March 11, 2010
Our satisfaction of Broadband speeds in the UK has reportedly fallen for the third year in a row!
A broadband speed satisfaction survey was done by broadband comparison website broadbandchoices.co.uk that had 8,000 respondents and around a third of those who answered were not satisfied with the broadband speeds that they received. The level of dissatisfaction since last year has increased where 27% were not satisfied and is basically double how dissatisfied users were in 2008 when 16% said they were not happy with their broadband speeds.
Broadband speeds for many is the main important factor they have with their internet connection, and with broadband speeds being the main selling points to many broadband deals alongside the price it is only to be expected that the speed we receive is of high importance.
Of those who responded, 28% of those said that they were planning on changing broadband providers because they were not happy with their broadband speeds.
It appears that the main dissatisfaction comes from those who are on standard 8Mb or below broadband deals, as the study also found that of the broadband subscribers who were on 24Mb and above broadband deals only 15% of these were not satisfied with their broadband speeds.
Demand for fast broadband is ever increasing, this is mainly because more and more online applications become available that require faster broadband connections, such as streaming TV and music live and the internet connections are used to do more tasks.
Not a day goes by when there is not more talk of the latest fibre optic broadband deployments. As such we anticipate that as broadband speeds increase the “bar” for what broadband speed we want to achieve will continue to be raised and once fibre broadband is deployed throughout the UK (BT are currently starting their roll out of fibre broadband) we anticipate that we will see those on ADSL2+ (24Mb broadband) becoming the ones who are not as satisfied of their broadband speeds.
One big bug-bear with broadband speeds is the advertised speeds are quite often not close to what the user is actually going to receive, the advertised “up to” speeds are the theoretical maximum broadband speeds users would be able to receive but there are very few, especially on standard copper wired ADSL who are likely to get this maximum speed.
Currently though, for those who are not satisfied with their broadband speeds should look to see if fibre broadband is available to them (Virgin Media) or if their telephone exchange has ADSL2+ enabled where they will be able to receive broadband speeds up to 24Mb and to consider changing their broadband provider if they are not happy with the download and upload speeds that they receive.
To see what broadband speed you receive use our free broadband speed test tool.
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February 26, 2010
New studies are to be undertook by Ofcom and the SamKnows website into the broadband speeds we receive.
 The research follows up successful broadband speed testing done last year between Ofcom and SamKnows and is designed to give a more accurate picture of our actual broadband connections and speeds and not just the advertised “up to” speeds that we all see.
Quite often there is a big difference between the advertised “up to” speed that broadband providers advertise and the actual broadband speed received by the consumer.
Volunteers are currently being recruited to take part in the study and if selected then they will be provided with a White Box that will be then used to monitor the web traffic for specific broadband providers.
With broadband in the UK rapidly changing and getting faster the information gathered will be interesting to see for those who are signed up to the next generation fibre broadband deals and those on the BT 21CN network.
The BT C1CN network is due to offer ADSL2+ technology to around 75% of UK homes by Spring 2011 which is able to deliver theoretical maximum broadband speeds of 24Mb.
We also have the huge investment in fibre optic networks currently taking place, with BT rolling out their own fibre broadband network which will offer broadband speed up to 40Mb, Virgin Media already have a 50Mb broadband package and announced yesterday that by the end of the year that they will be starting to roll out Virgin Media 100Mb broadband via their new DOCSIS 3 network.
The last broadband testing that was funded by Ofcom to be done via the “White Box” in 2009 found that the average broadband speed was 4.1Mb which was the equivalent of 57% of the advertised headline speed.
CEO of SamKnows, Alex Salter said:
“What started out as a project to monitor and report on the UK’s broadband connectivity in general, it instead highlighted that a clear discrepancy exists between what the ISPs are saying and what the end consumer is actually receiving.
What we’re looking to measure in the forthcoming project is how this ISP performance will improve as consumers switch to services which are being advertised as significantly faster.”
It is anticipated that the broadband speeds of users will increase throughout the year as new technologies become rolled out and made available to more people and as such we would expect the average broadband speed we are receiving to also rise in line with this.
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February 15, 2010
YouTube have added a new part to their site that is titled “YouTube Video Speed History” and is to show users what their average video speed is from their location in the previous month.
