Figures released at the Broadband World Forum on Tuesday by the DSL Forum showed that the UK isn't in the top 20 countries when it comes to the percentage of phone lines that have been converted to DSL.
South Korea leads the way with almost 30 percent of its phone lines having been converted to DSL as of 30 June this year. No other country makes it over 20 percent, which is the DSL Forum's measure of mass-market status, but Japan, Germany, Canada, Italy and France all register in the top 20 alongside less powerful nations like Iceland and Estonia.
The United States and Russia, along with the UK, are the only G8 nations not to make the top 20. Twentieth place on the list went to the Netherlands, with 5.43 percent of its phone lines upgraded to DSL.
It's not all bad news for Britain, though. The DSL Forum's figures show that the number of UK households with DSL jumped by 94.1 percent during the first six months of 2003, second only to Israel. This follows several advertising campaigns, and two price cuts from BT Wholesale -- the major supplier of DSL in Britain.
Dr Paul Reynolds, chief executive of BT Wholesale, told the Broadband World Forum that BT now has more than 1.25 million DSL customers -- equivalent to 5.9 percent of households in the 80 percent of areas where the technology is available. It is though that this works out at just under 5 percent of all households.
According to Tim Johnson, founder of Point Topic -- the analyst firm that carried out the DSL Forum's research -- the UK should soon break into the top 20.
"The key question is whether BT can carry on adding over half a million new connections every six months, as they're presently achieving. I think BT will manage that," Johnson told ZDNet UK.
It is understood that BT is currently adding more than 20,000 new wholesale DSL customers every week. If this is sustained, or even increased, then BT should be on track to hit its target of 5 million DSL users by 2006.
Johnson added that if the take-up of cable broadband was also included then the UK would fare better against international rivals.
The DSL Forum also reported that a total of 10.7 million more DSL customers were added in the first six months of 2003, bringing the total number of subscribers worldwide to 46.7 million.
Talkback
It's not surprising we lag far behind in broadband take up.
Here in Orkney, we rely on BT to supply the means of ADSL etc. There is a demand, but not sifficient to meet BT's target for take up on each exchange.
Result, zilch!
Many small companies cannot afford satellite coms so we all lose out once again because of BR's tardiness.
One black mark against UK ADSL that is often overlooked is the speed on offer. Given that quoted speeds are theoretical maximums, it's not unusual in Britain to have so-called broadband that's little faster than dialup.
Here in Japan, ADSL is surging ahead at up to 26Mbps, which really does make a difference. Of course, there are many structural reasons why the UK cannot hope to match this, but it's food for thought.
For further reading on Japanese ADSL, see my story here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,907951,00.html
Agreed with previous comment. BT themselves some 2 - 3 years ago described anything below 2Mbits as being 'mid-band' in a document regarding the future of broadband.
Even though higher speed technology has been tested by BT as far back as at least 1999 (they boasted about having the most advanced facilty in the world for testing of this technology, VDSL) this is still yet to filter through to the consumer in any way. It's quite depressing really that while the costs have decreased somewhat the speeds available are the very same ones that were available 3 years ago.
The statistics being used regarding Broadband misreprasent reality.
We live c.10 miles south of Birmingham, the UK's second biggest city. Broadband is not available in any form, neither are there any plans to make it available.
Like a great many living and working in the countryside, we are condemmed to struggle through with obsolete technology.
As regards the coverage debate, the old saying about "lies, damned lies and statistics" springs easily to mind!
The best way to satisfy both parties really would probably be to take older equipment that can't be upgraded out of urban / suburban exchanges, and place it into rural ones, and upgrade the urban exchanges. This would leave everyone happier, more densely populated areas would achieve higher data rates, less densely populated areas would get an upgrade more cost effectively for the telco.
J Mark Lytle, is he not Mark Biggs?
Mark Biggs best article written for a long time.
Biggs you've done it again.