UK broadband 35th in league
BROADBAND speeds in Britain are worse than countries in Africa and Eastern Europe – after coming 35th in a world league.
The UK lags behind Madagascar, Estonia, Latvia and Bulgaria – and UK dependency Jersey – following 163million speed tests in 200 countries. The UK average of 18.57Mbps was way behind Singapore on the speediest 60.39Mbps and Sweden on 46Mbps.
According to the Worldwide Broadband Speed League compiled by M-Lab, 136 nations failed to reach above 10Mbps, which is set by telecoms watchdog Ofcom as the minimum needed for a family. Overall global speeds rose to 9.10Mbps.
Strife-torn Yemen had the slowest speed of 0.31Mbps, which would take two days to download a film in HD. Dan Howdle, an analyst at Cable, which is part of the M-Lab partnership, said: “A number of countries have leapfrogged us. The UK has simply come too late to a full fibre solution.”