UK Broadband is 27th Fastest Worldwide

THE latest report on world broadband speeds has shown that the UK is falling behind the rest of the world with the 27th fastest broadband network.

Akamai's 'State of the Internet' report recorded that the UK has average broadband speeds of just 3.8Mb.

This compares poorly with the top three countries, South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan, all scoring average broadband speeds of above 7.5Mb.

With a tradition of investing heavily in next generation superfast network infrastructure it is no surprise to see these Asian countries holding the fastest broadband top spots.

The other seven nations with a place in the broadband top ten are all European, with an average broadband speed of at least 5.3Mb.

Perhaps most standout from this list is Romania and Latvia, who hold fourth and fifth places overall and have average broadband speeds of 6.3Mb.

These two countries best illustrate what investment in broadband infrastructure can achieve. In this case, faster speeds were achieved with investment help from the European Commission.

Broadband city fail

Far eastern cities also dominated in the top 100 fastest cities with 61 of them in Japan, 12 in South Korea.

Sadly, and perhaps a little too predictably, no UK city managed the top 100.

Conflicting reports

On a brighter note, a recent report carried out by Ofcom and broadband analysts SamKnows indicated more positive news for broadband speeds in the UK.

Their research indicated that the average broadband speed in the UK had increased 25% over the past year, rising from 4.1Mb to 5.2Mb.

There is clearly some disagreement then between the reports - the findings of this survey give the UK a broadband average speed falling just outside the top ten in the world - but why?

The OFCOM/Samknows data was collected using performance monitoring equipment in the routers of over 1,500 home broadband users. Over 18 million tests were run during May this year.

The Akamai report drew its conclusions from its own global server network which works with large companies including Amazon and Hulu in the US to deliver content.

In the UK, the company appears to be working with rather fewer popular sites which perhaps accounts for the disparity between their figures and OFCOM's.

What is clear from both reports is this: investment works and hopefully the improvements currently ongoing in the UK, such as BT Infinity broadband project, will help lift the country's placing in future 'State of the Internet' reports.

Hopefully there'll then be no need to look sheepishly at our shoes when everyone's comparing broadband at big UN conferences.

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