A graph is produced to show how your connection compares to averages for your country, ISP and globally.
Although it is not that useful it is useful to see how your Internet connection compares to others and if you do appear to have any speed issues. Another way to check your broadband speed is to run a broadband speed test that will show your your upload and download speeds.
To view this YouTube My Speed page simply visit: www.youtube.com/my_speed
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February 4, 2010
The latest monthly broadband speed test results from Broadband.co.uk once again see Virgin Media topping the broadband speeds list.
The broadband speed test results are collected from the broadband speed tests performed in January 2010.
Below are the average broadband speeds recorded for 10 of the UK’s broadband providers.
Virgin Media – 7.651Mb
O2 ( Be Broadband ) – 5.113Mb
TalkTalk – 3.628Mb
Sky Broadband – 3.336Mb
Eclipse Internet – 3.106Mb
Orange – 3.055Mb
BT – 2.982Mb
Tiscali – 2.788Mb
PlusNet – 2.732Mb
AOL – 2.131Mb
It is little surprise to see Virgin Media still placed up at the top, with their fibre optic broadband network they are able to offer much faster broadband speeds, with their headline deal offering up to 50Mb broadband.
We envisage that we will start to see other broadband speeds to increase for other broadband providers who use the BT Wholesale network as BT have started the roll out of BT Infinity, their own fibre broadband network.
The average broadband speed achieved across the broadband providers tested was 4.275Mb, this is in fact a 0.2Mb broadband speed decrease on the December 2009 speed test results.
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January 14, 2010
The UK is positioned way down the list of broadband nations in the latest study of the worldwide broadband market.
We are positioned in a disappointing 26th in the league table of broadband speeds after research done by Akamai was published in their latest quarterly “State of the Internet” report for Q3 2009.
Topping the list is South Korea who have an average broadband speed of 14.6Mb, Japan 7.9Mb, Hong Kong 7.6Mb, Romania 6.2Mb, Sweden 5.7Mb and Ireland 5.3Mb.
Looking down the list the USA comes in with 3.9Mb and the UK with just 3.5Mb average broadband speed. Globally the average broadband speed is just 1.7Mb.
The positive to look at this is that it means that we have plenty of scope to catch up providing the continued investment in fibre broadband continues which will bring us much faster broadband speeds.
The full table of countries and their broadband speeds can be viewed below. For anyone who wants to see how fats their own broadband connection is can do so by running a broadband speed test.
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November 25, 2009
The average mobile broadband speeds that were found by BroadbandGenie show that from the 3,600 users that were tested the average speed was less than 1Mb.
The exact figure they found was a mobile broadband speed of just 0.87Mb which is hugely slower than the advertised 3.6Mb and 7.2Mb that is advertised by the mobile broadband providers.
Of those who used the broadband speed test those who managed a mobile broadband speed of 3Mb or above was just 0.5%, with 65% getting speeds that were under 1Mb, with 39% of these results actually being under 0.5Mb!
Around a quarter (26%) got speeds of between 1Mb and 2Mb and just 7% managed to get between 2Mb and 3Mb.
What the big hope is that when 4G services start getting rolled out that mobile broadband speeds will increase dramatically, but hopefully the mobile broadband providers won’t just increase their advertised top speeds to speeds way greater than are likely to be received by most like most currently do at the moment.
There is more problems with mobile broadband still, with the use of smartphones and people using the Internet on the move more the capacity for mobile broadband is being stretched hugely as demand starts to close in on what is actually avai;lable, again 4G technology will hopefully go a long way to sorting this when it is launched.
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November 6, 2009
The latest set of broadband speed test results for October 2009 compiled by broadband.co.uk still have Virgin Media leading the way with the fastest broadband speeds.
The results are compiled from broadband speed tests that are performed each month for 10 of the most popular broadband providers in the UK.
Virgin were head and shoulders in front by averaging a broadband download speed of 7.328Mb and 2.3Mb faster than O2 & Be Broadband (they use the same infrastructure) who came in second place with 5.019Mb.
