The Affordability Report is an annual report produced by the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI), an 80+ member global coalition led by the Web Foundation. It represents an ongoing effort to understand why some countries have succeeded in making internet access more affordable, accessible, and universal, and what others can do to catch up quickly.

Our 2019 Affordability Report finds that consolidated broadband markets are keeping prices high and putting life-changing internet access out of reach for hundreds of millions of people.

The report calls on governments to focus their policies and regulations on building healthy broadband markets that improve competition, bring down prices, and expand internet access by:

• Adopting policy and regulation that support market competition, including fair rules for market entry and incentives to encourage new competitors.
• Bringing down costs for new operators to compete by supporting affordable access to wholesale internet data, so that competitors aren’t locked out by high capital barriers to entry.
• Investing in public internet access, such as free public WiFi and telecentres, and support community networks to expand internet coverage to those not served by commercial markets and provide consumers with more choices to get online.

The 2019 edition of the Affordability Report, along with all supporting data, an interactive data explorer, and impact stories to ground the policy issues in their human impact, is available at a4ai.org/affordability-report.