How does Britain’s broadband compare?

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The British government this year detailed plans to get the nation connected up with broadband.

The Digital Britain report, released back in May, made promises not only to invest in high speed broadband but to ensure everyone in the country has a 2Mbps connection by 2012.

We aren’t the only country making efforts in this area though and in this feature we take a look at how the UK’s broadband shapes up compared to other countries around the world.

The US

The US has similar problems to the UK when it comes to broadband structure, but on a much larger scale.

When it comes to connecting rural areas, the US has its fair share of problems and connecting up deserts and mountain ranges makes linking up a small village in Cornwall seem like a walk in the park.

“The US is very different from the UK with its large, dispersed and rural areas and in many respects it is a bigger challenge than the UK,” Rob Bamforth, principal analyst at Quocirca, told IT PRO.

“The problem with building a universal infrastructure [in a country] is that it may be a good business plan to put it where there are lots of people but it isn’t good business to put it where there are very few.”

This is where government funding comes into play. President Barack Obama is going through the motions with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to implement a national broadband strategy aiming to get this generation of the internet into every home in the US.

The stimulus package will amount to almost $800 billion (£484 billion), with $7.2 billion being allocated specifically for those rural areas.

However, even before this all gets put into action – the FCC needs to report back on the plans to congress next February – the other side of the Atlantic does still manage to top the UK on its average broadband download speeds.

In a recent Speed Matters broadband report, the average came out at 5.1Mbps, while the UK trailed behind with 4.1Mbps.

Sweden

The Nordics are renowned for their prowess in the area of mobile technology and now they dominate the speed league tables for broadband downloads too.

In the same speed test that saw the UK lag behind the US, both nations fell miles behind Sweden which reached an average download speed of 12.8Mbps.

It has also made the pledge that 90 per cent of its population will be able to get speeds of 100Mbps by 2020, with 40 per cent already having it by 2015. This leaves the UK’s 2Mbps Universal Service Commitment (UCS) in the shadows.

In addition to leading the European pack on speeds, it also benefits from some of the lowest monthly costs for high speed internet, according to a report from the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development.

One of the main government pushes is to ensure openness for competition in its broadband market, according to Phil Sayer, a principal analyst at Forrester Research.

“The theory underlying open access is that the more competitive consumer broadband markets that emerge from this more competitive environment will deliver higher capacity, at lower prices, to more of the population,” he said.

“Open access policies seek to make it easier for new competitors to enter and compete in broadband markets by requiring existing carriers to lease access to their networks to their competitors, mostly at regulated rates.”

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