Iran has something America can only dream of: cheap broadband

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. …

[Claude Yeller]

Consumer protection, lack thereof

"North America has some of the world's most expensive broadband, according to a new study, while Iran has the cheapest."

Not just broadband, but also mobile phones, cable TV, and basically cost of living. The US lacks anything resembling effective consumer protection.

It seems monopolies are the preferred market organization in the USA.

Iran simply subsidizes basic "needs", including broadband it seems, to keep people from protesting too much against economic failure and abject poverty. That doesn't always work as we saw earlier.

[Paul Herber]

Re: Consumer protection, lack thereof

Customer gouging and "There's a sucker born every minute" can be a way of life too, and some people will fight tooth and nail to protect that way of life.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: Consumer protection, lack thereof

Your generalised point is correct. So when one reads that the USA is investing billions in something, in another country comparable $something might cost hundreds of millions.

>> economic failure and abject poverty.

Iran is subject to sanctions. That is not economic failure on Iran's part.

[Claude Yeller]

Re: Iran is subject to sanctions

True, but that is only part of the story.

Although it is generally called a regime of Ayatollahs, the rulling clergy is not really religious clergy. The country is run by a kleptocrazy that has brought most of the economy in the hands of a few oligarchs.

Their mismanagement has emptied rivers and wasted water to a level that they were planning to move Teheran to a place where there was still enough freshwater to live.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/02/iran-must-move-its-capital-from-tehran-says-president-as-water-crisis-worsens

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: Iran is subject to sanctions

>> The country is run by a kleptocrazy that has brought most of the economy in the hands of a few oligarchs.

I am laughing. Have you looked at the USA?

>> Their mismanagement has emptied rivers and wasted water to a level

Flint, Michigan. Jackson, Mississippi. And so on.

[Claude Yeller]

Re: Whatsaboutism USA

"Have you looked at the USA?"

Yep, and the USA still kill less of their own citizens than Iran does. Although both parties can be bad, one party can still be much worse than the other.

"Flint, Michigan. Jackson, Mississippi. And so on."

Indeed, horribly stupid and devious policies reign in the USA. But again, it is of a different order than having to move a city of 9M people due to lack of fresh water. Not talking about Iranian rivers running dry because of kleptocratic irrigation works.

[seven of five]

Re: Whatsaboutism USA

> Not talking about Iranian rivers running dry because of kleptocratic irrigation works.

Rio Grande.

[Claude Yeller]

Re: Whatsaboutism

"Rio Grande."

Again, both sides can be devious, stupid, homicidal criminals. But the jury is still out who killed more Iranians this year, the USA& Israel or Iran.

Two criminals don't make a saint.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Whatsaboutism USA

It VoT. He is against the "west" and nothing else counts.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Iran is subject to sanctions

It's 2026. You're not seriously quoting the Grauniad, are you?

[Claude Yeller]

Re: The Guardian

"You're not seriously quoting the Grauniad, are you?"

Why not? Would you prefer Fox News or Breitbart?

It is just one of many news outlets reporting on the matter. It has the advantage of being in English, not American, and employing journalists.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The Guardian

> Why not? Would you prefer Fox News or Breitbart?

The Grauniad being a left leaning newspaper is a thing of the past. It hasn't been anywhere near the left since the late 90s (coinciding with "nu labour" and the Americanisation of European politics).

Nowadays it's just the same glorifier of US style economic liberalism as every other so-called mainstream publication out there. A raw manufacturer of consent.

[Claude Yeller]

Re: Was the Guardian piece incorrect?

"A raw manufacturer of consent."

But was the report I linked to incorrect? That is the only question that matters.

Everybody has a right to their opinions, but not to their facts.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Was the Guardian piece incorrect?

> But was the report I linked to incorrect? That is the only question that matters.

Who knows? The article is behind a paywall.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Consumer protection, lack thereof

> to keep people from protesting too much against economic failure and abject poverty.

