However the ASA has now proposed a significant change (here<\/a>), which would require broadband ISPs to display an “average<\/em>” (median) download speed measured at busy peak times (i.e. 8pm to 10pm). The proposal would effectively reflect the average (median) speed of a particular package. All of this made us wonder whether other countries advertised fixed broadband speeds in the same way.<\/p>\n Firstly, we should point out that service speeds can be influenced by all sorts of different factors (network congestion, poor home wiring, WiFi<\/a> signal strength etc.) and technology choice is one of the biggest differentiators. The most common fixed line broadband technologies in the United Kingdom are as follows.<\/p>\n Primary UK Home Broadband Technologies<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n ADSL2+<\/strong> Coverage:<\/u> Nearly universal coverage and used by just under half of fixed broadband connections<\/p>\n Performance Caveats:<\/u> Too many to mention, although the main issue tends to be signal degradation over copper line distance (i.e. the longer the line from a telephone exchange, the slower its speed). ADSL2+ performance is notoriously variable, with some people getting under 1-2Mbps and others achieving close to 20Mbps (you’re unlikely to get much above c.20Mbps on ADSL2+ in the UK).<\/p>\n Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC<\/a> \/ VDSL2<\/a>)<\/strong> Coverage:<\/u> Available to around 90% of premises and used by roughly a quarter of fixed broadband connections<\/p>\n Performance Caveats:<\/u> Similar variety of problems to ADSL2+, except the VDSL2<\/a> service is more reliable as the local street cabinet is fuelled by a fibre optic line closer to your home. Nevertheless the same issue with signal degradation over copper line distance (between cabinet and homes) does still occur. Performance can thus be highly variable but it’s usually a big improvement on ADSL2+.<\/p>\n * VDSL2<\/a> could in theory push to 100Mbps+ (download) but for various technical reasons it’s capped at 80Mbps in the UK, except via some altnets. A newer VDSL2-Vplus standard can even do 300Mbps but in the UK this has been skipped in favour of G.fast<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Cable (DOCSIS<\/a> \/ EuroDOCSIS)<\/strong> Coverage:<\/u> Available to over 50% of premises and used by less than a quarter of fixed broadband connections<\/p>\n Performance Caveats:<\/u> Most performance issues are usually the result of Virgin Media<\/a> oversubscribing their capacity in specific locations, network faults or incorrect power levels for individual properties. Otherwise cable speeds should deliver close to their advertised rate.<\/p>\n * This is the current peak speed set by Virgin Media<\/a>’s residential service, although DOCSIS<\/a> itself can theoretically do Gigabit speeds and future upgrades (DOCSIS<\/a> 3.1) will support this.<\/em><\/p>\n Fibre-to-the-Premises \/ Home (FTTP<\/a>\/H)<\/strong> Coverage:<\/u> Available to around 3% of premises and take-up isn’t yet high enough to make an impact.<\/p>\n Performance Caveats:<\/u> Nothing worth mentioning. Limited network capacity and external hardware restrictions are more likely to reduce the top speeds than anything on the technology itself.<\/p>\n * 1Gbps symmetric tends to be the fastest residential FTTP<\/a>\/H service offered by ISPs in the UK, although this is more of an economic restriction and Scientists are still trying to figure out the limits of optical fibre (multi-Terabit speeds are already possible).<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Naturally other countries will adopt a different mix of broadband technologies. For example, Sweden is dominated by FTTP<\/a>\/H with less than 20% on Cable and 30% taking VDSL (FTTC<\/a>) or ADSL<\/a>. By comparison Italy is almost entirely ADSL<\/a> \/ VDSL based, although they do have a growing FTTP\/H market.