A comprehensive worldwide study of broadband quality places the UK in a measly 25th place, trailing countries including Malta, Slovenia and Romania. The Cisco sponsored research surveyed 66 countries, using over 24 million speed tests from round the world.
UK Broadband Performance Lags Behind Asia and Eastern Europe
Each country was assigned a “broadband quality score”, taking into account up/download speeds, network latency times. South Korea gets the top spot, averaging 40 Mbps downloads across the country. Compare this to the UK’s 4.1 Mbps national average, and it’s clear that we have a long way to go to catch up.
Why Is UK A Broadband Slouch?
One of the reasons for our sluggish performance is that Britain mainly relies on copper phone wires for its broadband infrastructure. It’s possible to reach speeds of up to 24 Mbps this way, however performance tails off the further you get from your phone exchange.
It’s not all bad news, however. Virgin Media are the pioneers in high speed fibre optic broadband in the UK. They already have 50 Mbps downloads and are currently trialling a 100 Mbps service. BT are also planning to spend £1.5 bn on fibre before 2012.
What about the state of mobile broadband in the UK?
3G mobile broadband ( HSDPA and HSDPA+ ) is rapidly becoming a viable alternative to DSL for many UK internet users. A competitive market has pushed prices low enough to compete with fixed line broadband solutions. However, 3G mobile broadband doesn’t yet have the speed or network capacity to compete with copper or fibre.
Vodafone are about to roll out 14.4 Mbps in busy metropolitan areas, but it will likely be years until we see the next generation super-fast speeds of 4G LTE networks in operation.
Popularity: 1% [?]
I am also agree with “the reasons for sluggish performance is that Britain mainly relies on copper phone wires Instead of high speed optical fiber wire for its broadband”. Since the copper wire broadband have maximum up to 50Mbpsspeed while optical fiber wire have many times more than it.