OECD says Australia has most expensive Mobile Broadband

The OECD has just released its mammoth "Communications Outlook for 2009" and it shows Australia as one of the most expensive countries for communications services in the OECD, in particular, Australia is the most expensive country for high usage mobile broadband.

The OECD looked at average prices across countries for a low-use mobile broadband subscription (20MB to 1000MB per month), medium usage (2GB to 6GB) and for high usage (6GB to 20GB). The comparisons were made in September 2008.

For high usage the OECD found that "The average mobile broadband price across the 20 offers in the group is $US44 [purchasing power parity adjusted] per month. Ireland has the least expensive subscriptions at the higher data caps than other countries in the OECD at $US20 PPP per month. The price in the most expensive surveyed market, Australia, has an average price of $US62 for this data range and is more than three times the price of similar connections in Ireland."

The average price per month for a low-use subscription was $US25 across the 17 offers in the category. The least expensive connections were in Sweden ($US11) and the most expensive in Spain ($US33). Australia was in second place at $US27.

The 352 page report is available for download, price $US75. It "presents the most recent comparable data on the performance of the communication sector in OECD countries and on their policy frameworks." The data provided map the eight years of competition for many OECD countries that fully opened their market to competition in 1998.

More details can be found at:

OECD Communications Outlook

[Source: ITWire ]