British broadband "among slowest in Europe" 10:31AM, Monday 1st October 2007

The UK has one of the slowest average broadband speeds in Europe, according to a new report.
The study shows that Britain has an average connection speed of 2.6Mb/sec, placing it below countries such as Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and Holland.

In fact the UK comes in a miserable ninth in the table of 16 European countries studied by the Information Technology Innovation Foundation (ITIF).

The study's figures contrast sharply with regulator Ofcom's current appraisal of British broadband. In a consultation paper looking at the future of broadband published last week, Ofcom claimed the "the average headline speed has doubled in a year to reach 4.6Mb/sec."

This is, of course, based on the theoretical maximum speed of the connection - which not a single line in the country actually receives. A Moneysupermarket.com survey earlier this year revealed that just a fifth of British broadband customers felt they were receiving the speed they paid for.

Finland came out top in the ITIF study, with an average connection speed of 21.7Mb/sec - over eight times the UK's average speed.

Thats because BT's network is over 150 years old in some places and uses copper cable which is not designed for internet usage.

Virgin Media and Smallworld Media use fibre optic cable, the cable firms are able to offer up 20MB speed. Virgin Media are rolling out speeds of up to 50MB area by area.

It will cost a hell of a lot of money to upgrade BT's network and nobody is sure who is willing to pay for it. To be honest its down to slow increases in usage over the years and BT and Cable and Wireless only focused on the bigger cities as they thought that internet usage would not materialise but it has. In 1997 Nynex and BellAtlantic explained this and began work on broadband britain....................in the cities.

So the only way of getting good speed is by switching to fibre optic cable.



www.virginmedia.com
www.smallworldmedia.com (Southern Glasgow,Morecombe,Carisle and few others up that way)
www.wightcable.co.uk (isle of wight)

Or live near the exchange. I can get a sync of 24mb on my bt line wth BE.

Thats currently faster then what Cable offer.

Not for much longer, by 2010, all of Virgin Media's network will be running at 50MB and by 2015, probably 80MB,whilst ADSL will still be trotting behind.

Although, BT apparently own about 3 franchises which Virgin Media use,so I suppose they can share it those franchises.

Virgin Media could open its network to other companies too and generate revenue that way and then eventually expand its fibre optic network. I know that Verizon Business(formerly MCI Worldcom) and Cable and Wireless will jump at that offer as they really want to offer there businesses Cable Internet.

Blimey, that means the network was installed before the telephone was even invented ! Must have been forward thinking.

ROFL

Wasnt it installed to use on the tin cans?