Broadband Helps UK Rank 3rd in Huawei’s Global Connectivity Index
Strong Mobile Broadband penetration, good average download speeds and fixed broadband subscriber growth are all considered “strengths” that have helped to push the United Kingdom into 3rd place on Huawei’s new Global Connectivity Index, ranking us just behind the USA (2nd) and Germany (1st). But our telecoms investment as a % of GDP could apparently be better.
However Huawei’s study, which touts itself as offering the “first quantitative assessment of connectivity and its value from both national and industrial perspectives“, covers just 25 “developing and emerging” countries that together account for 78% of global GDP and 68% of the population.
The GCI study also found that country connectivity correlates with Gross Domestic Product (GDP), with Huawei’s analysis of 16 indexes showing that for each GCI percentage point increase the GDP per capital increases 1.4–1.9% (relatively higher for emerging countries).
Otherwise Germany ranked first with a score of 76 out of 100 due to its strong commitment and on-going investment in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) development, resulting in a market with “competitive vitality“. But the United Kingdom’s 3rd position is closer than you think as we scored 75, which is despite having some alleged weaknesses in telecoms investment, smartphone connections growth and growth of IPs/capita.
Sadly Huawei’s study fails to include a detailed report for each country (unless we’ve missed where it’s hiding), which makes it hard to assess precisely where the UK is perceived to be going wrong (even though overall we’re still doing very well) and by how much. It’s also unclear how this score and position might change if Scotland votes for independence tomorrow. A little more detail would have been nice.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and Linkedin.
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It would be awesome to see the full methodology of this report, along with why New Zealand is included while Australia is not for example.
A struggle to draw any conclusions from this as to why for example Germany, with a virtually all VDSL / cable deployment is superior to South Korea, the nation with the fastest average speeds on the planet and widespread 1Gb availability, or where the United States wins out over Japan when the USA is more expensive, more restricted, and has very little competition in many areas with the choice being the cable company or the phone company.
Surely a rather self-serving report for a Huawei to associate telecommunications investment with nation wealth. I’d have been rather staggered if they’d reported otherwise.