News Categories: General (Default) | Dialup | DSL (ADSL etc.) | Cable/FTTx | Satellite | Wireless | IPTV | VoIP

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITFI) has published a global ranking of broadband enabled countries, which balances cost, speed and household penetration figures to find out how well they all did.

The results placed the UK in 13th position, with an average 'subscriber per household' figure of 0.55 and download speeds touching 2.6Mbps. The typical lowest monthly cost per Mb (Megabit) was also $1.24 (£0.62). This result also meant that the UK came two places above the USA at 15th:

Residents of Scotland’s picturesque Tweed Valley village are up in arms at BTs failure to deliver faster broadband services. There are 350 households in the area and nearly all of them are online, yet speeds are estimated to be roughly 32 times slower than in neighbouring Peeblesshire.

In addition, 30 properties outside of the village have no broadband access at all. Sadly a recently held community meeting, which was organized by MP David Mundell and included BT, has failed to resolve the problem:


BT estimates that it would cost upwards of £500,000 to shorten the line and carry out additional work for faster broadband services. That's a lot of cash for such a small area and BT was not willing to cover the cost. Mundell now hopes to raise the issue with Ofcom.

The latest research from Point-Topic has revealed that just 8% of consumers in the UK feel perfectly safe using their computer at home. More worryingly, fewer people are now taking action to protect themselves:


Becoming complacent about such things can far too frequently lead to problems from cyber crime to theft of personal data and or your computer being remotely hijacked. Nobody should ever assume that the limited protection afforded by modern Internet browsers, ISPs and operating systems is enough.

Mercifully people have become more aware of phishing and social engineering attacks, where a user is persuaded to infect themselves by clicking on a link leading to sites with malicious code or tricked into handing over personal data.

Point-Topic also revealed that the number of standalone broadband users in the UK decreased by 11% in the 12 months to January 2008, preferring instead to signup with a bundled product (e.g. dual, triple or quad play voice, mobile, TV and broadband bundles).

The European Commission's (EC) latest i2010 report, which is part of a digital strategy for growth, has revealed that 250m of the EU's half a billion citizens regularly go online and 80% of broadband subscribers use a DSL (ADSL etc.) technology to do so.

Growth in broadband penetration continued in 2007 but large gaps remain between countries. In January 2008, there were an estimated total of 99 million broadband lines in the EU, an increase of 23.8% over the preceding year. This represents an average broadband take-up of 20% of the EU population.

Denmark (35.6%), Finland (34.6%), the Netherlands (34.2%) and Sweden (31.2%) top the EU league with penetration rates above 30%, and maintain their position as world leaders well ahead of Korea, the US or Japan. It's worth pointing out that the UK places fifth on 25.7%.

Naturally prices of broadband access tend to be cheaper in the most developed countries and more expensive in the least. For instance, the least expensive offer for broadband with a nominal download speed of 1Mbps was priced at €49 (inc. VAT) in Slovakia, while consumers in the Netherlands were charged €14 for a product with similar speeds. By comparison the UK came a few places behind the Netherlands with an average price of roughly €22.

Figures for the national coverage of DSL networks also hide a gap between rural and urban areas in several countries. Deployment costs largely depend on a country’s topography and population density, and full coverage remains a challenge in a number of countries. Greece, Slovakia, Latvia, Italy, Poland, Lithuania and Germany show a large gap between coverage in urban and rural areas.

On average, at EU25 level, 94% of the population in urban areas are able to subscribe to a DSL connection, as against 72% of the rural population. The UK places fourth in this chart too, with roughly 95% rural coverage and 99% urban.

The average rate of download speeds that European citizens subscribe to are slow compared to other regions. Average EU speeds are about 1Mbps with limited upload speeds. For the EU as a whole, the percentage of subscribers to cable modem and xDSL products with speeds below 1Mbps is declining, while the percentage of subscribers with access to speeds between 1 and 2Mbps has risen from 23% to 32%.

Nevertheless, the 512Kbps to 1Mbps range remains the most common (34% of subscribers), closely followed by the 1–2 Mbps bracket. Only a small fraction of European subscribers have broadband speeds above 2Mbps, and access speeds above 8 Mbps are still marginal (5% of cable modem and DSL subscribers). Fast connections, such as fibre (FTTx) are used by only 1.2% of European subscribers concentrated in a handful of countries. It's worth pointing out that the speed data is only as recent as December 2006, making it of little use.