Which has of course nothing to do with them kicking out the glorious leader imposed upon them by, initially, the Brits and then supported by the Americans (even though they opposed British imperialism).

I've been to Iran. Extremely diverse and beautiful country (Teheran aside!) with the politest people I've ever met. As a westerner (and one at the service of Western interests, no less) I do not feel any more represented by the actions of my leaders than Iranians feel by theirs.

[seven of five]

Re: Consumer protection, lack thereof

> I've been to the US (several times). Extremely diverse and beautiful country (Memphis aside!) with some of the most polite people I've ever met. As a westerner (and one at the service of Western interests, no less) I do not feel any more represented by the actions of my leaders than Citizens of the USA feel by theirs.

[simonlb]

Re: Consumer protection, lack thereof

"effective consumer protection"

In the US? No such thing. At one point they were considering going for something similar to the EU where the consumer has clearly and broadly defined rights and you cannot ride roughshod over them, but the well funded lobbyists got in and pleaded that it would cost far too much and could potentially bankrupt every company so they ended up with 'forced arbitration' which is essentially, "write a complaint letter and we might get back to you at some point with a convoluted process to follow."

And this is why, in the US, companies sell you an electronic device, arbitrarily obsolete it a year later then deliberately brick it with an update and you are forced to either buy the newer one or go somewhere else. That or changing the T's & C's after you've bought it and putting most of the normal device functionality behind a subscription paywall to ransom you. It also doesn't help that the DCMA makes it illegal to use a software tool to bypass a software lock to re-enable a deliberately bricked device, or to restore any functionality you paid for that is now under subscription. You can create a tool to do it, but cannot actually use it.

So, for example, you have new 'Smart' TV's that must be connected to the internet for you to set them up, that will harvest data about everything you do with the TV and send it back to the mothership, and that the only option to complete the setup is an Agree button. No options for airgapping the device, no way of opting out of certain T's & C's and no way of turning off data harvesting, you WILL accept every restriction the manufacturer wishes to impose on you before you can use the device that YOU own. Even if you are only using it as a monitor for playing back content. That is completely insane.

[doublelayer]

Re: Consumer protection, lack thereof

All of those things are problems. Not all of those things are solely problems in the US. Would I be correct that many of your examples are coming straight off Louis Rossmann's many examples of anti-consumer practices? Either way, let's see some examples helpfully collected by his Consumer Rights wiki of how other countries escape or don't such practices:

"in the US, companies sell you an electronic device, arbitrarily obsolete it a year later then deliberately brick it with an update"

Yes, they do. They also do that in in Germany and the UK and Sweden.

"That or changing the T's & C's after you've bought it and putting most of the normal device functionality behind a subscription paywall to ransom you."

Yes, a very big problem. Also a problem in Norway and Sweden and also Sweden.

In the case of laws, other countries have laws implementing similar restrictions as the DMCA's nastiness or have laws that theoretically protect people but don't work; the US's lack of privacy legislation is a big problem, but the EU's GDPR which doesn't get enforced isn't as useful as it should be when it isn't enforced. If you assume that other countries have this handled when they do not, it can lead you into false trust that you can't be affected or false hope that they'll fix it when they're not trying. If you're in the US, you're not alone. If you're not in the US, you're not immune.

[Catkin]

Re: Consumer protection, lack thereof

"Iran simply subsidizes basic "needs", including broadband it seems, to keep people from protesting too much against economic failure and abject poverty."

There's also the aspect that giving it lets you take it away at a whim too. That's why Maduro took control of incoming food aid (skimming a healthy profit as a bonus); any areas that got uppity could be starved out and the threat of starvation could encourage neighbours to silence any dissent, before their food supply was interrupted.

[anthonyhegedus]

What annoys me is the attitude of some people: “I’ll stick with what I’ve got. If it ain’t broke…” etc, and they don’t realise what a stupendous botch job it is trying to keep ageing copper infrastructure going. It IS broken, it’s a sticking plaster.

It doesn’t help when ISPs do things like cut off people’s phones, given them fibre and say “oh, we don’t do telephone service”.

