Figures from Ofcom have revealed that Britain has some of the cheapest broadband in the world.
The 142 page report is filled with graphs and tables showing how the UK compares to other countries. Compared to France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the US the UK comes in with the lowest prices for mobile and single service broadband and also comes in second lowest for fixed line voice after Italy.
The huge competition for communication services in the UK has helped drive the costs down although the picture is not all rosy. If you look to page 117 and image 4.47 you will see that the broadband speeds we receive are still way off those heading the field in Europe.
The image shows the proportion of broadband connections that have a headline speed above 8Mb, the UK comes in with just 10%, which is way behind the Netherlands with 37%, Sweden with 33%, France on 26% and Germany on 16%!
Although the UK is now starting to address the investment in next generation Fibre broadband we are still lagging well behind other countries in this department.
Other interesting statistics from the report showed that in the UK we have increased how much we watch TV by 3%, taking us up to 3.8 hours per day, although we watch less than Italy, Poland and Spain, with the US topping the list with 4.6 hours of TV per day.
In 2008 in the UK we sent 83 billion text messages with only the USA sending more than us, although they did send 10 times as many as we did.
The full report can be viewed at www.ofcom.org.uk
Price is not everything. It may be the cheapest, but is it a good deal if the allowance is much lower than elsewhere.
Like has to be compared with like.
DrT
Comment by DrTeeth — January 3, 2010 @ 12:05 pm