The latest study of 41,230 broadband connections over February and March 2008 from comparison site 'Broadband-Expert' has revealed that consumers typically receive just 48% of the advertised download speed.

The average speed achieved in the 16Mbps+ category was a relatively low 8.6Mbps (45% of the quoted maximum). By comparison customers on 2Mbps packages achieved on average 1.8Mbps (88%) and customers on 8Mbps achieved 3.4Mbps (43%).

The average speeds achieved by broadband users varied hugely between providers and packages. In the 2Mbps category top performers were Virgin Media’s cable service, Talk Talk and UK Online, all of which achieved slightly more than the advertised maximum 2Mbps speed. Even the lowest performers Tiscali, Pipex and Toucan achieved 68%, 70% and 73% respectively.

The biggest variations were in the 8Mbps category where O2 and Be achieved 73% and 68% of advertised speeds, compared to just 26% for Toucan and 29% for both Virgin Media’s ADSL service and Eclipse.

The fastest actual speed achieved in the 16Mbps+ category was Virgin Media’s cable service with an average of 10.4Mbps or 52% of the 20Mbps quoted top speed. The only other ISP to deliver more than 50% of the advertised maximum speed was UK Online which achieved 62% of the 16Mbps quoted top speed, delivering an average of 9.99Mbps.

The Scotsman reports that residents of the Lothians who are unable to access broadband should be able to do so soon. The Scottish Government's Broadband for Scotland programme aims to have the problem resolved by the end of this year:


Meanwhile Ceredigion Council (Wales) has launch a new "notspot" survey to gauge how many residents have access to broadband. BBC News Online offers the following quote from Mark Elliott, assistant director of the council's corporate performance:


British Telecom (BT) notes that 99% of people in Wales should be able to access broadband, although that remaining 1% must not be ignored. Likewise it's worth remembering that many of those with access may only be able to surf at slower speeds.

We've just uploaded a new monthly survey, which asks: "Would you leave your ISP if it adopted Phorm?" (check out our 'Phorm Related News History' for some background). Results from the previous month’s survey can be found below:


Nearly 80% of respondents felt that there was demand for an 'up to' 20Mbps service, with just 10.6% saying “no” and the rest remaining undecided. The result suggests that ISP who fail to keep pace with the latest technologies risk being left behind as customers seek to migrate onto faster alternatives.

Some 50.7% expect to upgrade their packages to 20Mbps+ when it becomes available, with 22.8% remaining undecided, 16.2% saying “no” and 10.3% using it already.

New Nielsen//Netratings research has revealed that the majority of Britons online (52%) are on a connection speed between 512Kbps and 2Mbps, while one-third are on a connection speed between 2Mbps and 8Mbps.

The statistics show that 'Super Fast' broadband (termed in the report as connection speeds over 8Mbps) is only as common as "the old dial-up speeds (connections no faster than 128Kbps)" – both being used by just 3% of Britons online:


Interestingly the research reveals that faster broadband speeds do cause people to spend more time online, with those on the fastest speeds (over 8Mbps) averaging 22% more time online than those on the lowest (< 128Kb):


Naturally the number of people on speeds over 8Mbps is set to increase as BT begins its nation wide rollout of ‘up to’ 24Mbps ADSL2+ technology towards the end of this month.

Point Topic has released its latest 'World Broadband Statistics Report' to the fourth quarter of 2007, highlighting a worldwide growth in broadband subscribers of 4.8% (16.1m) between Q3 and Q4-2007. This number of net additions represents the lowest since Q2-2006, when 14.53 million new broadband subscribers were added.

However, global broadband population penetration stood at 6.1% at the same time, representing a 24% increase year-on-year from 4.9% penetration at Q4-2006. Quarterly growth increased by 0.3% from 5.8% in Q3 2007. The regional Share of World Broadband Subscribers has been rewritten by us below:


Eastern Europe, despite coming lower down overall, still managed to top the pack for quarterly growth at 10.45%; thanks largely to the growing markets of Russia, Romania, Poland and the Czech Republic.

For comparison, quarterly growth in North America fell from 7.41% in Q1 to 4.23% in Q4 while growth in Western Europe fell from 7.16% in Q1 to 4.42% in Q4. Regardless of that, North America still recorded the third highest number of net additions (3.3m) after South and East Asia and Western Europe, representing 20% of the global total.

