UK falls to 47th in the world for internet speed

BRITAIN’S woeful broadband service during the coronavirus lockdown means the nation has been overtaken in the global speed league.

The UK falls way behind countries like Lichtenstein, Andorra, Hungary, the Baltic states, the Caribbean islands and Spain, which has more than double the land mass to cover.

The average download speed in the UK is put at a snail’s pace 37.82 megabits per second. Although it is an improvement on 22.37Mbps in 2019, other countries have achieved much bigger increases and Britain has now dropped from 34th to 47th in the world.

It follows a lack of investment in the UK’s antiquated infrastructure as millions get internet access down copper wires built for the telephone network more than 100 years ago. BT subsidiary Openreach is largely responsible for replacing this system with the fibre cable network needed for world-beating speeds.

The league is based on an analysis of over 557million broadband speed tests worldwide for Cable.co.uk.

Catherine Colloms, of Openreach, said: ‘We’re investing £12billion in the next big build and taking ultra-fast, ultra-reliable full fibre broadband to 20million premises by the mid-to-late 2020s.’