For this project, we assemble a new dataset consisting of more than 25,000 residential and business broadband plans from all OECD countries from 2007 2009. We explore three issues: the relationship between plan components such as metering and consumer prices, price changes over time, and how broadband prices vary across countries.
This paper, part 2 of the project, studies prices and price changes over time in the United States and other OECD countries. We find that residential prices in the U.S. remained fairly stable overall in this time period for both standalone and triple play (voice, video, and data) plans, though prices for some speed tiers increased while others decreased. Business broadband prices in the U.S., however, appear to have decreased by 15-25 percent over the three years, with faster speeds showing bigger price decreases. Prices for standalone broadband plans in the U.S. are approximately in the middle of the range of prices across OECD countries. Prices for triple play plans in the U.S. are among the highest in the OECD. And while residential prices have on the whole remained constant in the U.S. they have been declining in most other countries.
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Scott Wallsten is President and Senior Fellow at the Technology Policy Institute, a Policy Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), and a senior fellow at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy. He is an economist with expertise in industrial organization and public policy, and his research focuses on competition, regulation, telecommunications, the economics of digitization, and technology policy. He was the economics director for the FCC's National Broadband Plan and has been a lecturer in Stanford University's public policy program, director of communications policy studies and senior fellow at the Progress & Freedom Foundation, a senior fellow at the AEI–Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, an economist at the World Bank, and a staff economist at the U.S. President's Council of Economic Advisers. He holds a PhD in economics from Stanford University.
