The UK suffers from a “massive discrepancy” in broadband speeds and should be aiming for the standards of Singapore where broadband speeds have doubled, according to a report.
A report from UK-based wireless comparison providers uSwitch.com has uncovered a ‘massive discrepancy’ between certain streets for broadband speed – and warns that the gap between urban and rural areas is widening.
It’s long been a running theme in UK broadband: residents in rural areas struggling to get good connection speeds, compared to those in cities.
“Rural parts of Britain in particular are still experiencing broadband speeds so slow that they might as well have no broadband at all,” uSwitch’s Julia Stent commented.
And looking at the figures, this is a reasonable assumption. Ledbury Road, in Wellington Heath, Herefordshire, which had the second lowest broadband speed according to the test, recorded a miserly 0.192Mbps. Halsey Drive, in Edzell, Aberdeenshire, was third with 0.25Mbps.
However a significant portion of the top 10 lowest UK speeds weren’t necessarily rural, epitomised by the number 1 slowest speed: Cromarty Road, in Stamford, Lincolnshire, which is in a built up area. It recorded a download speed of 0.132Mbps.
To put this in perspective, Akamai’s State of the Internet report published in August found that in the UK, average peak speed was 23.7Mbps, with average measured speed of 5.6Mbps. These figures differ from thinkbroadband.com’s factsheet, which gave a Q2 2012 measured speed of 9.1Mbps – however, they both illustrate the discrepancy the uSwitch report demonstrates.
As Stent noted: “Most of Britain’s slowest streets for broadband are not in particularly remote areas, but in small towns, nearer to exchanges and where we would expect to see higher download speeds across the board”.
The UK street with the fastest broadband speed, according to the report, was Willowfield, Telford, which delivers an average connection speed of 70.90Mbps.
How can the UK get faster broadband rollout?
Stent added: “These results show just how ambitious [the Government] is being in its bid to overtake the rest of Europe and haul Britain in line with the likes of South Korea and Singapore”.
Recent research from SingTel shows that Singapore broadband users have been able to access overseas sites at twice the speed they used to get, The Star Online reports.
This is because two major ISPs have lifted the caps on overseas connection speeds. Whereas before overseas sites trundled along at approximately 15Mbps, certain fibre users now get a connection speed of 34.9Mbps on average for overseas.
So that’s the competition the UK Government is facing for a super-fast broadband rollout. But what’s the solution? Better infrastructure, more ethical ISPs?
The news of Everything Everywhere’s 4G LTE service, the first of its kind in the UK, may be a stepping stone, but how can there be progress from here?
Find out more at the LTE Conference as part of Telecoms Tech World on 4-5 June
