Access to right-of-way and it's impact on Broadband cost & performance

For my presentation at eComm 2008 in March, I searched out the cost and availability of 100 Mbps symmetric Internet Access in various locations.  At that time (1Q08), the ranking and approximate monthly cost (in US $) was:

Stockhom        $16

Tokyo              $25

Seoul               $32

Hong Kong       $35

In each case, 100/100 Mbps symmetric service was widely available in the city and in many other parts of the country, (but I only obtained costs for those specific cities).

Now I have a new data point to add:

Bucharest        $11
Image via WikipediaFor 9 Euros per month you actually get a quad play service:  CATV + FTTB (FastEthernet 100 Mbps) + fixed voice + mobile with some hundreds of minutes included.  The only catch is connectivity to the rest of the Internet is subject to congestion.  Here's a mid-afternoon measurement between Bucharest and Frankfurt which shows 43 Mbps upstream, but less than half that downstream.   Thanks to Catalin for the detail and the measurement.

Access to the right-of-way

It's interesting that the best deal is in Bucharest where there is open access to public rights-of-way, as I blogged last month.

The second best deal is in Stockholm where dark fiber is widely available to all comers.  Stockholm's abundant dark fiber is mostly due to Stokab AB, a government sponsored corporation originally chartered in the mid-90s to install dark fiber and make it available at break even costs.