UK Ranks 34th out of 207 Countries for Average Broadband Speed

The annual 2019 world speeds report from research firm M-Lab and Cable.co.uk has revealed that for 2019 the United Kingdom delivered an average (mean) broadband ISP download speed of just 22.37Mbps (up from 18.57Mbps in 2018 and 16.51Mbps in 2017), ranking us 34th fastest in the world (up from 35th last year).

The research stems from information gathered via 276 million speed tests (up from the 163 million conducted last year), which were carried out across the world. The average global broadband download speed was recorded as 11.03Mbps, which is up by 20.65% on the 9.10Mbps recorded last year.

However we note that the average UK speed of 22.37Mbps (Megabits per second) is well below the 54.2Mbps recorded by Ofcom’s 2019 fixed line broadband speeds report (here) and is also way off the 61.75Mbps reported by Ookla’s (Speedtest.net) study published in June 2019 (here). Admittedly Ofcom and Ookla used different methodologies to M-Lab but that’s still a huge gap.

Despite this the UK has done a reasonable job of holding and even slightly improving its position since last year’s study, although we remain positioned behind two thirds of other EU countries. This is due in no small part to being behind on our “full fibre” (FTTP) deployments and related “ultrafast broadband” coverage (as illustrated here). Likewise the top countries in today’s study all have strong full fibre coverage.

As usual speed testing based reports like this should be taken with a pinch of salt because they can easily be misinterpreted. In particular, nobody should be equating such studies to directly reflect the availability of faster connections as the two are far from being in sync. On top of that people are more likely to measure their speed if there is something wrong or if they aren’t getting the speed they need, which can produce a negative bias.

At present it’s estimated that fixed “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) networks are available to almost 96% of UK premises (rising to around 98% by the end of 2020) and around 55-60% can access an “ultrafast” (100Mbps+) network, although in reality many people have yet to upgrade (i.e. they cannot afford, are aware of or even feel the need to upgrade). However, roughly a third of premises still subscribe to far slower copper ADSL lines, despite most now being within reach of faster networks.

Speed tests like this can also be impacted by other factors, such as poor home wiring, user choice of package (e.g. 1Gbps could be available but most people may still pick a slower and cheaper tier), local network congestion and slow home WiFi performance etc. Likewise it’s unclear whether this study has also lumped 3G / 4G Mobile data speeds or business connections in with fixed line services.

Nevertheless if we assume that such caveats will apply to all countries then the data is still useful as a rough gauge of market change and take-up across the world. The good news is that the UK Government now aspires to achieve nationwide coverage of full fibre broadband by 2033. The bad news is that’s a long way away and we’re playing catch-up with those who have been deploying at scale for many years longer (i.e. don’t be surprised if our ranking in future years slips again).