<\/p>\n The following chart is an extract from the recent EU Broadband Process Report 2017<\/strong><\/a>, which offers a simplified overview of fixed broadband technology by country and market share in the European Union. We will be looking outside of the EU too but this still gives a good indication of how the market shares differ by technology.<\/p>\n Obviously it would take us a very long time to examine all of the countries in the EU or even the world and so instead we’ve decided to focus on a smaller cross-section, which we’ve chosen because they all reflect different markets and deployment scenarios. A few of these countries are closer to the UK model than others and to save time we’re only going to look at some of the largest ISPs in each market.<\/p>\n Most of those we picked also use the Latin alphabet, which makes our translation work easier and less prone to error. However we did have to leave out a fair few ISPs because we couldn’t find any clear details of their packages, usually due to difficulties with the language translation.<\/p>\n Take note that all of the data for this article was gathered during July – August 2017 and we generally only picked a couple of packages from each provider (the cheapest and fastest options). Now let’s kick things off by looking at our closest neighbour.<\/p>\n France<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Generally speaking, France is dominated by ADSL<\/a> and hybrid fibre VDSL technologies, although they have a rapidly growing base of FTTP\/H\/B services in major cities. We found that FTTP\/H\/B services advertised peak package speeds (no ‘up to’ or ‘averages’) and the same was true for their ADSL options, which promoted 20Mbps for downloads and 1Mbps for uploads.<\/p>\n The exception was Orange, which promoted their ADSL and VDSL services without even mentioning a headline speed.<\/p>\n Orange – Jet Fibre<\/strong><\/p>\n 500Mbps down – 200Mbps up – \u20ac33.99<\/p>\n Orange – Zen ADSL \/ VDSL<\/strong><\/p>\n No speed stated – \u20ac19.99<\/p>\n SFR (ADSL2+)<\/strong><\/p>\n 20Mbps down – 1Mbps up – \u20ac24.99<\/p>\n SFR (Fibre)<\/strong><\/p>\n 1Gbps down – 100Mbps up – \u20ac24.99<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Flick over the page for more countries and some analysis..<\/p>\n <\/p>\n USA<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n The United States is a huge country with a lot of different providers, although Comcast, Charter, AT&T and Verizon tend to be the largest four. Both Comcast and Charter are DOCSIS based Cable networks with a little FTTP\/H, while AT&T uses a mix of ADSL, VDSL and FTTP\/H technologies and it’s a similar story for Verizon.<\/p>\n Most of the cable and DSL<\/a> providers stick “up to<\/em>” in front of their speeds and appeared to promote a peak headline speed on each package, rather than an average or % measure. The exception being Verizon where they just promoted a top headline speed, although the technology being used wasn’t very clear.<\/p>\n Comcast (XFINITY)<\/strong><\/p>\n Up to 10Mbps – $49.95<\/p>\n Up to 2000Mbps – $149.99<\/p>\n Charter (Spectrum \/ Time Warner Cable)<\/strong><\/p>\n Up to 60Mbps – $29.99<\/p>\n AT&T<\/strong><\/p>\n We had trouble getting package details for this provider, although their DSL<\/a> speeds were generally promoted as “up to 50Mbps<\/em>“, while AT&T Fibre offered speeds of “100Mbps<\/em>” at $80 per month.<\/p>\n Verizon<\/strong><\/p>\n 50\/50Mbps – $39.99<\/p>\n 500\/500Mbps – $194.99<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Singapore<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Singapore is a unique country in that it’s effectively a single city-state and one where nearly all older Cable and ADSL services were withdrawn permanently in June 2016. Instead almost every property in the country has access to an ultrafast fibre optic (FTTP\/H) broadband network and many ISPs offer multi-Gigabit speeds.