Ofcom Release Final UK vs EU Broadband Scorecard Results for 2015

Ofcom has published the final version of their most recent European Broadband Scorecard, which shows how the United Kingdom compares with Europe’s other major countries in terms of delivering the Government’s ambition for us to have the “fastest broadband of any major European country by 2015“.

As a quick recap the Government originally said that they wanted us to have “the best superfast broadband network in Europe by 2015“, which was watered down in 2012 (here) to deliver the more easily achievable “fastest broadband of any major European country by 2015” (i.e. comparing us against France, Germany, Italy and Spain [EU5] rather than the whole of Europe).

The Scorecard reports on coverage, take-up and use, price, speed and choice. It also draws on three main sources of data: the EC Digital Agenda Scoreboard 2015 to year-end 2014, Eurostat data on fixed broadband household take-up and online activities relating to Q2 2015 and Ofcom’s own analysis of pricing data sourced from Teligen (July 2015). Suffice to say that the data is woefully out of date and won’t reflect the most recent progress.

Note: Data and rankings relating to year-end 2014 and Q2 2015 are listed first. Data and rankings for year-end 2013 and Q1 2014 are listed below in italics and parentheses

The UK ranks first on almost all metrics except the number of fixed broadband connections per 100 people, where it ranks joint second behind France, and in 4G (mobile broadband) coverage, where it ranks second behind Germany, and in the percentage of individuals who interacted online with public authorities within the last 12 months, where it ranks joint third with Spain after France and Germany.

Crucially we are top of the key metric for Next Generation Access (NGA) broadband coverage, although it’s worth noting that this changes when we look at all of Europe’s 28 member states and in this picture the UK only ranks 9th overall. Ofcom also tends to lump everything from slower FTTC (VDSL) to ultrafast FTTH/P under the same NGA title.

Ofcom’s European Broadband Scorecard 2015
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/../european-broadband-scorecard-2015-update.pdf