Figure 4: Comparison of share of month income consumed by an Internet plan with an advertised download speed of 2 Mbps between May 2012 and May 2014 (Source: ICT Pulse)<\/p><\/div>\n
Within the past year, between May 2013 and May 2014, there was a general decrease in the portion of monthly income that would be spent on a 2\u00a0Mbps plan. The largest drops were recorded in Suriname, -3.7%, followed by Trinidad and Tobago and Anguilla, at +2.1% and 1.1%, respectively. On the other hand, increases in the portion of monthly income that would be spent on 2\u00a0Mbps plan, were recorded in the Turks and Caicos Islands, +1.7%, the British Virgin Islands, +0.5% and in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, +0.3%.<\/p>\n
Over the period in which we have been tracking the affordability of fixed-line broadband Internet service, since May 2011, generally, pricing for Internet service have been falling and so is consuming less of an average person\u2019s income, as reflected in Table 1. Across the Caribbean (again excluding Belize and Guyana), the averaged proportion of monthly income spent on a 2 Mbps fixed broadband Internet plan is continuing to decline, though the rate appears to be slowing.<\/p>\n
Table 1: Portion of monthly income spent on an Internet plan with an advertised download speed of 2 Mbps averaged across the Caribbean between 2011 and 2014 (Source: ICT Pulse)<\/p><\/div>\n
Having said this, it is important to highlight that ISPs have been increaasing the download speeds offered. In some instances the prices for a particular plan, e.g. a 2 Mbps plan might be reduced; however, ISPs appear more inclined to maintain the price point but increase the speed. Hence, while the price per Megabit per second might be dropping, overall, the pool of persons who can afford to subscribe for service might not necessarily be widening at an heighten rate as expected. \u00a0 ____________<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A 2014 update of how affordable Internet broadband service is across the Caribbean. Since May 2011, and following on from our most recent Snapshot of Internet speed and pricing, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,17,27,11,6],"tags":[59,32,61,63,15],"class_list":["post-57418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-broadband","category-caribbean","category-computing","category-ict-tech","category-internet","tag-digital-divide","tag-information-society","tag-snapshot-series","tag-survey","tag-trends","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2iE1G-eW6","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57418"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57434,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57418\/revisions\/57434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}