The dominant technologies remain largely unchanged, with DSL (ADSL, SDSL etc.) commanding 65.19% of the global market, cable modems on 21.95% and fibre (FTTx) lines still lingering in the sub-11% range (10.79%). Other technologies, such as wireless and satellite, accounted for a meagre 2.08%.

Despite FTTx's limited global penetration, quarterly growth of subscribers was the highest of the three technologies at 6.35%. This was a higher growth rate than in Q3 2007 when it was 4.26% but not as high as that reported in Q2 2007 when it was 7.81%. Asia continues to be the main source of FTTx subscribers, representing a staggering 83% share.


The USA continues to lead with 72.9 million subscribers in Q4 2007. China is in second place with 66.5 million subscribers. Highest growth from Q3 to Q4 2007 was experienced in Germany, which put it in fourth place after USA, China and Japan; its subscriber base increased from 18.8 million to 20 million representing a 6.23% increase.

The countries that experienced lowest growth were UK (1.83%) and South Korea (0.82%). The full report can be found here: http://point-topic.com .

Ofcom's boss, Ed Richards, has responded to yesterdays calls by the regulators own independent 'Consumer Panel' (here) for clearer advertising of broadband speeds. Richards has reportedly promised new guidelines on the selling of broadband services, which will come into force during early 2008:


We suspect that Ofcom will reveal its proposals and then open them up for wider consultation, although so far there are no firm details on what they’re planning. Consumers will be hoping that the measures aren't so weak as to have little impact while ISP's will want to ensure that Ofcom recognises the technical difficulty of making realistic performance predictions and work that into its rules. More @ BBC News Online.

The Consumer Panel, an independent voice for consumer interests in the communications market, has called on Ofcom to produce a mandatory code of practise for how ISP's can advertise broadband speeds:

The panel has also called for clearer advertising of broadband speeds and is requesting that the UK's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) works with the industry to improve this. Certainly something does need to happen, although doing it accurately could prove technically difficult as there are many factors that can hinder a lines performance.

It would be nice to see some firm and constructive movement on this prior to BT's mass introduction of ADSL2+ services, although Ofcom is known for dragging its feet.

Forrester Research has predicted a surge in West European residential broadband uptake of 48 million households over the next six years, rising from 44% penetration now to 71% by the end of 2013.

Dialup will naturally decrease, ultimately accounting for just 2% of all connections. WiMAX wireless and Fibre To The Home (FTTH) cable will increase but only marginally to 8% of all connections:


The statistics suggest that Internet providers will ultimately succeed in signing up a significant quantity of customers that currently see no need for broadband, though we’ve yet to see much movement on that front.

Ofcom has published its second annual International Communications Market report, which found that broadband take-up continues to increase in the UK with over half of all households connected at the end of 2006, putting the UK slightly ahead of the US for the first time.

Broadband is the fastest growing communications sector accounting for 9% of total telecoms revenue across the 12 countries in 2006. The total number of broadband connections increased by more than 600% between 2001 and 2006. This growth has been driven mainly by DSL broadband which is now the largest broadband platform in all the countries analysed except the US and Canada.

Consumer research commissioned for this report shows that in most countries, apart from Japan, the majority of consumers are satisfied with the speed of their broadband connection. Consumers are most satisfied in the US, at 85%. 68% of UK broadband were satisfied with their broadband speed, while satisfaction was lowest in Japan, at 41%. Ironic given Japan's heavily touted fibre network.

In the UK and the US, women use the Internet more often than men. In the US, 52% of internet users are women and in the UK the Internet is used equally by men and women except in the 18-34 age group where women spend more time online than men (57% compared with 43%).

It's also reported that 40% of UK households already take a bundled service. A typical family household in the UK with two parents and two children, who use a basket of communications services that includes a landline, basic pay-TV and the Internet, will pay £25 a month on a triple-play deal. This compares with £27.22 in France and £39.77 in Germany. The same family in the US will pay £69.54.

By the end of 2006 there were 402 million landlines (39%) and 634 million mobile connections (61%) across the twelve countries surveyed and in the majority of the countries surveyed the number of mobile subscriptions outnumbers the population. Italy has the highest number of active mobile connections with 139 subscriptions per hundred people followed by the UK with 115. The number of mobile connections is also high in Russia at 106.

Accessing the Internet from a mobile phone is growing in popularity. In Japan, where over half of mobile phones use a 3G network, mobile users are three times more likely to send an email from their mobiles as they are a text message. However, Europeans send more text messages with 75 per cent of mobile phone users in the UK, France, Germany and Italy sending SMS messages regularly.

