Britain lagging behind in the broadband race
BRITAIN has slipped to 81st place in the world for the value of home internet packages as sluggish broadband speeds fail to keep pace with steadily rising prices, research shows.
A global study of more than 3,000 fixed-line monthly bundles found the UK lagging “far behind” much of Europe, mainly due to reliance on ageing copper cabling rather than highspeed fibre optic.
It was ranked 71st cheapest overall of 206 countries worldwide according to comparison site Cable, and the fifth cheapest of 29 countries looked at in western Europe.
But due to lower average speeds it fared worse in terms of value for money, coming 23rd of the 29 countries in Europe and was ranked 81st worldwide. Dan Howdle, consumer telecoms analyst for Cable, said: “The UK is still heavily reliant on part-copper networks, coming rather late to the party when it comes to pure fibre.”
He added: “Speeds available to UK households have not significantly changed for the majority of the UK population in the last five to six years. Prices, meanwhile, have risen steadily.”
It found that in the UK, the standard household pays nearly £28 a month for connections of 22 megabits per second (MBPS). Customers in Romania enjoy Europe’s cheapest fixed-line broadband, paying on average just £6 per month for only marginally slower speeds.
France and Germany were next cheapest, with packages averaging about £22, while customers in Andorra, Italy and Monaco pay between £25 and £26.50 for their services.
Web users on Jersey pay the most in western Europe, about £62 monthly, but get the world’s third fastest speeds in return — capable of downloading a 5GB film in about 10 minutes.
The world’s cheapest fixed-line broadband was to be found in Syria.
According to Cable’s figures, Eritrea pays the most, with packages costing more than £2,000 for a month’s service.
Speed tests found Britain lags behind 33 countries, including Andorra and San Marino. Average download speeds were found to be about 22MBPS, compared with 85MBPS in Taiwan.
It takes British users about 30 minutes to download a 5GB HD film, compared with eight minutes in Taiwan.
The Government has pledged an acceleration of the roll-out of highspeed internet across the country but has not committed to a firm timetable.
It comes after online estate agent Housesimple claimed that “sluggish broadband can slash house prices”.