Milton Keynes Has Slowest 3G Broadband In UK

Milton Keynes, notorious for its poor ADSL broadband, has been named and shamed once again as the town with the slowest 3G mobile broadband speed in Britain, according to new research.

Users of mobile broadband in the Buckinghamshire town endure an average speed of just 1.73Mbps – around 45 percent slower than the UK’s average. At this speed it would take up to 10 seconds to load a webpage, an hour to start watching a streamed movie and well over two minutes to download an application.

At the other end of the spectrum, smartphone users in Britain’s fastest 3G town, Peterborough, enjoy an average download speed of 3.86Mbps.

“There’s clearly quite a disparity when it comes to 3G connectivity across the UK,” said Alex Buttle, director of Top10.com, which conducted the research. “Advancements in mobile communications technology will be crucial if Britain hopes to remain a economic force on the world stage and compete in the global marketplace.”

Major cities lag in 3G

Also present in Top10.com’s list of the slowest 3G towns were two of the UK’s largest cities, Birmingham and Liverpool. Users in Birmingham can only get speeds of 2.43Mbps, while those in Liverpool get just 2.21Mbps.

The full list of slowest UK towns for 3G is as follows:  Milton Keynes (1.73Mbps), Leicester (2.01Mbps), Huddersfield (2.17Mbps), Cardiff (2.18Mbps), Liverpool (2.21Mbps), Blackburn (2.23Mbps), Stevenage (2.23Mbps), Hull (2.35Mbps), Stafford (2.37Mbps) and Birmingham (2.43Mbps).

Buttle calls for further investment in the UK’s telecoms infrastructure, with the aim of providing mobile broadband speeds that are 16 to 20 times faster than currently achieved.

Milton Keynes is also known for having poor fixed-line broadband provision, as a lot of the telecom infrastructure in Milton Keynes is  aluminium-based, and prone to picking up all manner of interference in the form of stray electric currents. However, the town has benefited from trials of BT’s fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) service.

In September 2010, the communications regulator Ofcom launched new research into the performance of mobile broadband services over the UK’s five mobile network operators: 3, O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone. The research is being conducted by broadband testing and measurement company Epitiro.

“Due to the difference in performance between nationally available ADSL and mobile broadband service levels, Epitiro recommends that consumers fully monitor the actual service levels they receive to ensure broadband services meet their requirements,” said the company in a previous report on mobile broadband performance.

Forthcoming 4G auction

Ironically, while Milton Keynes has slow 3G data, it was one of the quickest towns off the mark for 4G, having an experimental service which launched in 2006, using  WiMax wireless technology.

Unfortunately, WiMax has lost out to LTE in the contest to be the leading 4G broadband standard. Although Connect MK – the council-owned WiMax provider– still has a site, the other provider, Freedom4, has sold its WiMax licence to PCCW, a company which appears to have no wish to deliver WiMax broadband services.

The 4G sector could ignite again soon, as Ofcom is currently gearing up to auction off the 800Mhz and 2.6Ghz high-speed data spectrum in the first quarter of 2012. The regulator has set itself the goals of increasing mobile broadband coverage, and maintaining competition, despite operators’ fears that the auction could squeeze out smaller players.

Ofcom has set out minimum amounts of spectrum, or “floors” which will ensure every player gets enough spectrum to compete. There are four minimum combination, combining some 800MHz spectrum and some at 2.6GHz.

To guard against longer term risks, Ofcom is also setting “caps”, or maximum amounts of spectrum, to prevent the emergence of any dominant player in this spectrum. No operator can have more than 2×27.5MHz of the 800MHz spectrum band, and none can have more than 2x105MHz of the 2.6GHz band.

However, Buttle warns that mobile networks need to ensure their 3G infrastructure is in order before they start promoting 4G services.