G7 countries beat UK in global broadband speed test again:
For the second year in a row, the UK is second worst in the G7 league of industrial nations for broadband speed, only faster than Italy, according to a report published today.
Beating the UK's 72.06Mbps mean download speed globally was Japan in ninth place overall (with an average of 122.33Mbps); France (10th with 120.01Mbps); the United States (in 11th place with 119.01Mbps); Canada (17th, with 106.80Mbps) and Germany, which was 33rd in the rankings (with an average of 72.95Mbps).
As for Italy, which languishes in 56th place with an average download speed of 46.77Mbps, according to Eurostat's 2022 Digital Economy and Society Index, more than half of the country's population still lacks basic digital skills and an FTTH Council Europe study in September 2021 said Italy's full-fiber household penetration would hit 10 percent by the end of last year. However, Rome is attempting to remedy this, and in 2021 set out an Italian Strategy for Ultra Broadband called Plan Italy 1 Giga, with an allocation of €3.8 billion and the aim of providing 1Gbps in download and 200Mbps upload speeds, covering 8.5 million households by 2026. In June this year, the country's €6 billion telecoms incumbent, Telecom Italia, signed an MoU to spin off its fiber network assets and merge them with state-backed rival Open Fiber, seemingly with the aim of creating a single fiber network operator in Italy. Shareholders, bondholders, and regulators have yet to approve the deal.
At 72.06Mbps, the UK average puts it in 19th place out of 28 states in Western Europe, or tenth slowest. Average speeds in the UK are roughly 73 percent of the Western European average (99.00Mbps) – which is an improvement on last year's results.
Commenting on the worldwide rankings, Dan Howdle, consumer telecoms analyst at Cable.co.uk, said: "The fastest average speeds in the world are no longer accelerating away from the rest of the field, since FTTP/pure fibre saturation is hitting its current limits in many of the fastest locations."
Howdle added: "In all cases, those countries ranking highest are those with a strong focus on pure fiber (FTTP) networks, with those countries dawdling too much on FTTC and ADSL solutions slipping further down year on year."
I live in France but in a rural area. These speeds might be good for major cities but there is little chance of fibre being available to anyone around here for at least another 2 years.
(Score: 2) by Revek on Thursday September 08 2022, @02:12PM
Its a decade or more before any rural areas get fiber in the the US. The government keeps giving away consequences free money to do it but won't do anything if they use it for bonuses.
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(Score: 1) by dwilson98052 on Thursday September 08 2022, @02:16PM (1 child)
...dial up. I can still remember being in the middle of a download and suddenly hearing a voice in the distance scream "get off the phone, I need to call your grandmother".
These days I've got dual WAN connections on my router. 1.2Gb from Comcast with crappy upload speeds as a backup, and 1Gb fiber as my primary with the option to upgrade it to 2Gb or 5Gb if "needed"(you know, for bragging rights).
(Score: 2) by stormreaver on Friday September 09 2022, @12:40AM
I have gig fiber to my home, no caps, no restrictions, etc. I didn't ask for upgrade options, so I don't know if it's even offered. If it is, assuming it's 2gb, and it costs double what I'm paying now, it would probably cost me about as much as AT&T was charging me for 24mb/6mb.
What made this whole jump in speeds possible was the government owning the infrastructure while renting it out to ISP's to provide the service. It's been the best service model I've ever experienced. AT&T, Comcast, etc. can fuck the hell off and die.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 08 2022, @05:34PM
I mean... look, if the Italians would filter out their incessant gesturing from their "internet speech", I bet they would have beaten the brits by the amount of freed bandwidth. (large grin)
(Score: 2) by xorsyst on Friday September 09 2022, @08:46AM
Oh no! Only 72Mbps. Why do I care? That's fast enough for basically anything I would want to do. I'm much more interested in improvements in reliability, customer service, upload speed and latency. But of course, we have to judge everything on a single number.