Virgin are expected to be at the top as they have a fibre optic broadband network and have a broadband package with a headline speed of 50Mb, we do anticipate that when BT’s fibre network is rolled out that the gap will close slightly.
Coming in slowest was AOL broadband who recorded an average broadband speed of just 2.183Mb with the average across the 10 broadband providers being 4.328Mb.
The broadband provider and their average broadband speed for each are listed below.
Virgin Media – 7.260Mb
O2 ( Be Broadband ) – 5.019Mb
Eclipse Internet – 3.899Mb
Sky Broadband – 3.512Mb
TalkTalk – 3.357Mb
Orange – 3.199
BT – 2.920Mb
Tiscali – 2.770Mb
PlusNet – 2.559Mb
AOL – 2.183Mb
For the first time Virgin Media managed to average over 8Mb broadband speed (8.303Mb) for speed tests taken between midnight and 8am.
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October 2, 2009
Britain has come dragging it’s heels into either 25th or 31st place depending on how the results are taken for broadband in the world, with countries like Latvia, Lithuania and Romania all coming higher up the list than us.
The results from the survey that was done by Oxford University and sponsored by Cisco said that the broadband in the UK only meets the needs for today and not for the future.
The difference between South Korea who top the league and the UK is that while we have our Digital Britain report that said that there should be a minimum universal broadband speed in the UK of 2Mb by 2012 the South Korean government has promised a universal speed of up to 1Gb by 2012!
The “Broadband Quality Score” was worked out by combining the download speed, upload speed and the latency.
Hopefully the investment in fibre broadband that BT are currently doing will bring us back more into contention with other countries round the world.
The average broadband speed achieved globally was 4.75Mb with an average upload speed of 1.3Mb, it is thought that in the future the average download speed will need to be 11.25Mb and an average upload speed of 5Mb to handle future applications such as high definition video.
The results for the study were taken from broadband speed test site speedtest.net.
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September 22, 2009
A study into mobile broadband speeds has found that on average that mobile broadband users are receiving just 24% of the advertised headline speeds.
 The study done by “Broadband Expert” a broadband comparison site tested 3,342 mobile broadband connections between 1st March 2009 and 31st August 2009 with the average download speed coming in at 1.1Mb which is way below the advertised maximum of 4.5Mb.
Vodafone offered the fastest mobile broadband speeds at 1.3Mb, although they also advertised their mobile broadband at speeds up to 7.2Mb and so in effect only delivered speeds at 18% of what they were advertising.
The actual average broadband speeds between the mobile broadband providers was very close, although T-Mobile offered the slowest speed of 0.9Mb.
Vodafone will have a lot of work to do as they have recently started deploying technology that they say will be able to provide mobile broadband speeds up to 14.4Mb. If they continue on with how they have performed in this test then the average speed that users will receive is 2.6Mb.
Also, with MiFi (Mobile WiFi) being introduced there is even more need for the mobile broadband providers to get their broadband speeds faster to make the use of MiFi more usable.
You can test your broadband speed by using a speed test.
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September 17, 2009
The broadband comparison site Top10Broadband.co.uk ran it’s annual broadband awards last night.
Their results for winners were based on 1.5 million customer ratings and 400,000 broadband speed tests that they ran and helped them decide who should win each of the 11 categories that were done.
In the broadband speeds stakes the fastest home broadband award was picked up by Virgin Media while Vodafone mobile broadband picked up the fastest mobile broadband award and the best rated mobile broadband award.
The full list of winners and their respective categories were:
- Best Rated Home Broadband: O2
- Best Wireless Broadband: BT
- Best Broadband & TV: Sky
- Best Broadband & Laptop: Orange
- Fastest Home Broadband: Virgin Media
- Fastest Mobile Broadband: Vodafone
- Best value Mobile Broadband: 3
- Best Rated Mobile Broadband: Vodafone
- Best Broadband & Phone: TalkTalk
- Best Value Home Broadband: Plusnet
- Best Innovation Award: Virgin Media
It is nice to see that the winners were fairly varied with a good range of broadband providers winning categories and not being dominated by one broadband provider.
The two mobile broadband awards were won by Vodafone but with competition in this area becoming ever more competitive and the technology advancing well we still expect the other mobile broadband providers to be not too far behind.
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