It's worth pointing out that Ofcom's report compares the UK with eleven other countries: France, Germany, Italy, the Republic of Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Japan, Canada and the United States.

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/cm/icmr07/

Just to correct the BBC and a few other mainstream media outlets, online multiplayer gaming is unlikely to be one of the driving forces behind the push for next generation broadband networks. Certainly the medium could benefit from higher and more stable ‘upload’ speeds (not download) but it wouldn’t have that much of an impact.

Instead, online games are more dependant upon the latency (response time) of a connection and not how much extra data can be shovelled down the broadband pipe at any one time. To this end online games are designed to move as little information around as possible, minimising the time it takes to update a client and reflect that change on the users screen.

This is why a rock solid but truly ancient 128Kbps ISDN connection is still just as good for multiplayer as a more modern ‘up to’ 8Mbps broadband connection. ISDN may not have the raw speed but its network is very stable, often making multiplayer more reliable than the broadband connections of some modern ISP’s.

None of this is to say that a fibre connection wouldn’t bring some benefits but there are limits to the degree of expected improvement. Even some bog standard LAN (Local Area Network) games can report latency of 5 to 20ms (millisecond response time) while a good broadband ISP may give you 30 to 60ms to most UK servers.

Typically and not unlike the difference between 60Hz and 75hz on an LCD monitor, past a certain point you’re unlikely to notice any visual difference in play. Generally speaking a well coded game engine should feel smooth from 70 to 80ms or lower, while anything over 100ms may be problematic – game dependant.

Ultimately gamers are just as likely to suffer from ISP side congestion problems and service restrictions under next-gen broadband services as they do with existing technology. For gamers, having a fat pipe isn’t as important as having a stable and un-congested ISP that offers lower latency.

The latest research from Point-Topic has revealed that average residential DSL (e.g. ADSL etc.) downstream speeds have increased in all but two regions (North America & Canada / Middle East & Africa) globally from Q2 2007 to Q3 2007.

The Asia Pacific and South and East Asia region has seen the biggest increases, thanks to the introduction of faster ADSL and VDSL technology, with the latter offering downstream service speeds of up to 100Mbps.

The following list shows increases by region between Q2 and Q3-2007:

• Western Europe (Q2 5227Kbps) (Q3 5552Kbps) +6.22% change



• South & East Asia (Q2 1543Kbps) (Q3 3582Kbps) +132.15%



• Middle East & Africa (Q2 1414Kbps) (Q3 1404Kbps) -0.71%



• North America & Canada (Q2 2966Kbps) (Q3 2971Kbps) +0.17%



• Latin America (Q2 1280Kbps) (Q3 1652Kbps) +29.06%



• Eastern Europe (Q2 2292Kbps) (Q3 2443Kbps) +6.59%



• Asia Pacific (Q2 10800Kbps) (Q3 14989Kbps) +38.79%

Western Europe's growth margin typically comes more from those countries that have been busy adopting ADSL2+ and FTTx technology on a wider scale.

The Telecommunications, Internet access industry and government have agreed to work with each other by drawing up a new plan for rolling out and funding faster broadband networks. It must also be able to prove the viability of such a project, especially with BT remaining unconvinced.

The news follows yesterdays key debate (here) on next generation broadband services, which many believe will be essential lest the UK risks falling behind other countries.

uSwitch has predicted that dial-up (narrowband) Internet users will account for only 4% of all residential Internet connections by 2010. The survey also found that nine million broadband customers rank the quality and speed of their broadband connection as more important than its value for money.

Sadly the UK continues to lag behind our European neighbours when it comes to speed. French consumers receive average speeds of 17.6Mbps compared to the UK average of 3.6Mbps.


However the uSwitch piece admits that it fails to understand why dialup is still used by several million people and then goes on to praise Orange for recently forcing its dialup users out in to the cold!:


Clearly Weller has managed to completely miss several reasons why dialup remains so well used despite the obvious benefits of broadband. Certainly it doesn’t have to be more expensive, Weller uses the comparison of commercial unmetered dialup connections while ignoring direct access local call rate (0845) dialup altogether.

Those that merely check their e-mail or the odd website once every now and then have little need for a broadband connection when 0845 dialup fits the bill and can cost less than £1 per month in calls. Similarly some areas remain uncovered by broadband and only have the ability to access dialup.

