European Broadband Operators and Tariffs Benchmark Report, Q1 2025

1 Introduction

Point Topic tracks the quarterly changes in the standalone and bundled broadband tariffs provided by European[1] fixed line residential and business operators. This report presents the latest tariff benchmarks at the end of March 2025. To put them into perspective, we are comparing the trends to December 2024.

The complete tariff data is available within Point Topic’s European Broadband Statistics subscription service. We provide access to the raw data, as well as charts and tables for the tariffs offered.

2 What we measure

The tariff database covers all major fixed broadband operators across the EU, UK, Norway, Iceland and Switzerland. In total, we track more than 200 operators from 31 countries.

Standalone and bundled

We report tariffs where broadband is offered as the only service (standalone) and tariffs where broadband is offered with other services such as TV and telephony (bundled).

Residential and business

We report both business and residential broadband tariffs.

Technologies

Within this report, we look at differences between the three major fixed broadband technologies – copper, cable and fibre. The full tariff database also includes some wireless and mobile broadband tariffs.

Changes to reporting

• We have excluded all tariffs which report a monthly subscription charge higher than $5,000 PPP (purchasing power parity) or which report no monthly subscription charge.

This change does not affect the full tariff database but only this analysis.

3 Europe-wide tariffs and bandwidths

We have compared the average subscription charges and corresponding bandwidths for different broadband technologies across Europe. All prices are quoted in US dollars at PPP (purchasing power parity) rates to allow easier comparison.

3.1 Residential broadband packages

As of the end of March 2025, copper-based residential broadband tariffs were the cheapest ($51 PPP) but they also offered the lowest average download speed of 22 Mbps which is up from the previous quarter’s 16 Mbps.

The average monthly tariffs for cable-based technologies increased by 2.7% to $65 PPP up from $63 PPP at the end of 2024.   Fibre-based tariffs remained the most expensive of the technology accesses, yet its cost was relatively static at $69 PPP.  

Average cable-based tariff speeds dropped by nearly 11% to reach 544 Mbps down from 608 Mbps in the previous quarter.  Many operators are currently upgrading their cable legacy networks to full-fibre which has seen many ISPs trying to almost forcibly migrate consumers onto their FTTP products to mitigate the cost of expensive network upgrades. 

Full fibre-based tariffs offered the highest average download speed at 725 Mbps up ever so slightly from 724 Mbps in the previous quarter.   At the close of 2024, the average downstream bandwidth in Europe, regardless of technology, was 637 Mbps down just over 1% from 645 Mbps in the previous quarter.

As FTTP and DOCSIS 3.1 availability across Europe is becoming more widespread, we recorded 327 residential gigabit tariffs (with downstream bandwidth of at least 900 Mbps) in Q1 2025.  This is up from 302 ultrafast tariffs on offer in the previous quarter. 

Figure 1 below provides a comparative overview of average speed and monthly cost by technology for Q4 2024 and Q1 2025.

Figure 1. Average monthly cost and download bandwidth by technology, residential broadband.     Source: Point Topic.

3.2 Business broadband packages

Businesses aiming to change or access broadband connectivity during Q1 would have been finally feeling some respite as the average price for all technologies remained relatively unchanged quarter-on-quarter.  The average monthly cost for business broadband services, regardless of the technology, decreased to $145 PPP during the quarter, down ever so slightly from $146 PPP.   

There has been another notable increase in the number of full fibre tariffs during the quarter as we recorded 629  tariffs compared to 575 in Q4.  The average download speed for businesses using fibre-based connections increased to 872 Mbps in Q1 from 832 Mbps at the end of December 2024.

The number of cable tariffs slightly increased during the quarter, with 83 cable-based packages on offer compared to 58 in the previous.  The average bandwidth being offered via cable therefore went down by 16%, from 631 Mbps to 530 Mbps.

Cable-based services pricing saw the largest decrease in the monthly average pricing at $95 PPP compared with $102 PPP in the previous quarter, which is just over a 7% drop.  This was followed by copper-based accesses decreasing by 5% coming in at $77 PPP on average per month.  Fibre products were down by just under 2% with the average monthly charges reaching $146 PPP.

At the regional level, there were somewhat large disparities in the average download speed and average monthly subscription in Eastern Europe and Western Europe.  Similar to residential services there were significantly more tariffs on offer in Western European countries (704 in total) compared to Eastern Europe (103 in total).  The average monthly subscription cost for Western Europe was $152 PPP  compared to $98 PPP in the eastern region.  The average download speed was slightly higher in Western Europe – 726 Mbps compared to 654 Mbps in Eastern Europe.

During the quarter, Western Europe saw just a little over a 1% increase in the average speed, compared to Eastern Europe’s 3% increase.  In the same period, the average subscription decreased by just over 2% in the more saturated markets of Western Europe compared to an increase of nearly 4% in Eastern Europe.  Figure 2 represents the disparity between the two regions in terms of the number of tariffs, costs, and speed availability.  (Figure 2).

During the quarter, Western Europe saw an 18% decrease in the average speed, compared to Eastern Europe’s 4% increase.  In the same period, the average subscription increased by 12% in the more saturated markets of Western Europe compared to a decrease of 12% in Eastern Europe (Figure 2).  

Figure 2. Regional bundled and standalone broadband tariffs and average downstream speeds by technology, business broadband. Source: Point Topic.

4 Country ranking tables

Ranking countries using the average cost of broadband subscriptions is a straightforward idea but the variation in entry level versus median and average costs can be significant. To help provide an easy way of comparing directly we have taken the PPP data on the entry level, median and average tariffs, produced rankings and then compared the variance (Table 1).

We have included a ‘variance’ column to indicate how different ranks for the different metrics are spread.  So we see that, for example, the wide spread in Denmark, Italy, Latvia, Spain and the UK (big differences in entry level, average and median tariffs) is represented by high variance of the rankings.  At the other end of the scale countries such as Czech Republic, Finland, Iceland, Lithuania, Slovakia, Sweden, and Switzerland rank rather consistently.  However, it should be noted that this is only one set of metrics measuring one aspect of the broadband markets so conclusions should not be drawn in isolation. 

       Table 1. Country ranking by median residential broadband tariffs, Q1 2025. Source: Point Topic.

[1] Until Q4 2022, we tracked tariffs in countries across all continents on a biannual basis (every second quarter). From Q2 2023, we pared down our global tariff reporting to include 31 countries in Europe, with regional focuses on Eastern and Western Europe and as such have been updating the European tariff benchmark report on a quarterly basis. 

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The complete tariff data is available within Point Topic’s European Broadband Statistics subscription service. We provide access to the raw data, as well as charts and tables for the tariffs offered.