UK 17th in the world for broadband speeds

[SouthernComfort]

Last month, BT made Cornwall a little bit faster: it gave fifty people internet access at speeds of up to 40Mbps as part of a roll-out that will reach 80% of UK homes by 2014.
40Mbps sounds impressive, and it was - in 2005. That's when Asian ISPs were upping speeds to 40 and 50Mbps or higher, and it's taken quite a while for us to catch up.
By the time the average UK consumer gets 40Mbps broadband many other countries will be on 100-plus - and because BT's fibre doesn't reach our homes and offices we'll still have the same "up to" nonsense that makes the UK's broadband adverts so confusing.
British broadband is rubbish. The average UK broadband speed is just 6.2Mbps, Ofcom says, and while faster options do exist they aren't widespread - so for example Virgin's 100Mb service is only available to one million homes, and BT's roll-out can't deliver 100Mbps until we have fibre-optic connections from the cabinets in our streets to the sockets in our homes.
Akamai's most recent State of the Internet report rated us 17th in the world for broadband. Akamai reckons our average speed was even lower than Ofcom's number - it says we're averaging 4Mbps - while the world leaders, South Korea, averaged 14Mbps.


Read more: How the UK could get the world's fastest broadband | News | TechRadar UK

[oneman]

What a load of rubbish yet again.

BT infinity will be able to deliver 100mb to some people without replacing the cable from cabinet to street. Most of the Asian countries can offer high speed if you are in a metropolitan area, out in the countryside they would be lucky to get dial up. But I suspect high speed internet is a low priority for people living on a few dollars a day and home computer penetration is very low.

[SouthernComfort]

What a load of rubbish yet again.

How did you come to that conclusion? The statistics speak for themselves. If you're comparing our network to South Korea well this could be a pointless conversation.

[oneman]

Every time there is talk of 'digital' Britain they roll useless rubbish like this out. Yes there are metropolitian areas of some countries which have ethernet broadband available. But look deeper and most of countries outside of cities is rather poorly served. Anybody who believes that the whole of south korea has 100mb+ broadband will find themselves sadly mis-informed.

Reality is even if high speed broadband was available a majority of poeple are just not interested in it.

Around 60% of the country is cabled giving potential base of around 20 million subscribers. Out of those 4m actually use VM for BB who have potential for 50mb right now and all with have potential for 100mb by end of summer and some will have 200mb by beginning of next year. Want to guess at the number of people on 50mb or 100mb service. Around 50,000 out of the 20,000,000 or take up rate of 0.25%. Number taking up BT infinity service is around the same percentage I have read.

UK and most of the world don't need high speed BB just yet. Very few services exist, your business model just could not survive right now if you relied on needing fast BB. I believe iplayer streams HD at around 3.5mb so even if you needed say 4 HD streams that would 14mb.

[SouthernComfort]

Think you may be missing the point.

"These figures are averages for the entire country, taking into account both urban broadband and slower rural services: when it comes to cities with fast broadband, the UK didn't make the top 100."

"South Korea's investment in broadband and related technologies saved its economy"

"its government saw technology as a lifeline and spent billions on infrastructure"

"Broadband increases the tax base, increases GDP - by up to 2% from the first period of broadband... and even more today, reduces government expenditure in the medium to long term and improves the quality of life and access to services for the population."

[Canker_Canison]

Of the millions of UK residents that are not taking up the high speed BB provided by VM & BT's Infinity, ask them why?

I'm willing to place money on most saying either A) It's just too expensive. Or B) It won't be as fast as they say it is.

BT has destroyed the BB market. All providers have to use BT's network, with the exception of VM cabled areas, so they all have the same limitations. So they use the same 'upto' terminology.
If they had to post the actual speeds from the begining VM would be laughing & there would be a lot more investment from BT.

[oneman]

Of the millions of UK residents that are not taking up the high speed BB provided by VM & BT's Infinity, ask them why?

I'm willing to place money on most saying either A) It's just too expensive. Or B) It won't be as fast as they say it is.

BT has destroyed the BB market. All providers have to use BT's network, with the exception of VM cabled areas, so they all have the same limitations. So they use the same 'upto' terminology.
If they had to post the actual speeds from the begining VM would be laughing & there would be a lot more investment from BT.

Why is take of infinity and cable both so low when both will give pretty much the advertised speed ?

As for expensive, that is relative. I am guessing people are happy to spend ?25 elsewhere rather then on faster BB. As long as they can do e-mail, web browsing and a bit of youtube then they are happy.

