Ofcom has today brought out the results of its latest consumer research regarding broadband internet speeds in the UK. The report has shown that despite UK consumers having a possible average maximum possible broadband speed of 4.3Mb/s, in reality UK consumer receive an average broadband speed of 3.6Mb/s. The research was carried out over a 30 day period, with approximately 7,000 tests run through monitoring units connected to around 1,500 homes’ broadband routers, resulting in over 10 million separate tests of a range of suppliers’ services. The full report can be views here.
Such a speed is seen as sufficient for many internet applications, such as audio and video applications. However, such a speed is significantly lower than well advertised headline speeds. For example, 60% of UK broadband consumers are subscribed to ‘up to 8Mb/s packages’, but 20% of these receive a speed of less than 2Mb/s and only 45% receive the advertised headline speed.
Ofcom last month addressed this problem by ensuring all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) signed up to the Broadband Speeds Code of Practice, a new Code of Practice which ensures that consumers are provided with an accurate estimate of the maximum speed that they can expect when signing up to a service.
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