UK 24th In Broadband Value Table

The UK has been placed in a lowly 24th place for the value of its broadband in a survey that ranked countries on how much a consumer pays for a megabit of bandwidth.

The findings came from analyst house Point Topic as part of its Broadband Tariff Benchmarks (Q3 2010). It found that the countries which offered the best value for consumer broadband include Hong Kong in first position, with Japan and Romania in second and third place respectively. Germany was in ninth position. The UK meanwhile languished far behind in 24th position.

Point Topic arrived at the data by studying the best deals on offer to consumers around the world. It ranked countries on how much a consumer pays for a megabit of bandwidth.

Fibre Lowers Cost

“Consumers in different countries are faced with very different broadband tariffs, dependent on geography, market and network maturity, local competition and various levels and sources of subsidy,” said Fiona Vanier, Senior Analyst at Point Topic.

The analyst house admitted that this viewpoint was not the whole picture, as bandwidth in different countries can vary dramatically, from as little as 150kbps and up to 1Gbps. And of course, the UK has much greater levels of peneration of broadband than some other countries, although some rural areas of the UK remain as stubborn broadband ‘not spots’.

In October for example, a survey by Cisco and the University of Oxford’s ‘Said Business School’ placed the UK 18th in the world for broadband leadership, based on quality of service and penetration. And the government’s digital champion Martha Lane Fox is working hard to get the last 10 million people in the UK online.

“Many (countries) come with data limits, email addresses or static IPs and that is before the ‘special offers’ are accounted for,” said Point Topic. “To help comparison, Point Topic has analysed the amount a consumer will pay for a megabit of bandwidth.”

To this end it calculated the total cost for the first year of a broadband subscription. And somewhat surprisingly, it seems that the prevailance of fibre helps lower the cost of broadband provision.

“Nine of the ten best value tariffs are either pure fibre or hybrid offerings where fibre is a significant part of the local loop,” said Vanier, although she added that Germany was the exception here thanks to a local cable provider.

Value For Money?

The report does make for interesting reading for many who had automatically assumed that due to the sheer numbers of ISPs competing in the UK market, this country would achieve a much better showing in the value for money league table. However Point Topic was keen to point out that these rankings can change very quickly.

“If a particular operator upgrades its network or decides to introduce a new tariff, it can result in a significant improvement in the cost on offer to the consumer,” it said.

“Prices are stabilising in many markets around the world and overall in the last quarter there was an average increase globally,” said Vanier. “However there are plenty of countries that are still rolling out new networks and ISPs that are announcing new tariffs. Even in relatively mature markets, like Singapore or Italy, there is room for improvement as the new tariffs from StarHub and Fastweb demonstrate.”

“Bandwidth will continue to increase as fibre edges closer to the consumer,” she added. “Higher speeds generally mean better value for the consumer. All that remains is to work out how best to use it.”

Fibre Investment

The coalition government has pledged an investment of £530 million towards the improvement of the UK’s broadband infrastructure, and has pledged that the UK would have “the best superfast broadband network in Europe by 2015”. More will become clear on this claim when the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) publishes a broadband strategy paper in December.

Meanwhile fibre is slowly coming to certain parts of the UK thanks to the multi billion pound fibre investment by BT. The carrier is also currently urging consumers to enter its ‘Race to Infinity’ competition for fibre in their area.

BT is also working with partners such as the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), and it recently announced plans to deliver fibre broadband to 90 percent of homes in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. Other projects include broadband rollout in the Shetlands.