The cost of mobile data plans in the EU fell in 2017, based on average user profiles. A comparative study by Empirica and TUV Rhineland for the European Commission found prices fell the most for plans with a large amount of data, according Telecompaper. The study is based on the OECD average user profiles. For the lowest combination of 250 MB and 30 calls, the average price in the EU28 was EUR 14.11 per month based on data from February 2017 and adjusted for purchasing power parity. That's down 9 percent from a year earlier. The biggest price drop was for plans with 2 GB data and 100 calls, which fell by 45 percent to an average EUR 23.93 per month. The study also recorded an average price of EUR 31.80 for 5 GB and 100 calls per month, with no annual comparison available due to insufficient data from 2016.
For mobile broadband only, the biggest basket of 20 GB again had the biggest fall in price, dropping 21 percent year-on-year to an average EUR 33.12 per month in July 2017. The cost of 10 GB also fell 19 percent, to EUR 21.77. The smallest plan, of 250 MB, showed a small increase of 4 percent to EUR 8.18, due mainly to fewer operators offering this amount.
Averaging across all OECD usage baskets, the study found that the cheapest countries for mobile broadband were Poland, Austria, Italy, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovenia, Luxembourg, Sweden and France. The relatively inexpensive countries were the UK, Denmark, Romania, Croatia, Spain, Bulgaria and Germany, and relatively expensive countries were Belgium, Malta, Finland, the Netherlands,
Portugal, Slovakia and Ireland. The most expensive countries were Hungary, Cyprus, the Czech Republic and Greece.
The study also compared prices in the EU with Iceland, Norway, Turkey, Japan, South Korea and the US. On average, mobile broadband in the EU28 was about the same or more expensive than in the non-EU countries for most of the OECD usage baskets.
