The cost of a mobile plan including a top smartphone showed a general increase in the latest Telecompaper benchmark report on 16 countries in Western Europe. In the latest survey, based on prices advertised in Q3 2014, there were more mobile plans on offer (just over 4,100 from 72 operators) than six months previously (3,300), and in many instances, the prices had gone up slightly for plans including a handset.
Many factors may explain the general increase in prices, such as annual inflation increases or the trend toward lower handset subsidies. Mobile operators are also shifting to more flat-rate pricing, often with unlimited calls and SMS and bigger data bundles, in order to justify higher monthly access fees.
The research shows for instance that over a third of plans now come with 1,000+ or unlimited minutes per month, and nearly half (45%) include unlimited SMS. The share of plans with 2GB of data or more per month increased to 37 percent of the total, from 32 percent in the previous report from Q1 2014. At the same time, the amount of plans available with small bundles of minutes, SMS and/or data, and as such lower prices, is decreasing.
Sixteen countries
The research compares mobile price plans available both with a high-end smartphone and as sim-only, looking at the total cost of ownership. The data covers all the major operators and certain of their sub-brands in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.
Overall, the data shows that Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom are consistently cheap countries for mobile communications compared to other countries in Western Europe. Greece and Portugal on the other hand are relatively expensive for mobile consumers. Belgium, Germany and Italy, as well as Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland continue to display a mixed performance, with prices sometimes cheap or expensive, depending on the type of plan.
SIM-only
For instance, SIM-only plans with a large bundle (1,000+ minutes, 2,000+ megabytes) varied greatly in price (monthly TCO). During the period researched, prices ranged from a median EUR 24 per month in Denmark to EUR 95 per month in Greece. In the Netherlands, the median price for this type of plan was EUR 40, just EUR 1 below the median of the 16 countries.
For SIM-only plans in many cases the median prices had gone down, although not in all the countries. For example, in Q1 2014 the median in Denmark for the above mentioned SIM-only plan stood at EUR 20 and in Greece it came to EUR 92, while in the Netherlands it was EUR 42.
