By: MarkJ - 31 January, 2012 (7:19 AM) - Score: 2802 - Fixed Line Broadband, Mobile Broadband, Statistics
The Akamai global Content Delivery Network (CDN) has today released its latest quarterly State of the Internet Q3 2011 report, which reveals that the average global internet download speed has climbed by 4.5% to 2.7Mbps (up from 2.6Mbps in Q2-2011). By comparison the UK average speed has increased to 5.1Mbps (up from 5Mbps in Q2-2011), which sees our world ranking fall from 25th (Q2) to 27th (Q3) fastest.As a result the UK remains a long way off the fastest country in the world, South Korea, which uses a national superfast fibre optic ( FTTH ) telecoms infrastructure to deliver average download speeds of 16.7Mbps (up from 13.8Mbps in Q2)! According to Akamai, the fastest European state was the Netherlands (global rank of 5th) with an unchanged speed of 8.5Mbps, which oddly ignores Latvia's 8.9Mbps.
The report notes that 31% of broadband users in the UK experienced download speeds of over 5.1Mbps (up from 30% in Q2), while an unchanged 91% received more than 2Mbps (the governments minimum speed target for 2015) and just 0.5% suffered speeds of less than 256Kbps (down from 0.6% in Q2). The UK's PEAK recorded speed hit 20Mbps in Q3, which is up from 18.9Mbps in Q2.
Elsewhere the average UK mobile download speed ( Mobile Broadband ) stood unchanged at approximately 2.87Mbps, yet the average monthly mobile data consumption per user saw a rise from 698MB (MegaBytes) in Q2-2011 to 754MB in Q3.
A mobile provider in Poland claimed the highest global average mobile speed by hitting 6.1Mbps. By comparison the worlds slowest mobile operator (lowest average connection speed) was found in Thailand at 149Kbps (0.15Mbps). This is most likely attributed to flooding, which ravaged the country at the end of last year.
Akamai's State of the Internet Q3 2011 Report
http://www.akamai.com/stateoftheinternet/
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Comments: 15
New_LondonerPosted: 31 January, 2012 - 8:29 AM
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Still not convinced that the international comparisons are valid, bearing in mind that the vast majority of people in the UK chose to have lower cost broadband rather than opting for the highest available speed.
What is surprising is the relatively low throughput achieved in some of the countries/cities regularly extolled as excellent by proponents of FTTP. You'd have thought that average speeds would be somewhat higher thanm 16.7Mbps, which is well below that on my FTTC service - and that's before the 80Mbps upgrade!
MarkJPosted: 31 January, 2012 - 9:26 AM
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Indeed. However in fairness we should remember that many FTTH dominated country's also offer different package tiers (e.g. 10Mbps etc.), which would influence the overall result quite significantly. People in other countries are just as likely to pick the cheaper solution.
AlexPosted: 31 January, 2012 - 9:40 AM
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So you're not recognising Latvia as a european country then. Not that I care, just pointing it out.
MarkJPosted: 31 January, 2012 - 10:20 AM
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For some reason Akamai chose not to recognise Latvia. It is listed but oddly not in the EU specific section.
VMPosted: 31 January, 2012 - 10:37 AM
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This chart mean nothing to us. Virgin Media is the fastest 100 Meg and average speed of 75 Meg during busy hours. Why isn't Virgin Media not on the list ?
NickPosted: 31 January, 2012 - 1:15 PM
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Did you also notice how high Ireland were in the table and they have less Cable than the UK, vitually no FTTH, and v little FTTC?
Shows how poorly served we are by BT. But don't worry, with the Govt handing £530M to BT we will be the best in Europe by 2015 (there goes that flying pig)
DeductionPosted: 31 January, 2012 - 4:19 PM
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"UK will have the best superfast broadband network in Europe by 2015" that was the governments pledge.
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/story/2011/11/10/uk-isps-believe-the-country-will-not-have-the-best-broadband-in-europe
-by-2015.html
We are not even currently in the top 10, some though its amusing to see still think that statement may end up true.
quote"Shows how poorly served we are by BT. But don't worry, with the Govt handing £530M to BT we will be the best in Europe by 2015 (there goes that flying pig)"
From my link someone at BT believes it LOL
New_LondonerPosted: 31 January, 2012 - 9:48 PM
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All the table really shows is that many UK consumers prefer to spend their money on something other than fast broadband at present, despite widespread availability from various providers.
DeductionPosted: 1 February, 2012 - 12:15 AM
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Or shows how expensive fast solutions here are compared to other countries. Id also hardly call less than 50% of the country able to get UPTO speeds in excess of 24Mb "widespread".
Good luck to the government with their quote they put out there and the single person in the industry that thinks it may be true LOL
Roll on 2015 see we can all look back at this and point and laugh how nothing has changed.
NickPosted: 1 February, 2012 - 12:25 PM
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Quote "All the table really shows is that many UK consumers prefer to spend their money on something other than fast broadband at present, despite widespread availability from various providers."
Really? Considering you can't buy a 2M or 4M (guaranteed) service, but can only buy an 'upto 8M' or 'upto 20M' (these two usually a similar price) or an 'upto 40M' service, and remembering that Ireland doesn't have access to much FTTH or FTTC, so most there have an 'upto 8M' service (the lowest we can buy here in the UK), but their average is still significantly higher than ours, I don't think our buying habits have a major effect on the speeds.
Poor infrastructure from BT is a more likely cause me thinks
DeductionPosted: 1 February, 2012 - 6:43 PM
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quote"Poor infrastructure from BT is a more likely cause me thinks"
Not just BT to be fair but services in general. Be them BT or Virgin.
To get anywhere near the top of that chart our country would need FTTH/P in much larger proportions than we are going to have. Come 2015 its only going to be around 2% of the UK with FTTP
The states which is 13th in that chart above to give a rough idea mainly uses cable tech and a system similar to virgins and/or actual FTTP, they only manage 13th........ We have no chance of being significantly better than that let alone best in Europe.
As usual the funding for something which could had been great in this country has been squandered on a "it will do" solution rather than actual "best" solution which some want us to believe.
Briecheese TotalpongPosted: 2 February, 2012 - 10:57 AM
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BT and UK speeds are very slow.
New_LondonerPosted: 7 February, 2012 - 11:33 AM
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WOrth noting that the UK woudl be ranked 6th using Ofcom's average speed figures. Not that the "rankings" are especially meaningful, but that's another story....
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