UK Broadband not as fast as one would like......

The above chart is my analysis of data from the ITIF and shows the broadband speeds of various countries against the services you can obtain at that speed. As you can see, the UK is hardly a stellar performer at a mean speed of 2.6 Mb/s - and now comes evidence that it ain't even that good..

The deplorable speed of British broadband connections has been revealed in the the latest figures from the Office of National Statistics, which show that 42.3% of broadband connections are slower than 2Mb/sec.

As far back as last year, telecoms regulator Ofcom was claiming "the average headline speed has doubled in a year to reach 4.6Mb/sec".

However, the ONS figures suggest that average is being heavily weighted by a small proportion of truly high-speed connections, such as the 24Mb/sec ADSL2+ broadband offered by ISPs with Local Loop Unbundled services.

More worryingly, the ONS statistics are based on the connection's headline speed, not actual throughput. That means that many more British broadband connections could well dip below the 2Mb/sec barrier when it comes to actual speeds.

We do argue internally as to bandwidth required for SDTV (Standard Definition TV) my view is for a contended line you want 3.5 - 4Mb for a PAL level of quality (Video and US NTSC and levels are lower, c 1.5 - 2.5 Mbps in my view). I have noticed my connection - ostensibly 8Mb/sec - has very seldom got above 1 Mb/sec over the last few weeks. It makes using video quite an issue, and even rich media websites are a pain in the *rse.

The worrying thing for the UK is that video media is one thing we're rather good at - but if we are competing on cart tracks while others have autobahns, we will be left behind.