Broadband stat farm Point Topic this week released their latest report on global broadband prices, and found that worldwide, DSL prices dropped roughly twenty percent over the first three quarter of 2008. The firm notes that average subscription prices for cable are down just over 12% and FTTx down by 6.5%. Before you get too excited, most of these drops occurred outside North America, where prices remained largely static, and there’s more to measuring value than just price per MB.

As you might expect, there are huge variations in how much users pay per megabit, with many customers in the Middle East & Africa paying over per megabit, while many customers in Europe pay as little as .23 per megabit. The average price per megabit in North America is .10, while it’s closer to .80 in Asia Pac.

While DSL price per megabit remained largely unchanged in North America, the deployment of faster DOCSIS 3.0 speeds helped cable’s already lower price per megabit drop in both Western Europe and North America. In the first quarter of ‘08, the price per megabit in both areas was .45/Mb and .80/Mb, respectively. DOCSIS 3.0 deployment has shifted those numbers to .80/Mb and .89/Mb respectively. Europe is getting both faster speeds and lower prices.

Keep in mind that Point Topic is measuring standalone broadband prices, and while they don’t include the savings from broadband bundles, they also don’t include the below the line fees carriers omit from their advertised price — used to raise rates without looking like they’ve raised rates. Also considering the cutbacks in services (newsgroups) users are seeing, price per MB doesn’t show the full picture of subscription value (or lack thereof).

Of course, this year is also seeing an exploding interest in capped service and highly uneconomical overages (up to .50 per GB) from carriers like AT&T, Comcast and Time Warner Cable, despite extremely healthy profits and an overall decrease in bandwidth costs for these carriers.
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