As with most things technological, it’s sad to say it, but the UK lags the best in the world.  Recent research by the BBC shows that the average broadband speed in the UK is just 3.5 Mb/s.  Some commentators have decreed this to be more than adequate and it reflects the dominance of the DSL broadband delivery technology in the UK.

But there were many commentators who said that three channels on the TV were more than adequate.  But it’s just not the way the world works - so sure as three became three hundred in the UK TV channel market – the same will be true with broadband speeds.

And Japan is leading the way.  The Land of the Rising Sun is way out in front when it comes to broadband service delivery, making the UK look positively antiquated. 

In Japan over 40% of residential broadband connections are via fibre to the home (FTTH) allowing for broadband speeds of many hundreds of Mbs/sec.  As a result the Japanese cable company KDDI for example, has just launched a fibre-optic broadband and telephony package with upload and download speeds each of up to one gigabit per second, (that’s 1000 Mb/sec!) and this is in a country where speeds of up to 100 mb/sec are the norm.  What’s more the KDDI service (with a free phone line) costs only about £30 per month.

So whilst Virgin Media is to be applauded to have invested in its less expensive FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) service (which relies on copper for the last yards into the home), the up to 50 Mb/sec speeds offered for nearly £50 per month, don’t seem all that sexy – though faster than all the other broadband providers in the UK.

And this is the key – the price of broadband per Mb/sec, as received by the customer.  Data is hard to come by, but the most recent available suggests that Japan leads the world by this measure, offering broadband access at an average price of $0.7 per Mb/s.  The UK consumer is charged about seven and a half times that rate.

So when will things improve for the UK broadband consumer?   Well it’s not just Virgin Media who are investing in improving the broadband infrastructure.  BT also has earmarked a £1.5bn investment project to improve its DSL network and roll out FTTC services.  This could eventually see 40% of the country enjoying speeds of up to 60Mbps.  But don’t hold your breath - there is still a lot of discussion underway as to the cost of the investment and the ability of BT to recoup their investment by selling on the capacity to other broadband providers at fair rates.  

And even if the investment does come it is still very unlikely to provide FTTH services (that the Japanese all but take for granted) to more than a few lucky new-build households.  This in large part reflects the nature of the UK housing stock, which is far lower density than many other countries in the world, making the cost of installing FTTH services extremely expensive.

UK broadband - slow compared to Japan

Joeri Van Bogert, the outspoken President of the Fibre to the Home Council of Europe believes that only the ultra-fast, two-way speed of fibre to the home will really deliver on consumers’ future expectations.

Speaking to the BBC Mr Van Bogert said earlier this week “A lot of DSL and cable modem services can be complementary to Fibre to the Home (FTTH) but they are in no way a substitute for it”. 

He cites the importance of upload speeds as well as download speeds (a key constraint with DSL and FTTC technologies), as so much “web 2.0” activity involves sharing data with other users on the internet.

“Just take something simple, like photos. Increasingly, people want to upload them to share with friends and have them stored somewhere secure,” said Mr Van Bogaert. “FTTH is much more than a technology, it has the power to change the way we live, work and communicate,” he continued.

And therein lies the key, there are two fundamental trends that will inevitably lead to an ever increasing appetite for broadband speed:

·         The first is the so-called “web 2.0” phenomenon – the fact that so much of the power of the web in the future will be connecting users to each other (to share and interact) – rather than binary connections to individual websites. Such connections require high speed upload and download capability;

·         and the second is that the web is ultimately a visual medium, so video content will continue to augment the written word in almost every activity online – and with it, bring an inexorable appetite for increased speeds and usage limits.

Written by chris

Point Topic the international research company, released their latest worldwide broadband statistics in December 2008 and they make for interesting reading.  The UK rankings are respectable rather than stellar.

Overall by Q3 2008 there were approximately 400 million broadband subscribers worldwide, up by approximately 16 million subscriptions on the previous quarter.

Western Europe has the largest share of broadband subscribers with 26% of the total, followed by South and East Asia at 23% and North America with 22%.

In terms of broadband penetration (as a % of total population), North America leads with 27% penetration, followed by Western Europe on 26% and Asia Pacific on 10%, but predictably growth rates in less well penetrated markets were far higher.   Western Europe’s broadband growth rate over the period was 2.7%, whilst Latin America for example grew at 8.3%.

By far the largest absolute volume of new broadband subscribers was acquired in South and East Asia, with over 5 million broadband subscribers added in China in the third quarter of 2008 alone which accounted for one third of the total volume of broadband subscribers added globally and almost twice the number added throughout Western Europe over the same time period.

 Within Western Europe 2.7million new subscribers were added, of which over 800,000 were added in Germany; 428,000 in France and 320,000 in the UK.  The 320,000 new broadband subscriptions added in the UK ranked ninth in volume terms worldwide, with Brazil, Mexico, Russia and India all adding more broadband subscribers than the UK, in addition to China, USA, Germany and France.

DSL technologies are by far the most common method of receiving broadband worldwide, accounting for 65% of total worldwide connections.  This is followed by cable modems accounting for 21% of connections; and fibre to the home or the cabinet (FFTx) accounting for just over 12%.

The Western European   market is especially dominated by DSL with a total of 86 million connections, of which 21 million are in Germany, 16 million in France and 13.4 million in the UK.  All three are dwarfed by China which has a staggering 62 million DSL subscribers.

The sheer size of China’s market means that it is now in volume terms the largest broadband market in the world with 80.9 million broadband subscribers, having overtaken the USA (79 million subscribers) in Q3 2008.  The UK is back in 6^th place by volume, after Japan, Germany and France.

There are some interesting differences in the technologies adopted that will profoundly affect each country’s ability to provide ultra-fast broadband connections in future.  DSL connections tend to limit available speeds to approx 40 Mb/sec; whilst “fibre to the cabinet” can offer speeds of nearly 200 Mb/sec; and “fibre to the home” of over 1,000 Mb/sec.  These all can be compared to the UK average broadband speed of approx 3.5 Mb/s.

In Japan for example nearly 60% of their 29 million broadband connections are via FFTx resulting in an average broadband speed of over 90 Mb/sec.  This is in contrast to the UK where nearly 80% of broadband connections are via DSL.  This makes Virgin Media’s decision to invest in FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) broadband services in the UK very timely.  The new service which launched at the end of 2008 offers speeds of up to 50Mb/sec.

Written by chris

Written by chris