<\/p>\n Most ISPs advertised either a flat headline rate (i.e. the fastest peak speed for that package) or they put “Up to<\/em>” in front of the speed. One interesting exception to this rule was M1, which promoted a peak headline rate but then gave customers a “typical speed<\/em>” report for each package in the small print (this is similar to one of the ASA’s earlier proposals for the UK).<\/p>\n M1’s small print: “Typical download speed for Fibre Broadband 300Mbps, Fibre Broadband 1Gbps, Fibre Broadband GamePRO 1Gbps and 4G<\/a> Mobile Broadband 300Mbps is 291.3 \u2013 299.6Mbps, 764.4 \u2013 846.4Mbps, 738.7 \u2013 878.9Mbps and 41.7 \u2013 105.1Mbps respectively. The typical speed range refers to the range of download speeds that users can experience 80% of the time<\/em>.”<\/p>\n Singtel – FTTP\/H<\/strong><\/p>\n 500M – $49.90<\/p>\n 10Gbps – $189.99<\/p>\n StarHub – Cable<\/strong><\/p>\n Up to 200Mbps down – Up to 10Mbps upload – $22.90<\/p>\n StarHub Fibre – FTTP\/H<\/strong><\/p>\n Up to 1Gbps down + upload – $39.90<\/p>\n M1 – FTTP\/H<\/strong><\/p>\n 300Mbps – $29<\/p>\n 1Gbps – $39<\/p>\n My Republic – FTTP\/H<\/strong><\/p>\n Up to 1000Mbps down – Up to 500Mbps upload – $49.99<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Germany<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n The German market is perhaps the one that is most comparable to the UK in its mixed market share of ADSL \/ VDSL (dominant method of connectivity), Cable and FTTH<\/a>\/P technologies. However technology isn’t the only similarity as the country’s ADSL packages all follow the same sort of top 10% mould as the UK’s old approach by promoting speeds of ‘up to 16Mbps’.<\/p>\n However we see a difference on the VDSL (FTTC<\/a>) options, which all adopted the ‘Up to’ prefix but then proceeded to promote a peak headline rate for each package.<\/p>\n Deutsche Telekom (T) – ADSL\/VDSL<\/strong><\/p>\n Up to 16Mbps down – up to 2.4Mbps upload – \u20ac34.95<\/p>\n Up to 50Mbps down – up to 10Mbps upload – \u20ac39.95<\/p>\n Up to 100Mbps down – up to 40Mbps upload – \u20ac44.95<\/p>\n 1&1 Internet – ADSL\/VDSL<\/strong><\/p>\n Up to 16Mbps down – up to 1Mbps upload – \u20ac24.99<\/p>\n Up to 50Mbps down – up to 10Mbps upload – \u20ac29.99<\/p>\n Up to 100Mbps down – up to 20Mbps upload – \u20ac34.99<\/p>\n Unitymedia – Cable<\/strong><\/p>\n Up to 10Mbps down – 1Mbps upload – \u20ac19.99<\/p>\n Up to 60Mbps down – 3Mbps upload – \u20ac24.99<\/p>\n Up to 120Mbps down – 6Mbps upload – \u20ac29.99<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Italy<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n As stated earlier, Italy is almost entirely ADSL \/ VDSL based but they do have a growing FTTP\/H market. Once again the pure fibre optic packages all promoted peak headline speeds with an “up to<\/em>” prefix, while we noted that one ISP promoted ADSL performance as “up to<\/em>” 7Mbps and another listed it at the more theoretical level of “up to<\/em>” 20Mbps (we couldn’t figure out why these ISPs promoted such different ADSL speeds).<\/p>\n Fastweb – ADSL\/FTTH<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n up to 200Mbps – \u20ac39<\/p>\n Tiscali – ADSL\/FTTH<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n up to 20 Meg – \u20ac19.95<\/p>\n up to 1 Gig – \u20ac34.95<\/p>\n Telecom Italia – ADSL\/FTTH<\/strong><\/p>\n Up to 7 meg – \u20ac39.90<\/p>\n Up to 1000 meg down – up to 100 Meg upload – \u20ac39.90 (pricing was hard to discern)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Sweden<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Only around 30% of Swedish consumers take slower ADSL or VDSL (FTTC) based broadband services, while 20% prefer Cable (DOCSIS) networks and the other half are catered for by pure fibre optic (FTTH\/P) services. Interestingly the hybrid fibre Cable DOCSIS networks in Sweden are almost as fast as rival FTTH\/P providers, which is perhaps an indication of how Virgin Media<\/a> may evolve in the UK.