A few days ago I commented on Cem Sertoğlu’s report of Turkey having the most expensive broadband in the world.

Well.

Cem has posted a follow-up to his original post with some very interesting new information… turns out the latest reports tell a slightly different story, with Turkey still quite high up on the list of expensive broadband, but Kazakhstan taking the ultimate prize, as it were. You’re not going to believe this, but here it is:

Most users (and only four percent of the country even has access) hook up through state-owned Kazakhtelecom, a company not concerned with competitive pricing for its services. An unlimited dial-up plan costs about €82 ($111) in a country where the average monthly wage is €292 ($399). As for DSL, an unlimited 1.5Mbps connection costs €2,458 ($3,355) a month, and doesn’t even included the required ADSL modem. Want a 6Mbps cable connection? It’ll cost you, to the tune of €16,144 ($22,032) a month. As the OSCE report drily notes, this is more than a thousand times the price of such a connection in Western Europe.

Er, yeah. Imagine phoning up for broadband and being told it’ll set you back twenty-two thousand dollars a month. Yikes! Now I’m tempted to search around on my favourite social networks and see if I can find anyone in the four percent of connected Kazakhs and learn what they pay for their connection. It wouldn’t surprise me if at some point some black market underground solution becomes available, some kind of pirate satellite or something. Link