UK trails in broadband speed study
The figures released by the OECD put the UK an embarrassing 21st in terms of Internet connection speed.
As reported over on the BBC, the figures released by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development put the UK 21st in the table of 30 countries ranked by average consumer Internet access speeds.
For a country which prides itself on its forward-thinking and technological innovation, it's an embarrassing showing: doubly so when you see the top ten, which includes Japan's impressive 1Gb/s, Finland's 110Mb/s, and the 100Mb/s offered by Finland, Sweden, Korea, Iceland, France, and Denmark. The UK is even pipped to the post by the the Netherland's 60Mb/s, and the 50Mb/s available to residents of the United States and Spain.
The recommendation of the OECD is that government investment in broadband technologies is sorely required - with benefits being felt in electricity, health, education, and transportation sectors should funds be allocated to broadband development. Indeed, the OECD's Taylor Reynolds believes that "if you cut 1 percent off the costs of education, electricity, health and transportation you would more than pay for a fibre network" and each sector would gain far more than it would lose.
With other countries - including top-ten list member Finland - making moves to ensure all its citizens have access to high-speed broadband, the UK government will have to do something to improve matters. With the UK 21st out of 30 in terms of raw speed - and a not much better 13th out of 30 in terms of overall penetration - the government's 50p per month 'broadband tax' on fixed telephone lines appears much less a ridiculous notion and more a necessity.
Do you hope that the government will listen to the OECD and plough money into the UK's telecoms infrastructure in order to boost broadband speeds, or are our current connections fast enough? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyWhich party is going to stand up and say "Le'ts cut spending on these things, to fund a high speed network across the country".? Not one that wants to get elected, that's for sure!
It's all in how you approach these things... if it can be sold as 'investment for health/education/transport/communication/add-other-stuff-you-think-of-here' then it could be a winner.
If you marketed it as 'wasting money for high-speed internet for gamers and global e-peen' then of course voters aren't going to go for it.
Then again, most voters will vote for whichever party says they'll cut taxes the most... whether or not they actually do, after they've got in. And most voters seem to be blissfully ignorant of the wonderful collection of 'stealth' taxes that sneak in everywhere: you pay tax on tax, in several situations; VAT is paid on Fuel Duty Tax for petrol, for example.
...
One thing is certain; without the Govt. spending money on it, the ISPs sure won't. They already complain they aren't making enough money and that their networks are over-stressed. With how much money BT and others make, investing some of it back into the network is a very good idea... to everyone but the shareholders. Which is why they don't do it, as they want their shareholders happy.
Yes folks - I'm promised 24 and I get 3. Somehow, this is not perceived as lying.
But it's OK - the government has implemented a broadband tax so that the taxpayer can fund a faster national network, which will then be given away free to profitmaking commercial entities so that they can make money out of it! Marvellous - I wish I'd thought of that!
I know it's human nature to remember the bad and not the good, but I'd really like to hear the opinion of any bit-tech'er with knowledge of our social/economic/political landscape and why (imo) we're so slow with stuff like this.
Moreover, most people I know have a wifi connection of 54 Mbps and those who have a "draf n" router for wifi (400 Mbps), it connects to the rest of the network via 100Mb Ethernet connection (which is a bottleneck).
This makes all these adds claiming speeds above or equal 100 Mbps here in Portugal misleading. And even if you spend some money converting your home network to gigabit+"draft n" wifi+cat6 cables (to avoid a bandwidth saturation/bottlenecks), don't forget that computers don't keep up (yet) - http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gigabit-ethernet-bandwidth,2321.html
If you use 100 Mbps home network don't forget that's the theoretical speed (I doubt such network is able to provide maximum speed at all times).
According to MeoFibra site (PTs brand), my area has 100Mbps/10Mbps available. Just asked for the 20/2Mbps service, though.
Lets see how that goes...
A high speed network will doubtless come - wondrous businesses like http://www.h2onetworksdarkfibre.com/ are seeing to that - but it's not half as crucial as the think tanks that pump out these reports would like us to believe. Currently, the average consumers experience would only be improved by improved filesharing, smoother streaming of HD Video and better gaming speeds - hardly things to drive huge Government investment.
Until business needs a vastly improved network or someone comes up with a way to make revenue out of it there's no reason to upgrade a perfectly passable system when the national deficit is overwhelming finances.