<\/p>\n However it’s interesting to note that all of the major providers appear to advertise their service speeds by adopting a ranged approach and in some cases, particularly on the fastest fibre packages (e.g. 500-1000Mbps), those ranges can be extremely wide. We somewhat prefer this way of doing things, although it’s unclear how the ISPs decide where to place the minimum performance level for each package.<\/p>\n Comhem – Cable<\/strong><\/p>\n Receive files 500-1000Mbps – Send files 50-100Mbps – 899 kr per month<\/p>\n Receive files 30-50Mbps – Send files 7-10Mbps – 349 kr per month<\/p>\n Telia – FTTH \/ ADSL \/ VDSL<\/strong><\/p>\n Downstream: 12-30Mbps – Upstream: Up to 12 Mbps – 439 kr per month<\/p>\n Downstream: 500-1000Mbps – Upstream: 500-1000Mbps – 999 kr per month<\/p>\n Bredbandsbolaget – FTTH \/ ADSL \/ VDSL<\/strong><\/p>\n Download speed 60-100Mbps – Elevated upload speed to 60-100Mbps – 369 kr per month<\/p>\n Download speed 500-1000Mbps – Elevated upload speed to 60-100Mbps – 599 kr per month<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Poland<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Around 35% of lines in Poland use DSL<\/a> (ADSL\/VDSL) services and a similar proportion connect via Cable (DOCSIS) networks, while the rest reflect an interesting mix of FTTH\/P and fixed wireless network types. In terms of advertising, most of the ISPs we checked put “up to<\/em>” in front of their packages and then proceeded to promote a peak headline speed. The exception was Orange, which chose not to add “up to<\/em>” on their FTTH service.<\/p>\n UPC – Cable<\/strong><\/p>\n Up to 250Mbps down \/ up to 20Mbps upload – 69zt per month<\/p>\n Up to 60Mbps down \/ up to 6Mbps upload – 49zt per month<\/p>\n Orange Poland – VDSL \/ FTTH<\/strong><\/p>\n Download 300Mbps \/ Upload 30Mbps – 79zt per month<\/p>\n Download up to 80Mbps \/ Upload up to 8Mbps – 39.90zt per month<\/p>\n Netia – FTTH<\/strong><\/p>\n Up to 100Mbps – 49.90zt per month<\/p>\n Up to 900Mbps – 79.90zt per month<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Brazil<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Most of this country’s connections still appear to be dominated by older ADSL \/ VDSL services and Cable networks, with a few FTTH dotted around. Broadband packages also came advertised in a variety of ways, with some ISPs only promoting a flat headline speed and others putting “up to<\/em>” in front. However the diversity of service provision made it difficult to establish if providers were taking a specific approach to advertising or merely doing their own thing (we suspect the latter).<\/p>\n NET Virtua – FTTH 2MB down – 500Kbps upload – R$39.90<\/p>\n 240MB down – 20Mbps upload – R$199.90<\/p>\n Vivo – ADSL \/ Cable \/ FTTH 300Mbps down – 150Mbps upload – R$199.99<\/p>\n 50Mbps down – up to 25Mbps upload – R$89.99<\/p>\n Oi – ADSL \/ VDSL Up to 15Mbps down – up to 1Mbps upload – R$49.90<\/p>\n Up to 35Mbps down – up to 3Mbps upload – R$84.90<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Spain<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Like most EU countries Spain is a patchwork of different technologies. Overall around 50% of lines use ADSL \/ VDSL technology, while 20% take a Cable (DOCSIS) service and 30% have migrated to a new generation of ultrafast FTTH\/P connections. Spain is often used as an example by Ofcom<\/a> when showing the rapid rise of fibre optic lines and they want to see something similar in the UK.<\/p>\n The only ADSL package we came across was sold by Vodafone<\/a> and oddly this was presented as an “up to 30Mbps” connection, which is faster than ADSL2+ technology can go and so we assume that they were actually using VDSL. Otherwise all of the other packages were either Cable or FTTH based and all promoted a top headline speed without any use of an “up to<\/em>” prefix.