UK lagging in broadband quality

Recently a Broadband Quality Study was done, this is an annual study performed by the Saïd Business School and the University of Oviedo Applied Economics Department and sponsored by Cisco Systems . The purpose of this study was to compare broadband speeds and overall quality of service as well as broadband penetration, the measure of how much of the internet access market broadband takes up.

This study measures what it calls the "Broadband Quality Score", a metric which takes into account download throughput, upload throughput, and quality of service (QoS) measures such as packet loss and service continuity (uptime), and is calculated as a percentage value. As well as this, speed tests were conducted by users throughout the world using http://www.speedtest.net. The period for this survey was from May 2008 to June 2009, and the final report and appendix for this study was made available on the 30th September.

This study shows that UK's aging copper-based broadband is not ready for tomorrow's requirements, and the UK comes in at 25th out of 66 countries in terms of broadband leadership (combined score of broadband quality and penetration), but 31st in terms of broadband quality, which is extremely poor and needs to be improved on if the UK is to become a knowledge-based economy.

The UK also lags behind France, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, Japan and South Korea. In Europe, Sweden rated best in terms of broadband access rollout, and worldwide South Korea came out top for both quality and penetration with Japan a close second in both. Among cities and towns, the Japanese cities of Yokohama and Nagoya came top worldwide, and Kaunas in Lithuania did well too. By contrast, London failed to make the top 20.

In terms of the urban-rural divide, this is unsurprisingly pronounced in the UK, with rural areas having either poor quality or non-existent broadband. Having said that, the study identifies Lithuania, Russia, and Latvia, had the greatest quality advantage in cities. Only a few countries had rural areas enjoying even better connection than the cites, one of those was Sweden which was stated as the "most successful country in closing the broadband quality gap".

Globally, the average download speed was 4.75 Mb/s, while average upload speed was 1.3 Mb/s. It is estimated that countries will need an average download speed of 11.25 Mb/s and an upload speed of 5 Mb/s in order to handle future applications such as high definition video.

The Broadband Quality Score study illustrates exactly why the UK needs Fibre to the Home as soon as possible, as called for in my previous article. Not only will the quality of the overall broadband improve, the UK will at last be ready to use the said future applications, and be truly prepared for a knowledge based economy, whilst maintaining a high quality of service at the same time.

On the 1st October, BT Openreach have announced plans for FTTH trials in two brownfield sites which are Highams Park in London, and Milton Keynes. This is different to the FTTH deployment to the Ebbsfleet Valley housing development which was to a new build development. Furthermore, Highams Park is an area listed to receive fibre to the kerb or FTTK (fibre to the curb or FTTC in US English), which presumably means FTTC would co-exist alongside FTTH there as part of the trial. This is a start, but the UK really needs to have a full rollout of FTTH as soon as possible, and nothing less will do.

The UK government has introduced the idea of a 50p tax on all copper telephone lines to fund next generation broadband, as part of the Digital Britain report, with legislation to be debated in parliament before the general election. It remains to be seen, if this tax actually happens, and if so whether the most of the capital raised will actually be invested on FTTH, as it should be. Whether or not we agree with the principle of such a levy, this does not change the fact that we need FTTH in the UK as soon as possible, and Broadband Quality Study for this year illustrates this quite clearly.

Broadband Quality Study 2009 – Final Report
Broadband Quality Study 2009 – Appendix