[Canker_Canison]

Why is take of infinity and cable both so low when both will give pretty much the advertised speed ?

As for expensive, that is relative. I am guessing people are happy to spend ?25 elsewhere rather then on faster BB. As long as they can do e-mail, web browsing and a bit of youtube then they are happy.

It's common knowledge that BB speeds are never what they say. A friend pays for 'upto' 20MB with sky, but only gets 2MB speeds...when he's lucky.

So when they then come out saying 'upto' 50MB connection, everybody then down grades that to 'maybe I'll end up with 5-10MB'. Followed by 'it's not worth the money for a 5MB connection'.

If they were forced to publish real connection rates in the advertised areas things could get better.

VM have the best BB speeds, but throttle the shit out of it after 40mins of full speed. You just can't win..... Unless you have access to several VM connections & hope from one the another as they get throttled. Gotta love BT4

[oneman]

It's common knowledge that BB speeds are never what they say. A friend pays for 'upto' 20MB with sky, but only gets 2MB speeds...when he's lucky.

So when they then come out saying 'upto' 50MB connection, everybody then down grades that to 'maybe I'll end up with 5-10MB'. Followed by 'it's not worth the money for a 5MB connection'.

If they were forced to publish real connection rates in the advertised areas things could get better.

VM have the best BB speeds, but throttle the shit out of it after 40mins of full speed. You just can't win..... Unless you have access to several VM connections & hope from one the another as they get throttled. Gotta love BT4

AFAIK, Virgin have been pretty consistant at delivering the advertised speeds. There is no capping on the 50mb service, only traffic shaping for some protocols commonly used to download illegal material.

Also Inifinity also deliveries pretty much 40mb from what I have read. This could potentially be going up to 100mb next year.

[Canker_Canison]

VM do throttle normal traffic on the 50MB connection.

A month or so ago I was downloading some legitimate software from a standard website. After about 1 hour of full speed downloading it was cut right back to 20MB

Hours later speed tests still showed 20MB download speeds.

[MrFug]

Ive noticed this myself. My speed drops from 50mb to about 30mb during peak times, and that's using usenet with SSL.

[oneman]

From personal experiance and speaking to several other friends and family, VM only seem to throttle usenet and P2P traffic, which would explain your issue Fug.

Don't know what site you were downloading from cankar but are you sure they were not using P2P or other distributed distribution method. If not then call VM and ask them to investigate. I know there were some issues when throttling was first implemented and some legit sites where throttled but I believe those are now fixed.

[barrowmanandrew]

yep, vermin say they only "manage" p2p and newsgroup traffic,
but if you download more than they allow on their fair usage policy, then they will throtlle you across the board for 5 or 6 hours.
your speed basically drops to a quarter of what you should get.

i know, i have been caught out many times and i now only download between 9pm and 9am when its safe....

you get maximum speed between midnight and 9 am without any traffic shaping.

Our traffic management policy

[oneman]

yep, vermin say they only "manage" p2p and newsgroup traffic,
but if you download more than they allow on their fair usage policy, then they will throtlle you across the board for 5 or 6 hours.
your speed basically drops to a quarter of what you should get.

i know, i have been caught out many times and i now only download between 9pm and 9am when its safe....

you get maximum speed between midnight and 9 am without any traffic shaping.

Our traffic management policy

There are no download quotes on the 50mb and 100mb service. its all clearly laid out on the link your provided.

[masur123]

There are no download quotes on the 50mb and 100mb service. its all clearly laid out on the link your provided.

Sorry mate there is if you read it again. The polict for BT and Newsgroups is to shape, so whilst it wont stop after a certain amount, they will certainly "shape" your download so you dont get the full speed.

Quote from said link

File sharing


We moderate the total volume of file sharing traffic on our network between 5pm and midnight on weekdays and midday and midnight on weekends. This policy, which applies to all broadband packages, is restricted to Peer to Peer ("P2P") applications and Newsgroups (which are commonly used to distribute large amounts of data)
This policy does not impact any applications other than Peer to Peer and Newsgroups, so things like watching iPlayer, online gaming, making calls via Skype, downloading music tracks from iTunes or streaming them from Spotify and sending an email or normal browsing are unaffected.
It's important to remember that these traffic management policies only apply at peak times when speeds are most likely to be affected by people using more than their fair share. Outside of peak times we do not manage traffic.