Recently I was browsing through broadband penetration reports and I found some interesting data. First of all, for the record, there are around 1,6 billion Internet users worldwide. That is about 25% of the world population.

Now that number obviously includes dial-up connections and even people who don’t have an Internet connection at home and use the Internet at work or on Internet cafes.

So have many broadband connections do we have? According to Point Topic, a research firm, by June of 2009 there were 444 million broadband subscribers around the world. If you want to get details about prices and bandwidth, however, you need to check local websites. One that we found useful is http://www.broadbandexpert.com.au/, which is dedicated to the Australian broadband market. If you visit the page with broadband plans you will find 44 offers compared. We did some calculations and found that in Australia the average monthly price for a broadband service is $63, and the average bandwidth speed is 16 Megabits per second. Not bad huh?

Again according to Point Topic, the 10 countries with the highest broadband penetration are:

1. Monaco
2. Luxembourg
3. Iceland
4. Denmark
5. Switzerland
6. Norway
7. Australia
8. Netherlands
9. Malta
10. Sweden

As you can see most of them are small countries, but Norway, Australia, Netherlands and Sweden perform well despite their larger size.

Finally, it is also interesting to see the rise of wireless Internet connections. Analyzing the numbers on the BroadbandExpert portal we can see that the average wireless broadband service in Australia costs around $30 and provides a speed of 3 Megabits.

What about in your country? How much do you need to pay for a broadband connection, and what kind of speed do you get in return?