Ookla Launch Global Monthly Broadband Speeds Report – UK at 49.22Mbps

The firm behind the Speedtest.net service, Ookla, has reintroduced a monthly country ranking of global mobile and fixed broadband speeds. In their first report we find the United Kingdom ranked 24th fastest in the world with an average download of 49.22Mbps (fixed) and 25.83Mbps (mobile).

The first “report” is incredibly basic and only displays an overall level of broadband speed over time, which doesn’t offer a breakdown by ISP or provide a truly detailed explanation of its methodology for that calculation. Lately we seem to have been bombarded by reports based on internet speedtests and the results tend to be all over the shop, so nobody will be surprised to find that Ookla’s result is quite a bit higher than all of the others.

Anybody familiar with the data that Ookla puts out will also understand that their reports tend to be more optimistic than most for a number of reasons. One reason is because their data doesn’t distinguish between business (leased lines etc.) and residential connections. We also recall that they had a tendency to drop a sizeable chunk of the slowest tests and a smaller slice of the fastest results, which further reinforced the optimistic scores.

Otherwise the fastest country in the world for fixed broadband speeds came out as Singapore again, which is a city-state that’s been blanketed with FTTH/P and a country like that will always best a mixed technology market like the UK (i.e. where most people are still using copper based ADSL or hybrid-fibre connections).

The Top 25 Fastest Countries by Fixed Broadband Speed

Suffice to say that Ookla’s new Global Index is useful because it adds to the available data, although like all speedtest based reports it’s still subject to the usual caveats of service take-up, methodology and any constrains of the testing environment. In other words, such reports make for a poor gauge when considering the availability of faster networks.

At present it’s estimated that around 93%+ of premises are within reach of a fixed line “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) network, which should rise to 97% by 2020. However just under half of home broadband lines in the UK are still connected via slow pure copper ADSL services, even though faster networks are often available (many people haven’t upgraded due to various reasons, such as a lack of awareness, higher prices, fear of switching, satisfaction with their existing package etc.).

Lest we forget that lots of other problems can also skew results extracted from internet speedtests, such as slow WiFi, poor home wiring and local network congestion (e.g. running a speedtest at the same time as somebody else is downloading a big file). But if we assume that many other countries will face the same issues then Ookla’s ranking can still be a useful indicator of progress and take-up, so long as it’s taken in the correct context.