[IGotOut]

In surveys like this...

...it would be far more useful to compare X with average income (or mean income).

I remember several years back when us westerners were complaining about how a sports clothing company in India / Bangladesh (can't remember) was only paying a few Dollars a day in wages.

Huge protests, company closed factory. Job done!

Then a reporter actually bothered to go and interview the affected workers and found many were now jobless and destitute and that the factory was actually one of the highest paying employers in the area.

[Excused Boots]

Re: In surveys like this...

Ah yes, the ‘Law of unintended consequences’!

[david 12]

Re: In surveys like this...

The same source also offers https://www.broadband.co.uk/broadband-world-affordability

Which is perhaps more interesting. PNG, third-world country with cheap internet ($17.30), also has relatively expensive internet (82.4% of annual income, rank 110). No surprise there. But the USSR (1.37%, 17) seems to be cheap on both measures, which is interesting.

The figures still aren't directly comparable, since the definition of "broadband" used is 50Mb, and the numbers don't represent coverage: presumably the USSR figures, and the China figures, are mostly low-speed residential towers in places like Moscow / Beijing, not gigabit connections in Siberia / Junggar

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: In surveys like this...

> But the USSR (1.37%, 17)

You're looking at the data for which century exactly?

[david 12]

Re: In surveys like this...

You're looking at the data for which century exactly?

I'm sorry that I expressed that in a way that confused people. What I meant for you to notice is that

The same source also offers https://www.broadband.co.uk/broadband-world-affordability

And that the affordability figures are also interesting for Russia: (1.37%, 17) compared to expected countries like PNG (82.4% of annual income, rank 110).

[doublelayer]

Re: In surveys like this...

Another thing that makes this data confusing and, in my opinion, not very useful is how they're averaging things. They collected contract prices from a bunch of ISPs and took the average of those. That means if 95% of people have access to a broadband service at $20, offered from five large national ISPs, and the remaining 5% of extremely rural users are offered $100 from 50 tiny monopolies serving individual areas, then the reported average price would be $92.73. That doesn't accurately describe what most people are paying for their service.

Collecting the data needed to give a more representative number would be hard. You'd need to know how many people can access that service and, to be most useful, how many do access it. Anyone who has entered their address only to be told that they can't get the kind of service the map says is available knows this is not an easy thing to collect. Unfortunately, the lazy way of collecting it leaves us with uncertain numbers.

[Anonymous Coward]

What exactly defines a "broadband contract"?

Curious about the definitions here, considering how often broadband is bundled with other services.

I don't believe that the average price of broadband in the US is $80. You can get 1 Gbps fiber with no contract and a long-term price lock for that. Most people don't have broadband that good.

Comcrap is offering 100 Mbps Internet for $30/mo, no contract, inclusive of all taxes and fees, no bundle required. 100 Mbps (down, obviously) is perfectly fine for light users, even in shared houses (even though I wish we'd make 10 Gbps symmetric FTTH a national infrastructure priority).

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: What exactly defines a "broadband contract"?

> What exactly defines a "broadband contract"?

For someone my age, one in which speeds are not expressed in Baud.

[doublelayer]

Re: What exactly defines a "broadband contract"?

They have details about what they considered on the study page, but they are vague and raw data is explicitly not available. Broadband was defined as things from 30 Mbps up but there was supposedly some consideration of multiple speed tiers, but how there could be with a single reported price is not explained. Contracts including other services were excluded when possible, considering contracts providing internet service alone.

[KSM-AZ]

Broad or Narrow?

"Broadband" with "narrow" access to content.

[Lazlo Woodbine]

So, maybe Trump invaded Iran not for oil, but to get cheap broadband...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Iran has something America can only dream of"

What ? A foreign policy not hostage to Israel ?

Actually when you think about it both are captive; just differently.

From the outset this ill·conceived adventure promised to be an unholy mess and has more than fulfilled that promise by quickly progressing to a complete bloody shambles.