Dialup also has other advantages, such as the ability to plug it into any phone line; it’s not stuck to a specific location like DSL or cable broadband connections. On top of this, broadband can fail but dialup will almost always work as a backup. So long as BT’s current infrastructure allows dialup to function then it will continue to exist, albeit at an ultimately statistically irrelevant level.

Stephen Timms, the governments competitiveness minister, will today open a key debate on future UK broadband services by inviting industry officials and ISP's to a special summit.

The meeting of industry big-wig's is expected to cover several areas, such as who should foot the bill and which technologies are best. It will also need to touch on the areas of market availability and impact, with much of the burden being placed upon BT's shoulders.

However BT is unlikely to foot the bill for everything by itself, especially if it has to share access with competitors, which would offer little opportunity to recoup an investment that some believe could reach up to £15bn.

Never the less, with the possible exception of VirginMedia's cable infrastructure, most are agreed that something does need to be done. Existing ADSL2+ technology can reach download speeds of up to 24Mbps, yet many live too far from their exchange to see the best performance; not to mention ISP side restrictions.

In addition the performance stated above is only a downstream (download) figure and it’s easy to forget just how important a fast upload can be too. Neither ADSL nor ADSL2+ is capable of pushing upstream performance very far, causing it to be a serious restriction for Internet TV (IPTV) operators and services, among others, where shared content could become essential.

We suspect that, in the long run, the industry is more likely to adopt ‘Fibre To The Curb (Cabinet)’ (FTTC) technology, which would run a faster fibre link to an areas local cabinet and then use some form of xDSL (e.g. VDSL2) technology to delivery faster speeds over existing copper wires. The distance would be short enough that high speeds could be achieved without needing to dig up an entire road.

Expect more reports on this during the week.

Ian Fogg, research director at broadband analyst Jupiter Research, has warned that the UK must not fall behind in its development of next-generation broadband networks.

Speaking at a Westminster eForum seminar, Fogg warned that the limitations of existing services could leave UK consumers behind. He also warned about the way in which ISP's advertise their packages based on headline 'up to' speeds:


The debate over next-generation networks looks set to continue for awhile yet, meanwhile those that say we don't need to go faster may be failing to see the Internet's true potential. More @ VNUNet.

We've just uploaded a new monthly poll, which asks: "How would you rate your ISP’s value for the money?". Results from the previous public survey can be found below:


Surprisingly the vast majority of people aren’t interested in a Mobile Broadband (3G) connection, probably due to remaining issues over price (some providers), service flexibility, lack of knowledge and initial performance issues. Happily just 3% of respondents didn’t know what it was, which is a lot lower than we expected.

However the good news for such an early technology is that 17% of visitors were VERY interested with a further 14% expressing a more passive curiosity. There’s clearly enough appetite for the technology to grow, though it’s still coming up short of being a true fixed-line broadband competitor.

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1:33 PM - Virgin Media Adopts NETGEAR Broadband Routers

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9:03 AM - NewNet Preps 40Mbps Bonded ADSL Broadband Service

8:50 AM - Tiscali UK Introduces Health & Beauty Content

8:45 AM - The Cloud Launch Auto-Logon Wi-Fi Hotspot Tool

8:35 AM - Carphone UK Sells Half of Business - Targets Tiscali

2:38 PM - 12% of DSL Broadband Users Could Migrate to WiMAX

2:25 PM - Orange Tops 1.107m Broadband Subscribers

2:08 PM - New Freesat Service to Offer Broadband TV

1:53 PM - BMW Introduces Mobile Internet Access to Cars

1:45 PM - H2O Brings 100Mbps Fibre to Bournemouth Homes

1:31 PM - Ofcom Predicts 50Mbps Broadband Using FTTC

10:27 AM - Unbundled (LLU / Non-BT) UK Lines Exceed 4.486m

9:45 AM - Samknows Launch ISP Performance Monitoring Network

9:09 AM - AOL Preps New 'Radio' Broadband Service

9:00 AM - BT Launch Total Broadband Anywhere Package

1:01 PM - Virgin Media Trials 40Gbps Network Infrastructure

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8:38 AM - Three (3) Offers 50% Discount on Mobile Broadband

8:48 AM - UK Places 13th in ITFI Global Broadband Rankings

8:34 AM - O2 Adopts Novatel Mobile Broadband USB Modems

10:11 AM - Unbundled Broadband Customers See Higher Satisfaction

9:02 AM - Virgin Media Clarifies Phorm Stance.. again

8:35 AM - EC Approves £3.4m for Scotland’s Broadband Development