Mobile and fixed broadband pricing study in the Baltics and Scandinavia

Surfshark’s 2021 Digital Quality of Life Index showed that Estonia has declined in the index standing mainly due to low scores in internet quality and affordability metrics. Therefore, Civitta conducted a study to understand the pricing of mobile and fixed broadband in the Baltic and Scandinavian region. The results show that while Estonia has competitive pricing for mobile broadband, the prices for fixed broadband are significantly higher than in other Baltic states as well as in several Scandinavian countries. As a result, customers often opt for lower speed products which impacts their user experience.

Mobile broadband prices for private customers in Estonia are at the same level with other Baltic countries, Finland and Denmark – on average, prices in Latvia, Lithuania and Finland are 9%, 8% and 5% cheaper**, respectively. However, Estonian prices are more unfavourable to customers at higher data amounts – for unlimited data, the average offer in Latvia is 30% and in Lithuania 17% cheaper. 

Mobile broadband prices for business customers in Estonia are at the same level with other Latvia, Finland and Denmark, only customers in Lithuania can enjoy on average 14% lower prices. However, similarly to private customers, Estonian prices are more unfavourable to customers at higher data amounts compared to neighbouring countries – for unlimited data, the average offer in Latvia is 18%, in Lithuania 27% and in Finland 8% cheaper.

The story is completely different when we examine fixed broadband - fixed internet prices in Estonia for private customers are significantly higher than in other Baltic countries. For the most common fast speed offers for private customers – 100 and 300 Mbit/s -, offers in other Baltic countries are 30-50% lower than in Estonia. Compared to Scandinavian countries, prices are cheaper in Finland and 20-25% higher in Sweden and Denmark. However, similarly to mobile broadband, the prices in Estonia get relatively more expensive with higher speeds as 1 Gbit/s connection is significantly cheaper in Finland, Sweden and Denmark and only slightly more expensive in Norway.

Fixed broadband prices in Estonia for business customers are significantly – up to 9 times for 1 Gbit/s connection – higher than in other Baltic countries. For 100 and 300 Mbit/s connections, offers for business customers are around 50% lower in Latvia and 75% lower in Lithuania. Prices for business customers in Scandinavian countries are often not public, however in Sweden the prices are also up to 65% lower than in Estonia. Similarly to other customer segments and products, the pricing becomes more unfavourable to Estonian customers on higher speeds.

* Pricing index is constructed based on both B2B and B2C prices for various speeds, indexing them towards the prices in Estonian market; crosshatched columns indicate that data for some speeds was missing

** The price difference is calculated on an equally-weighted average of available offers