<\/p>\n On top of that neither Movistar nor Jazztel seemed to be especially clear about the upload performance of their packages.<\/p>\n Vodafone<\/a> – ADSL \/ VDSL \/ FTTH Up to 30Mbps – \u20ac37.50 per month<\/p>\n 300Mbps down – 300Mbps up – \u20ac46.05 per month<\/p>\n Ono – Cable<\/strong><\/p>\n 50Mbps down – 5Mbps upload – \u20ac33.05 per month<\/p>\n 300Mbps down – 30Mbps upload – \u20ac43.85 per month<\/p>\n Movistar – FTTH 50Mbps – \u20ac38 per month<\/p>\n 300Mbps – \u20ac43 per month<\/p>\n Jazztel – ADSL \/ FTTH<\/strong><\/p>\n 20Mbps – \u20ac19.30 per month<\/p>\n 300Mbps – \u20ac36.24 per month<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So far as we could tell only Germany and one ISP in Brazil seemed to have a similar 10% advertising rule to that of the United Kingdom’s old approach and they only applied it on ADSL packages, while almost every other provider stuck to the original approach of displaying a peak headline speed capability (sometimes prefixed with “up to<\/em>” and sometimes not). However Sweden did opt for a range approach (e.g. 500-1000Mbps).<\/p>\n We also noted that most countries appear happy to promote their upload speeds alongside the primary download rate, although there were a few exceptions at specific ISPs (some of this could be due to the packages being symmetrical, which wasn’t always made clear). By comparison BT<\/a>, TalkTalk<\/a>, Vodafone<\/a>, Sky Broadband<\/a> and Virgin Media in the UK all fail to display their upload speeds, unless you start the sign-up process.<\/p>\n At this point some readers might suggest that FTTH\/P providers which only promote a peak headline speed are fine to do so because they can actually deliver such performance, except this isn’t always the case. Put another way, FTTH\/P might remove the cable itself from being an obstacle to performance but the ISP can still fail to provide enough capacity to fuel their service.<\/p>\n For example, a few years ago I took a visit to Uppsala in Sweden and had the pleasure of being able to connect via a friend’s supposedly 1Gbps FTTH line. However to my surprise this line struggled to deliver anything much above 20Mbps (although at times it did “jump<\/em>” to 80-90Mbps) and all of that was due to congestion in the local network. Suffice to say that a lot of FTTH providers may be promoting speeds that they can’t always deliver.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Over the past couple of years there’s been a ferocious debate in the United Kingdom over the question of how fixed line broadband providers should advertise their service speeds and this got us to thinking, how do other countries advertise line speeds? Let’s take a look.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,1],"tags":[99],"class_list":["post-14084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial_article","category-uk_isp_news","tag-asa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"yoast_head":"\n
\nTheoretical Peak Speed:<\/u> 24Mbps download \/ 1.4Mbps upload<\/p>\n
\nTheoretical Peak Speed:<\/u> 80Mbps download \/ 20Mbps upload*<\/p>\n
\nTheoretical Peak Speed:<\/u> 350Mbps download \/ 20Mbps upload*<\/p>\n
\nTheoretical Peak Speed:<\/u> 1Gbps download \/ 1Gbps upload (1000Mbps)*<\/p>\n![\"eu_fixed_broadband_technologies_by_country\"](\"\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/wp-content\/gallery\/2017-uk-internet-statistics\/eu_fixed_broadband_technologies_by_country.png\")
<\/p>\nSample Packages from Domestic ISPs<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n
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\n<\/strong><\/p>\nConclusions<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n