2021 Price Baskets

In the past year, the COVID-19 pandemic brought about two main counteracting trends influencing affordability. First, as digital replaced many physical interactions, the global demand for data usage increased, prompting operators and regulators to find solutions to ensure access with a variety of measures, such as capacity increase, increase in zero-rated services, or temporary subsidies. At the same time, the real economic impact of the pandemic, falling national income levels observed in 2020 in economies around the world, had a major influence on how affordable ICT services are for users.

The fact that demand for broadband services has increased in the past two years, even if those became less affordable, has shown that Internet access is not merely a luxury, but a necessity. However, one of the reasons why many people do not access and use ICT services remains to be the high cost of connectivity relative to income. The significant share of the world population who cannot make the necessary compromise with other expenditures, risks staying left behind.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) have partnered again to collect data and analyse global and regional trends in affordability and pricing for the set of ICT price baskets listed below, covering different technologies including mobile voice, and mobile and fixed broadband.

The ITU Expert Group on Telecommunication/ICT Indicators defined these ICT price baskets for benchmarking the cheapest price plans for those five categories. Details on methodology are available on the ITU website. In addition, our joint policy brief highlights the latest global and regional trends on affordability for this selection of price baskets (measured as the price of a basket relative to monthly income). You can also see data from 2020 and analysis.