Councils Complain About England’s Below Average Broadband Speeds

The County Councils Network (CCN), which highlights itself as the “national voice” for England’s 37 county councils, has today claimed that 72% of the country’s counties are below the national average download speed of 45Mbps and 27% have average speeds below Ofcom’s 30Mbps+ definition of “superfast“.

According to CCN’s analysis, broadband speeds in rural areas are lagging up to three times slower than neighbouring cities only a few miles down the road, with council leaders warning they are at a “competitive disadvantage” to urban areas. The highest speed in England was found to be 102.9Mbps in York, whilst the lowest average speed is 21.8Mbps in West Devon.

This is of course nothing new because it tends to cost significantly more to deploy faster broadband networks into sparse rural communities (commercially operators often struggle to get a good return on their investment), hence why the government’s £1.6bn+ state aid supported Broadband Delivery UK programme exists.

CCN goes on to argue that counties should have similar powers to drive forward local economic growth as city region metro-mayors, working as “strategic authorities” alongside Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEP), and should get a “fairer share of infrastructure investment which is currently skewed towards urban areas“.

Unfortunately CCN doesn’t state what sort of speed England should be aiming for or answer the question of how much £££ is needed and who pays, as well as over what sort of time-scale. A bit more detail from CCN here on what they’d do differently and why it would be better might have helped to support the case.

Philip Atkins, CCN Vice-Chairman and leader of Staffordshire Council, said:

“The government’s commitment to provide superfast broadband to as many areas in England as possible has resulted in some significant steps forward in rural connectivity in the last few years. Counties like Staffordshire are working with national and local partners to connect hard to reach rural areas and improve broadband connectivity.

Counties are great places to live and work, but these figures show that businesses in shire counties and rural areas are being left at a competitive disadvantage. It cannot be right that in some areas, businesses and residents in a city less than 10 miles down the road from a rural county benefit from average download speeds of more than three times faster.

While the government has announced investment in this area, we remain concerned that digital infrastructure in counties isn’t getting the attention it desperately needs. The ultimate success of the government’s Industrial Strategy will hinge on ensuring we drastically improve national productivity in all four corners of the country post-Brexit. This means ensuring we invest in digital infrastructure.

More investment is only part of the answer; county authorities need to be empowered as ‘strategic authorities’, alongside city region metro mayors, with devolved powers to drive forward infrastructure investment in their areas. The government’s promised ‘common devolution framework’ is an opportunity to ensure a practical framework for achieving this, placing county authorities as lead, accountable bodies as recommended by leading think-tanks Localis, ResPublica and IPPR.”

The analysis notes that example locations in North Yorkshire have an average download speed of 30.2Mbps, compared to neighbouring York’s average speed of 102Mbps. Similarly Ryedale shares a boundary with the city of York, yet residents and businesses in Ryedale get average speeds of less than one fifth (25.8Mbps) of those enjoyed in the city. Various similar examples are also highlighted.

For example, areas within Derbyshire have an average download speed of 31.6Mbps, almost half of that of the county’s city, Derby, which has average download speeds of 59.3Mbps. Just a few miles north of the city, residents and businesses in Amber Valley have average speeds of just 25.9Mbps.

Average Download Speed by Area

Average download speeds in individual county areas

As usual there are a few potential issues with the CCN study. Firstly, we should point out that the figures referencing individual areas within counties and cities are based off Ofcom’s data of individual local authorities, collated in May/June 2017 and used in their Connected Nations 2017 report. Among other things this data is now nearly a year out of date.

The average county area figures are similarly based on CCN’s own analysis of the figures, compiled by Grant Thornton UK LLP, that are again based on Ofcom’s old data. However they appear to be using a ‘mean‘ rather than ‘median‘ average in their findings (it’s often handy to see both).

As for Ofcom’s estimated speeds, these are based off data supplied by ISPs rather than speedtests. CCN informed ISPreview.co.uk that this availability data also includes coverage information provided by alternative network (AltNet) providers, although we suspect that Ofcom doesn’t have data from all of the available ISPs and networks in every single area.

Some areas can of course access multiple different network types but the above results, which focus on an average, might not be fully reflecting whether a Gigabit capable FTTP/H network from B4RN, Gigaclear or even Openreach etc. exists.

We should also point out that the UK Government’s definition of “superfast broadband” for Phase 1 and many, but not all, Phase 2 BDUK contracts (the very latest all adopt 30Mbps+) is still officially 24Mbps+, which in the grander scheme of things isn’t too different from using the Ofcom / EU’s definition of 30Mbps+ but it would change some of CCN’s opening remarks.

Crucially it’s important to state that estimated service speeds do not always sync correctly with real-world experiences or actual network availability (they can be better but are often worse). The BDUK programme claims to have made 24Mbps+ capable networks available to 95%+ of UK premises and the expectation is for this to reach around 98% by 2020, with the final 2% then being catered for via a 10Mbps+ USO (Details).

Lest we forgot the importance of take-up. Today less than half of all home broadband lines are still connected via slower ADSL services, even though faster networks are often available (i.e. a lot of people haven’t upgraded due to various reasons such as a lack of awareness, higher prices, fear of switching, satisfaction with their existing connection etc.).