UK broadband miles behind its counterparts

Guest post by Shahul Hameed, broadband analyst at VAC Media. Shahul reports on UK broadband provider performance, technologies, and markets for VAC's Broadband Suppliers site.

Will instant downloads ever happen here? Can we play online and watch videos without interruption? We have been expecting these changes with our UK broadband services a long time.

A recent study by Broadband Suppliers states our international peers, especially South Korea and Japan, are miles a head of the United Kingdom. Even though the UK ranks among the top thirty richest nations, the UK's telecommunication infrastructure is worse than rest of Europe and most of the countries in the world.

South Korea, for example, is the first country in the world to bring fiber optic cable connections to every school nationwide. Online games are a national event.

The maximum broadband speed offered in UK is 50 Mbps while the average monthly bill shoots up to 10 times higher than other countries. Expert analysis claims houses in most part of the country still connect to exchanges using old BT copper wires. Copper wires do not have better data carrying capacity compared to fiber optic cables. Moreover, the longer the wires are from the exchange, the slower the speed will be. The fiber optic cables have been laid in major cities while other parts of the country still wait for network expansion.

The Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG) recently announced that the UK is worse on broadband penetration by standard measures. They also reported that one in every five users (21%) express dissatisfaction with broadband speeds. 16% are dissatisfied with the price of the plan and 13% with the reliability and performance of the connection. Almost 26% of customers say broadband providers set a wrong expectation about connection speed.

Some of the major factors affecting speeds include:

1. Line capacity of the ISP's
2. Cable quality
3. Distance between the residents and exchange

Awareness about the speed of the broadband is mixed. Many people are well informed about the factors affecting speed and choose the fastest ISP, while almost 40% are unaware of the head line speed. Broadband suppliers continue to mislead the public regarding download speeds and tag customers with higher prices. This was also reported and criticized by Ofcom this year.

The UK Government should speed up the process of laying fiber optic cables and increase the coverage of wireless networks. Else we will remain in the 26th position or fall further when it comes to the quality of broadband service in the world, while competitors like Japan and South Korea are future ready.

tags: uk, broadband, rok, southkorea