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Mobile Broadband Prices in Europe 2016

This report on Mobile Broadband Prices in Europe presents the results of the analysis of mobile broadband offers that were collected in February 2016.

This study monitors mobile broadband prices in the EU28 and some non-EU countries (Norway, Iceland, Turkey, Japan, South Korea and the USA). Pricing information of 85 mobile operators and 2575 mobile broadband offers (for use with laptop, tablet or handset) is collected and compared.

It follows the 2012 OECD methodology for mobile broadband which aims at calculating the total price (including the monthly fee, non-recurring charges and usage charges) of a set of offers in order to identify the least expensive offers for three different types of mobile devices (i.e. laptop, tablet and handset) and five different levels of usage (i.e. monthly volume consumed).

The report presents mobile broadband prices in February 2016 in:

  1. Overall horizontal analysis of trends on the mobile broadband market
  2. Country fiches presenting an analysis per Member State

Key findings

  1. Like in 2015, price levels across the EU are rather dispersed, especially for offers with higher data allowances.
  2. Worst and best performers are not exactly the same for handset and laptop/tablet offers, but neither are enormous differences in position observed.
  3. Often, mobile broadband offers for use with laptop or with tablet are identical or comparable; the equipment cost that sometimes additionally applies for laptop offers, is small and thus only to a limited extent impacts on countries’ relative performance.
  4. Rather large price differences across countries are observed for advanced smartphones that are part of handset offers, resulting in an impact on performance.
  5. Prices have mostly decreased slightly since 2015 on average at the EU28 level, .
  6. There appears to be some correlation between prices and take-up: countries with low mobile broadband prices also often portray high mobile broadband penetration, and vice versa.
  7. The EU28 performs rather well compared to the other countries considered, especially for lower baskets. The latter are however not in all countries representative of the current market offer.

Downloads

Mobile Broadband Prices - Executive Summary
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Mobile Broadband Prices - Executive Summary (FR)
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Mobile Broadband Prices - Final Report
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Mobile Broadband Prices - Simulation Tool
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