The UK has some of the cheapest mobile and broadband bills in the world - a study claims

If you live in the UK and you think your mobile phone bill is very high, you should start comforting yourself with the thought that — in many countries — people pay a lot more for their mobile contracts. A recent study funded by Virgin Media O2 revealed that UK mobile and broadband bills are among the cheapest in the world.

The people behind the research decided to compare the UK's telecom prices to those in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, and the US. They found out that the average monthly mobile cost in the UK is 95% lower than in the US, 45% less than in Japan, and 16% lower than in France. The prices in the UK are only 10 pence a month more expensive than those in Spain, which — it looks like — is the country with the cheapest rates out of those six.

Furthermore, the study revealed that the average monthly bill a UK household pays for telecom services has actually dropped by almost a fifth, which is more than £18 per month, since 2017. And it appears that mobile and broadband bills are only 3.8% of the total UK household expenses.

According to the report, the average mobile data usage has tripled in the last five years, and the UK has surpassed all other countries in terms of fixed data consumption per person. However, despite the increased data consumption, the study claims that the price per megabyte has reached a "historical low."

The research also declares that if telecom prices were increasing as fast as those in the energy sector, the average monthly bill would soon be over the whopping £400. Now that is a high phone bill!

Since you already know how much you are saving on your data plan, if you want to save money on a new smartphone as well, we suggest you visit our best Virgin Media and O2 phone deals articles and get one with an amazing discount from there. Or, if you are rolling with another carrier but still want to save big on a new handset, feel free to check out our best Vodafone phone deals, best Three phone deals, and best EE phone deals.