below shows both the average and the lowest price per GB across 36 countries, as of December 2016, taking into account all relevant post-paid offers from the three most prominent providers in each country.