Japan leads the way in ultra-fast fibre optic broadband, with one broadband provider set to offer a 1,000 Mb/sec service. But the US, which has been well behind in the broadband infrastructure stakes, has started to get its act together too.
Cablevision is set to break the US broadband service speed record next month with the introduction of a broadband package with 101 Mb/sec download speed and upload speeds of 15 Mb/sec for a cost of $99.95 per month. It will be available to all 5 million of the people in areas served by Cablevision, mainly in the New York City suburbs.
Cablevision is deploying Docsis 3 technology which can utilize more of the capacity of a cable television system for data, offering both higher capacity and lower costs. In Japan, J:Com uses the same technology to offer 160 Mb/sec service for 6,000 yen ($60) per month.
Cablevision’s arch-rival, Verizon Communications, offers a top speed of 50 Mbps for downloads and 20 Mb/ssec for uploads. In most places, it sells service at that speed for $140 per month, but it has been offering the service at $90 per month in New York state, its primary battleground with Cablevision, as well as in Virginia and the District of Columbia.
Meanwhile in the UK, the only major broadband provider that comes close to matching these speeds is Virgin Media which launched its XXL 50 Mb/sec fibre-optic broadband service in January this year. The service is being rolled out across the Virgin Media network and will soon be available to approximately 50% of UK homes. The service is being marketed as a niche, high-quality product for families with multiple broadband users. Virgin Media have no current plan to increase the speed still further.
Unfortunately the great majority of the 17m broadband homes in the UK are served by DSL broadband providers, which include all the key players such as: BT, TalkTalk, Tiscali, Sky, O2 Broadband etc. These DSL broadband providers rely on the BT copper wire network to deliver their broadband services and cannot hope to match Virgin Media’s broadband speeds, as they are constrained to speeds of circa 20 Mb/sec, with significant problems of degradation of broadband speed as the customer’s distance from the local telephone exchange increases.
As a result the average broadband speed in the UK languishes at a measly 3.6 Mb/sec and this is not set to increase significantly any time soon.