Study – UK Rises to Rank 76th Cheapest in the World for Broadband

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1. dontcare says:

   March 14, 2023 at 12:10 am

   UK always rip off as usually are!

   1. Andrew G says:

      March 14, 2023 at 6:59 am

      Hardly. You’re suggesting that the happy citizens of Iran and Belarus are getting a better deal that you, poor soul? The majority of the top half of the table are non-comparable economies, often where the overwhelming majority of the country has little or no service, many are undemocratic regimes where there’s none of the niceties to be observed in rolling out broadband, often they’re state monopolies so the availability and standard of service is decided by the provider without appeal or governance, and many of these are island territories with entirely different circumstances. Many of these locations never had any competent first time provision of fixed line at all, so that building a broadband network has none of the challenges of over-build.

      The only valid comparison to the UK costs would be similarly developed economies with reasonably comparable geographies such as the larger EU, EEA countries, plus perhaps South Korea, Japan, maybe NZ & Aus. And when you look at the table for those countries, you’ll see we’re not doing so badly after all, despite the best efforts of our government to make everything worse.

   2. Ethel Prunehat says:

      March 14, 2023 at 10:37 am

      Why let reading the fine article get in the way of commenting about what a terrible country we live in?
      There are enough things actually wrong here without having to make up problems we don’t have.

   3. Reality Bytes says:

      March 14, 2023 at 1:02 pm

      Hello adslmax. I guess you’re still frustrated about not having FTTP yet? You’ve G.fast and access to gigabit cable with a solid 5G solution if you want it. You’re not exactly stuck on 1 megabit ADSL with no options.

      Small bit of advice: when you take the time to post on something to say you don’t care it makes it pretty obvious you do.

      Cuckoo Oak will be built when it’s its turn. It’ll be on the list somewhere but, clearly, isn’t a priority.

   4. DaveIsRight says:

      March 15, 2023 at 8:47 am

      @Andrew G ahhhh the fallacy of relative privation. Got to love it. The justification for something not being rubbish is that it’s not as rubbish as it could be or as rubbish as it is elsewhere. Just because it could be worse elsewhere doesn’t make it not bad here.

      Another way to look at it. There is a standard assumption that is drilled into us all from a young age that a binary decision consists of a “good” thing and a “bad” thing and we just need to pick the “good” thing. Unfortunately life isn’t just about a choice of good and bad, often it can be a choice between really bad and terrible. That doesn’t suddenly make something “good” it just makes it less bad than terrible.

      Considering we are supposedly a world leading nation being 76th (or 104th if you prefer) is a pretty terrible result. If you do look at the lists, as flawed as they are, while we compare to the likes of Germany and France, we are far behind Spain and Italy (10 and 20% cheaper and an entire order of magnitude faster for the money). Japan, which you name, may be 30% more expensive but for that you get 10 times the speed. South Korea which you again name, is 25% cheaper and 15x faster. Finally take a look at Poland. Half the cost and 20 TIMES faster.

      No matter how you decide to categorise it the UK has pretty poor broadband and just because it’s worse in places like Australia it doesn’t make it good.

2. Nick says:

   March 14, 2023 at 7:03 am

   I am not sure about Sudan and Kazakhstan, but Moldova it is definitely ahead of UK in terms of Full Fibre .

3. Richard Branston says:

   March 14, 2023 at 7:25 am

   Another headline could have been “Uk broadband is in the 10 cheapest countries in Europe”. Or “Uk broadband 43% cheaper than USA”.

   Unsurprisingly in an economy where wages are higher than Romania, the cost of running services is higher.

4. DrBob53 says:

   March 14, 2023 at 7:31 am

   Interesting to see how expensive USA is compared to us. I gather that in rural areas the availability, choice and performance are very poor.

   1. John says:

      March 14, 2023 at 12:48 pm

      Purely because in the US people actually own land rather than a tiny garden on their terraced homes and the population density is much much lower, sometimes going miles to reach the next home

   2. Reality Bytes says:

      March 14, 2023 at 12:59 pm

      Exactly this. Their cities are dense in the centre then have pretty sparse suburbs then huge sprawling exurbs where properties are spaced as far apart as pretty much our worst rural areas.

      Multiple this by a lot and you can see why cable companies are reluctant to build FTTP, and why overbuilds of even their suburban areas are proving far more expensive that here.

      Their urban areas are starting to see more competition however they’ve the issue of lockout from various MDUs and single dwelling units as well – lots of tie-in with the incumbent providing service so tough for new entrants.

      Very different situation from here where even in many rural areas once you get the fibre there the properties are relatively close and costs aren’t extreme. Openreach are in a good place and where there’s competitive backhaul available altnets are too.

   3. Roger_Gooner says:

      March 14, 2023 at 5:15 pm

      There are huge chunks of the USA where there is no broadband and, where broadband is available, tens of millions of Americans have just one provider. So, as you would expect, a monopoly provider has no incentive to keep prices low. Furthermore, unlike the UK where we take unlimited broadband data for granted, there is no shortage of US ISPs (including AT&T) that impose a myriad of data cap-related fees over the data cap or expensive “unlimited data allowance” fees to avoid the cap.

5. Less than 2Mb says:

   March 14, 2023 at 12:56 pm

   #1 for slowest and oldest systems

   1. Dan hope says:

      March 14, 2023 at 1:00 pm

      What are you on about my current fibre network was built less than 3 months ago

6. Daminous says:

   March 18, 2023 at 10:16 pm

   Well isn’t that embarrassing, with all the boasting the broadband companies and corrupt government does and the UK is at 76.