Ofcom’s 2016 Connected Nations report

Ofcom has published its 2016 Connected Nations report (press release here and details of reports from previous years here). The report tracks “communications providers’ progress in growing the availability of good communications, and how the UK is working towards a robust and visionary next generation of services.”

Key findings – fixed broadband:

• Over 9 million, or 31% of, UK premises now subscribe to superfast services offering speeds of at least 30Mbit/s, up from 27% in 2015 and 21% in 2014.
• The average download speed of all broadband products in the UK is now 37Mbit/s, up from 29Mbit/s in 2015; the average download speed of superfast connections is now 74Mbit/s.
• The growth in the number of premises taking up superfast broadband appears to be slowing: “While this latest year-on-year increase is a reasonable improvement, these figures suggest that growth in superfast take-up might be reaching a plateau. Given the relatively high levels of superfast coverage, it is unclear why more consumers are not actively taking up faster services.”
• Around 1.4 million, or 5% of, homes and small businesses in the UK are still unable to receive download speeds greater than 10Mbit/s.
• Average monthly data volumes per household have increased by 36% over the past year, from 97GB to 132GB. For superfast connections the figure is 169GB, up from 112GB.
• Approximately 1.7% of UK premises (498,000) have access to fibre to the premise (FTTP) services, which offer download speeds of between 250Mbit/s and 1Gbit/s (Ofcom currently defines ultrafast services as delivering download speeds of at least 300Mbit/s). The coverage of such services is broadly unchanged from 2015.
• SMEs still experience poorer superfast broadband coverage compared to consumers as a whole. This is because many are located in areas that are less well served. Only 80% of SMEs (1.9 million) have access to superfast services in the UK, compared to 89% of all premises; this leaves almost 480,000 SMEs without access to superfast broadband. Almost 192,000 SMEs cannot currently access speeds above 10Mbit/s.

Key findings – mobile:

• Effective indoor coverage5 of voice services from all operators is around 89% of UK premises (26 million), up from 85% last year.
• The coverage of data services has also improved, rising from 77% of UK premises in 2015 to 80% (23 million) this year.
• Geographic coverage remains an issue: “Consumers can now make and receive phone calls on all operators’ networks in 66% of UK landmass, up from 58% last year; and the coverage of data services from all operators has increased from 38% to 52% this year. There is, however, an enduring concern that geographic coverage is still relatively low and that future commercial rollouts are unlikely to fully address the situation.”
• Geographic coverage of 4G services from all operators now reaches 40% of UK landmass, up from just 8% in 2015.
• Mobile data consumption on mobile has increased to more than 1GB per month per active connection.
• Ofcom wants to see better coverage across the UK’s landmass and has written to mobile operators to explore solutions.

Key findings – Internet access services and interconnection trends:

• The amount of internet data being delivered to consumers by major video content providers continues to increase.
• The use of content delivery networks (CDNs) also continues to increase: internet content is increasingly being served from caching servers embedded in ISPs’ access networks and provided by content providers.
• CDN connectivity accounts for 76% of interconnection traffic on fixed networks. Generally, mobile networks have a lower proportion of CDN delivered traffic, probably reflecting the lower consumption of streamed video through devices connected directly to mobile networks (as opposed to Wi-Fi).
• In terms of the implementation of the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) guidelines on net neutrality, Ofcom will “continue to maintain a close dialogue with industry to ensure that the appropriate balance is struck between restricting ISP practices, in order to protect innovation in online services, and allowing ISPs to evolve their networks and the range of internet and non-internet services they offer – whilst avoiding harming incentives to invest and ensuring the Internet remains an open and innovative environment.”
• In terms of network and CDN interconnection agreements and practices, Ofcom has “no reason to believe that UK ISPs are abusing their position to extract payment from content providers.”