UK Falls to 47th out of 221 Countries for Average Broadband Speed

The annual 2020 world speeds report from research firm M-Lab and Cable.co.uk has revealed that the United Kingdom delivered an average (mean) broadband ISP download speed of 37.82Mbps, ranking us just 47th fastest in the world (that’s sharply down from 34th last year). But there are some caveats to this report.

The research stems from information gathered via 577 million speed tests (up from the 276 million conducted last year), which were carried out across the world. The average global broadband download speed was recorded as 24.83Mbps, which is more than double the 11.03Mbps recorded last year.

However, M-Lab‘s measurement platform was upgraded for 2020 and this has skewed year-on-year speed tracking, which means a direct comparison with the Mbps figures from previous years would be misleading (i.e. the average global broadband speed actually increased by a fairly steady c.20%). We should also point out that some 221 countries were included in this report, which is up from 207 last year.

Despite this we note that the average UK speed of 37.82Mbps (Megabits per second) under the new system is still well below the 64Mbps recorded by Ofcom’s 2020 fixed line broadband speeds report (here). Admittedly Ofcom used a different methodology to M-Lab (i.e. the regulator directly tested connections via a modified router, which rules out key issues like poor WiFi and local network load etc.), but that’s still a huge gap.

Despite this the UK has still seen its ranking tumble down the table this year and the report notes that we’re “now among the slowest countries in Europe.” As before, this is due in no small part to being behind on our “full fibre” (FTTP) deployments and other gigabit-capable network coverage (here and here). Suffice to say, the top countries in today’s study all have strong FTTP coverage, although the UK is starting to rapidly improve but it’s a long game of catch-up ahead.

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 over 96% of UK premises and 25% can access a “gigabit” (1Gbps+) capable network, although many people have yet to upgrade (i.e. they cannot afford, are aware of or even feel the need to upgrade). However, roughly a quarter of premises still subscribe to far slower copper ADSL lines, despite most 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 (i.e. conducting a test while others or background tasks are using the network) and slow home WiFi etc. Likewise, it’s unclear whether this study has also lumped Mobile Broadband (4G etc.) 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 plan to invest £5bn to boost gigabit broadband coverage across the final 20% of hardest to reach areas by the end of 2025, even if their target does seem to have been watered down.. yet again (here).

The bad news is that 2025 remains a long way away and we’re ultimately playing catch-up with those who have been deploying at scale for many years longer. We warned in last year’s report that the UK’s ranking was likely to slip and indeed that has now come to pass.

221 Countries Ranked by Average (Mean) Download Speed

UPDATE 4:55pm

Rural ISP County Broadband has just added a comment.

Lloyd Felton, CEO of County Broadband, said:

“We’re disappointed but not surprised to see once again another report showing that the UK is languishing near the bottom of a global broadband league.

The Covid-19 lockdown exposed just how poor and unfit the UK’s current copper-based digital infrastructure is – from Zoom meeting drop-outs to Netflix binge bufferings. We urgently need to catch up with the rest of the world by building new Hyperfast networks.

We were thrilled to connect the first set of thousands of residents and businesses to our growing network during lockdown in Essex, with engineers being granted key worker status.

We are continuing to hold virtual public meetings and progress our rollout plans to turbo-charge broadband for thousands more in desperate need.”