Based on competitiveness, which measures choice, price and regulation, the UK also comes in third. However, in terms of take-up, even the UK government has to admit to a mere a shared sixth place with Italy in the G7 ranking -- effectively joint bottom of the class.
The disappointing take-up ranking is down to several factors, says Michael Philpott, broadband analyst at Ovum. Firstly, BT was late to introduce the technology compared with incumbents in other countries. A second factor is that, although pricing has come down between 10 and 15 per cent over the last year, broadband is still relatively expensive, especially when compared with other nations. The situation also hasn't been helped by a general lack of service-level-agreement provisioning, although this is now starting to change as more business-oriented SDSL services become available.
Small companies confused
A third issue is that, although replacing ISDN with DSL, for example, can pay for itself in a couple of months, the providers have not got their messaging right and many small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in particular, are simply confused and do not see the benefits, says Quocirca's Longbottom.
"There is still a strong need for education on what broadband can and can't do and the vendors don't help with things like contention. Many businesses don't understand this and so get confused when offered a 1Mbps ADSL line at 10:1 contention for, say, £90 per month, or a 1Mbps ADSL line at 5:1 contention for, say, £130 per month," he warns.
Not all bad
Contention refers to the number of customers that share a line. This means a business opting for a connection with a 10:1 contention rate will have to share it with nine other customers. Obviously this can slow the line down considerably if everyone uses it at the same time.
Still, it's not all bad news. According to BT, DSL technology is now available to 85 percent of homes and businesses across the country, a figure that will jump to 90 percent by this summer and 100 percent by the end of next year. And Ofcom claims that cable modem access is now provided to 11 million or 45 percent of residences if they require it.
Talkback
I live in a village in the north west of england.
BT has set a trigger level of 350, which i'ld be surprised if theres 150 computers in the area never mind the ridiculous amount of computers BT assumes are present in a village of this size. But then again i'm surprised BT even know where silloth is in the country. We have a local group offering wireless broadband, which i ordered and when they came on the third arranged appointment all they told me was i could not recieve a signal. So there answer was rather stick the aerial on a pole on the side of my house or they would have to install a node. That was over two months ago. I would have thought if they had any clue what they were doing they would of already planned for this exact situation, but like most companies in the UK they are a bunch of cowboys. I personally think the government should subsidise the rollout of broadband to the parts of the country BT are not willing to commit to, as it was the government shouting about broadband britain by 2005, or are we in the rural areas not part of britain in this equation. Maybe the government should subsidise an alternative telecommunications network and bring other telecommunications companies that aren't run by imbecilic dinosaurs in to use the network thus creating competition for the lacklustre telecommunications monopoly we have had this country for decades namely BT.
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