Analysis of Internet Prices accross Countries

Porshi Gupta (s3894438)

26/10/2022

Introduction

At present, internet has become a necessity in every human’s life and it’s impossible to imagine a life without it. Whether it’s a big companies or an employee at an entry level, a student or a teacher, everyone take it’s assistance to complete their tasks.

Currently, each country has more than one internet plan to offer to it’s users. Research also shows the variation in internet speed based on the number of active users in a region.

Also, most of the countries had a huge price margin between their expensive plan and cheapest plan.

The distribution of Countries with internet access by Continental region.

From the pie chart of the distribution of countries by continental region, we can see that the data include 230 countries taken from 13 Continental regions.

The distribution of Average Speed Mbit/s by Users count.

The following scatter plot depicts the Average speed of internet based on the number active users. - As we can see, for most of the countries with user count approximately between 1 million to 30 million, the speed test by Ookla recorded a speed ranging between 9 mbps- 35mbps. - Some countries like South Korea, has approx. 50 million users, have average speed of 117.95mbps. It is one of the countries known for the world’s fastest average internet connection speed. One of the reason behind this is it’s government initiation towards expansion and developing internet infrastructure. - Countries like Bangladesh, Nigeria, Russia, Pakistan have range of 10mbps-20mbps, although the user count is significantly high compared to other countries. - UAE has fastest home mobile internet speed of 135.35mbps.

The distribution of Total number of Countries with same number of Plans.

The line graph of shows a that 20 countries offers 60 internet plans to it’s users. A total of 59 plans are given by one country followed by 3 places providing 58 and 1 region with 54 plans. There are 11 countries that provide 18 plans and another 11 selling 17 plan offers.

The distribution of Prices (USD) of 1 GB data: Average, Cheapest 30 days, Expensive.

The line graph id the distribution of prices w.r.t the countries. It shows three lines depicting prices based on 3 different criteria for 1 GB data. - It clearly shows a huge price difference between most expensive and an Average for almost all countries. - For a lot of countries the price margin between cheapest price and average price was double. - Some countries like France and Réunion have have significantly Expensive (118.20 USD) than other two variables.

Conclusion

From the analysis on the Internet Prices around 200+ countries in 2022, we can conclude that, 1) Almost all countries around the globe provide internet and have millions of active users. 2) A good number of developed/ developing countries like Switzerland, South Korea, UAE, Qatar, Denmark, Croatia, etc, with high-income economy provide it’s active users with high internet speed(qbove 80 Mbit/s) 3) Number of plans offered by the countries vary significantly. 4) A prices of the most expensive 1GB plan was very high for countries of African continental region because of low infrastructure. Also, according to a report by Kieron Monks, CNN, they argue that Africa’s slow markets and monopolies are primary reason behind expensive internet prices.

Hence, we can say that even though internet is available in almost every part of the world, it’s affordability will vary drastically. A lot of developing nations nowadays recognize the importance of expansion of internet infrastructure. Along with that they are actively working on strenghthening internet backbone which is evident from the average prices and average speed data.

References