North America has some of the world’s most expensive broadband, according to a new study, while Iran has the cheapest.
The Global Broadband Price League 2026 compiled by price comparison site Broadband Genie shows that – big surprise – countries with a lower cost of living also tend to have less expensive internet access.
Telco broadband contracts in North America have an average monthly cost of $98.40. The US is ranked 167th out of the 214 countries studied, with an average price for net access of $80.
But the costliest internet is found in remote areas, where there may be few subscribers for telcos to sign up. Wallis and Futuna, a set of islands in the South Pacific with a population of about 11,000, came bottom of the league table with an average price of $373.88 per month.
Broadband Genie looked at 2,631 telco tariffs across the 214 nations included in the study. It found that Iran has the cheapest broadband at $2.61 a month – a bitter irony given that the Middle Eastern nation’s government restricted internet access for most citizens as the first US-Israeli strikes began.
This low price is largely due to the collapse of the local currency against the US dollar, according to Broadband Genie, which also stressed that its study was carried out before hostilities began.
The UK ranks 70th for affordability, with an average monthly tariff of $31.43. It is behind some European neighbors such as France at 63rd and Italy at 62nd, while Germany comes in at 105th with a price tag of $47.59.
Emerging markets typically have cheaper broadband, with Egypt enjoying an average cost of $7.91, while three out of the top ten most affordable countries are found in Eastern Europe – Ukraine second, Romania seventh, and Russia tenth.
We asked Broadband Genie why this is so, and the firm’s broadband expert Alex Tofts told us it is largely due to Eastern Europe having a lower cost of living than many Western nations.
“This keeps deployment costs down and prevents the price inflating, like the study shows in North America,” Tofts said.
“High urban density, such as large apartment buildings, also allows providers to connect many premises at a very low cost per customer,” he added.
At the same time, countries like Romania were not held back by legacy infrastructure.
“The existing copper networks were so inadequate, providers skipped directly to full fibre, instead of wasting money trying to upgrade outdated lines,” Tofts explained.
Broadband Genie also noted that some countries, especially in the Caribbean and Africa, mainly use mobile data to access the internet. This means fixed-line broadband is not the main connectivity option for a large share of the population. ®
