UK broadband update June 2017
Speaking at the Connected Britain conference in London, Minister for Digital Matt Hancock reaffirmed the Government’s commitment to broadband following the General Election on 8th June. See coverage from Computer Weekly and ISP Review and see previous posts on the March 2017 Budget and 2016 Autumn Statement for further details of the Government’s plans. Computer Weekly also reported remarks at the conference by Lord Mendelsohn, shadow minister for business, energy and industrial strategy and shadow minister for international trade, that the Government’s 10Mbit/s universal service obligation (USO) target set out in the Digital Economy Act is not ambitious enough.
Which? published new details of the best and worst areas of the UK for broadband speeds, as part of its Fix Bad Broadband campaign. The Orkney Islands, Shetland Islands and Highland were ranked as the worst places in the UK for broadband speeds, with Ryedale in Yorkshire and Purbeck in Dorset also in the bottom five. The average broadband speeds recorded in these locations were all below 10Mbit/s. A number of urban locations were also found to have speeds below the average speed of 17Mbit/s identified by the Which? study: the London boroughs of Southwark, Westminster, Lambeth, Hackney and the City of London all had speeds below this figure. Also see coverage from BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
ThinkBroadband published its June update on broadband coverage across the UK, reporting that superfast services offering speeds above 24Mbit/s are available to 93% of premises, with 30Mbit/s or faster services available to 92.4%. Ultrafast services of 100Mbit/s or faster are available to 51.5% of premises. At the other end of the scale 0.8% of premises are unable to access speeds of 2Mbit/s while 3.2% cannot access 10Mbit/s.
Akamai’s Q1 2017 State of the Internet report found that the UK’s average fixed connection speed is now 16.9Mbit/s, against a global average of 7.2Mbit/s, placing us “in the middle of the pack for broadband adoption among European countries”. Ninety-two percent of UK connections were above 4Mbit/s, 60% were above 10Mbit/s and 42% were above 15Mbit/s; the UK also had the fastest average mobile connection speed at 26Mbit/s.
Cisco’s latest Visual Networking Index (full report here and interactive tool here) predicted that average UK fixed broadband speeds will double from 29.8Mbit/s in 2016 to 60.2Mbit/s by 2021. UK IP traffic will grow 3-fold from 2016 to 2021, from 3.9 to 10.6 Exabytes per month, a compound annual growth rate of 22%. IP video traffic will reach 8.4 Exabytes per month in 2021, up from 2.8 Exabytes per month in 2016. The average Internet household will generate 302.0 Gigabytes of Internet traffic per month in 2021, up 163% from 114.9 Gigabytes per month in 2016.
Ofcom published its annual Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes report: record numbers of older people are embracing smart and social technology, with a quarter of over-75s using tablet computers, and half of online baby boomers taking to social media. Over-65s spend 15 hours online each week, compared to 32 hours among 16-24s. Ofcom’s latest telecoms and pay-TV complaints data covered fixed broadband providers BT, EE, Plusnet, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media. BT generated the highest relative complaint volumes in Q1 2017, mainly in relation to faults, service and provision issues. TalkTalk, Plusnet and EE also generated above industry average complaint levels. Ofcom also commenced its Wholesale Broadband Access Market Review, setting out its provisional assessment of competition within the UK's Wholesale Broadband Access markets, where services are bought by telecoms providers in order to supply retail broadband services to residential and business consumers. Also see commentary from ISP Review.
The Scottish Government announced that more than 90% of Scottish premises can now access superfast broadband. The Scottish Government’s ambition is for 100% of premises to have access to superfast services by 2021. A new report from CBI Scotland reiterated the importance of broadband connectivity to Scotland’s economic development, suggesting that improving productivity and unlocking growth across Scotland’s regions could be worth up to £25bn to the economy over the next decade, increasing the size of the economy by as much as 15%. The RemIX Project (more here), a distributed Internet exchange for remote and rural networks in Scotland, was one of the five winners of the European Broadband Awards 2016 competition.
The Welsh Government published a new consultation on the next stage of superfast broadband deployment in Wales to take place in early 2018. This will be supported by around £80m and follows an Open Market Review process which identified that more than 98,000 premises will not be reached by the current rollout. The Welsh Government also announced that 341 schools across Wales are set to get superfast broadband through £5m of Welsh Government funding.
Northern Ireland: The agreement reached between the Conservative and Unionist Party and the Democratic Unionist Party following the results of the General Election on 8th June includes a UK Government contribution of £75 million per year for 2 years to help provide ultrafast broadband for Northern Ireland.
Consumer broadband advertising and speeds: the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) issued rulings on broadband advertisements by Sky and BT; the Sky advertisement’s claim of offering the UK’s lowest price fibre including line rental was found to be misleading, while BT’s advertisement included misleading claims in relation to W-Fi capabilities and coverage. ISP Review reported on revisions being considered by Ofcom to its voluntary code of practice for broadband speeds to provide further detail for consumers. A consultation will follow shortly. Ars Technica reported that Hyperoptic, Gigaclear and Cityfibre have called upon the Advertising Standards Agency to address the way BT, Virgin, Sky and others use the word “fibre” to describe their services as part of its current consultation on broadband advertising; more on this and related consumer broadband developments in this previous post. Cable reported on Virgin Media’s suggestion that any new advertising guidelines should take the needs of homeworkers into account, advertising average speeds across a whole day rather than just at peak times.
