Internet Access: Faster, But Not Cheaper


Ars Technica:

The monthly cost of Internet access has dropped regularly for years, but the big price reductions might now be behind us.

New data from Point Topic shows that prices for fiber, cable, and DSL connections have remained essentially flat since September 2007.

But when the total monthly bill for Internet access is graphed in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP), there’s been no dropoff at all.

PPP is a widely used method of assessing differences in buying power between different economies.

When PPP is used to measure worldwide Internet access rates, the graph at the left is the result.

So Internet access isn’t getting cheaper when measured against people’s purchasing power.

Point Topic suggests that’s because the Internet market is much closer to saturation in many economies, so the easy gains are now gone.

Photo by ilco/waterlamd.

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