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Ofcom Publishes Research on Broadband Speed

Ofcom has just announced the results of its research into consumer broadband speed in the UK. The report says that 93% of UK consumers are satisfied with their general broadband experience although levels of disatisfaction do vary depending on where they live.

Rural users are, unsurprisingly less satisfied than urban users. Also the satisfaction ratings drop to 67%  for those people watching online TV. This is a warning shot across the bows for UK ISPs as using ADSL for watching TV online is going to see a huge growth.

Ofcom used broadband monitoring company samknows to conduct the research which also found that the average UK consumer ADSL speed was 3.6Mbps which is only 45% of the typically adverstised speed of 8Mbps. This is lower than the theoretical average max possible speed across the UK of 4.3Mbps taking different distances from the exchange into account.

The testing seems to have been quite comprehensive with 1500 homes involved running 7,000 different tests, meaning that over 10 millions tests were conducted overall on a range of supplier services. Interestingly the peak usage was found to be between 5pm and 6pm on a Sunday afternoon. I guess everyone is watching Songs of Praise online – assuming they still broadcast it 🙂 .

What would be interesting is if Ofcom were to commission the same testing for business broadband connections. Unfortunately this is unlikely to happen because the original research was conducted as a result of a perceived level of consumer disatisfaction that is not there where businesses are concerned. Although businesses use the same fundamental ADSL technology they typically run with ISP networks such as Timico that are less congested.