(Most N routers are 150mb some do 300mb as well)
Wifi 54gb can only handle 24mb speeds (peak 30mb),
Wifi 150 or 300 N routers do on avg 50/80mb on good signal (some newer netgear and belkin N 300 routers can really do 150mb over wireless but they cost more then £100)
most computers nowadays have gigabit lan onboard and so do laptops but laptops norm lack N wireless (only windows 7 laptops i have seen with N yet), its norm the routers that do not have gigabit (like virgin provideing the WMR2000 router for 50mb but they going to have to replace them again when they start to offer 150MB as the WNR2000 only has 100mb ports, the WNR3500 has 1000 ports all of them, i think the D-link routers that VIrgin are useing now are 1000 based {the ones you have to pay for the cheaper one is 100mb based but has N 150})
Here i am, in the UK and i can choose from multiple companies upto a 50mb service, which will no doubt rise to 100mb when the competition demands it.
If people abroad who read this get the impression that all of us in the UK are stuck on 1mb lines in the slow lane, they are wrong.
True, but if you put it that way, some parts of the country doesn't even have copper wires for phones.
Still, I'm content with my 20Mb fibre
"Up to" is not the same thing as "you will definitely get"...
If your only getting that speed, then its worth looking elsewhere for a cheaper deal, as it seems 3 is the maximum your going to get
Sad to say the Conservatives said the 50p TAX was a ridiculous idea and would abolish it.
The only decent thing Labour has done in the past year is introduce that 50p per month TAX on every telephone line in the UK to help pay for the roll out of faster broadband.
Knowledge is power. Getting knowledge and delivering knowledge fast is imperative. We should be up there as world leaders in technologies, not begging for extra MB/s in our broadband.
Many many years ago when Mrs Thatcher was in charge, BT asked to be allowed to put fibre optics to every house in the country free of charge.
The government of the time declared it would give them too much of a monopoly and refused them permission.
BT are now skint and cannot afford it. Good planning Government people!
(point of interest, did you know the NHS tried to start a national lottery but were banned by the same Gov as it would be a morally terrible thing to do.....)
This kind of infrastructure should just be mandatory. This is future proofing that needs to be done. The benefit will be felt by businesses and the smallest customer alike. You may say the small customers don't care, but if their service is never interrupted then it's done it's job anyway.
thnx :)
Neither on this site nor on the BBC-link is the complete list...
Heh, If I sold a car which can run upto 120 Mph and then you notice it's stuck in first gear that would be considered not-quite-telling-the-truth thank you. :D
[off topic rant]Well... that's the traditional way of Portugal implements things. :'( [/off topic rant]
Going down the scale hasn't improved my internet experience, and also on the slower speed network i'm now on a capped service whereas the faster speeds were unlimited.
So I find my service is not up to my requirements, but in my area i'm already on the best i can get. I'm kind of the exception to the rule though. Most users in the uk don't notice any speed gains when you get over around 4Mb and the reason for crappy speeds accross the uk is the old copper network which BT say they are currently upgrading (bt's 21cn network upgrades are meant to roll out in the next 3 years)
BT also lease lines to other companys which is why you get others offering broadband down the same line so long as you have a bt phone line. BT maintain the network for these parties too and sure do take their sweet time fixing 3rd party problems.
we don't need the new network per-se the one we have works and is fine for the majority of people but the network needs overall improvement to a reasonable standard before worrying about high end speeds. There are people in the uk who can just barely get 256Kb which i wouldnt even class as broadband, i get faster speeds on my phone.
As for the tax? that will just become a standard tax that they will conveniently forget to remove once the network has been improved. There is enough cash in the system to do this already and the only hinderance to these improvements is profiteering.
On the positive side Be & ADSL24 are awesome companies who seem to care about their customers! You pay for what you get I would say, virgin, bt and orange etc may be cheaper but their service is terrible too!
As for the statements from our UK government/politicians, every comment I've ever heard regarding internet and broadband convinces me further that they just don't 'get' it. There was a time when authority equalled veracity, when finding facts and figures to challenge their statements was all but impossible and they appear stuck in that long gone age of bullshit. Today, facts and figures are a click away: 'The UK are world leaders in internet connectivity' <click> oh no we're not. Is it really so dificult to understand this age of information or is it more convienient play lip service while trying to ignore it in the hope it will go away and their credibility will remain unchallenged ?
eh dont complain at least its not nearly as bad as it is in US, granted all of the UK can fit inside the US many times over but Im tired of that excuse being used all the time for the crappy internet we have over here ><
Now thats something to dream about!
We pay $30 and they pay around the same, it's ridiculous