Flicking, as one does, through the Akamai State of the Internet Report for Q2 2011 I note that the average internet connection speed for the UK in the second quarter was 5Mbps1.
The good news is that this is up 9% from the previous quarter and 28% year on year.
Unfortunately the bad news is that the UK is not keeping pace with its competitors. I last looked at these stats in January 2011. In Q3 2010 the UK was placed 17th globally for average internet connection speed with 11 European countries ahead of us.
In Q2’11 we are down to 25th globally with 15 other European countries ahead of us. 14 European countries had a higher year on year growth than the UK.
Now I’m sure someone from DCMS2 will come out of the woodwork with some other indicators that show how the UK is going to have the best superfast broadband network in Europe by 2015. I don’t think we really need to spend time arguing this one. Perhaps someone could just explain to me how we are going to do it. The Akamai stats suggest that we are going backwards not forwards.
1 I know I’m a couple of weeks late with this one but I was all at sea when the report came out and I’ve only just read it. Also I’m not sure how many commentators have really looked at the relative progress within Europe – from what I can see they have mainly chosen to comment on the gap between advertised speeds and reality.
2 Department of Culture Media and Sports – responsible for “the internet” within government.
2 replies on “UK drops to 25th in league table of internet connection speeds, 15th in Europe – Akamai @edvaizey”
As more people get on to faster connections the average speed will keep rising slowly, but it won’t alter the fact that many are still on sub megabit speeds, most are on sub megabit uploads, and there are still folk everywhere stuck on dial up. I know telcos have to make money, and I know councils have to help the majority, but as long as there are so many so poorly served we will never have a digital britain, a digital economy, or be a ‘superfast nation’.
I think it is up to DCMS to look behind the vital vision and marketing hype and stop public money going into patching up the copper and subsidising satellite installations to get the 2meg USC to us peasants. I think the funding should go to build rural fibre networks, scattered around the country, which will soon grow to surround the cities and provide some competition to the telcos who are slowly throttling this country by sweating their copper assets and killing the golden goose.
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