The UK has scored 25th out of 66 in a worldwide study of national broadband services.
The Broadband Quality Score study, performed on behalf of Cisco by the Saïd Business School and the University of Oviedo, also placed the UK 31st in terms of broadband quality alone — a metric derived from download and upload throughput combined with latency and other factors such as packet loss and service continuity.
The report, which came out on Thursday, placed South Korea at the top of the chart for both broadband quality and the combined quality-and-penetration score, which the report defined as "broadband leadership". Japan was a close second in both rankings.
Sweden was noted as having the best broadband in Europe, coming third in terms of quality and fourth in terms of broadband leadership. Data was derived from user tests carried out on the speedtest.net service.
This is the second year of the report. Since 2008, the global average download throughput increased by 49 percent to 4.75Mbps, while the global average upload throughput increased by 69 percent to 1.3Mbps. Latency decreased by 21 percent to 170 milliseconds.
"It is really exciting to discover that almost every country has seen improvements in broadband quality, despite the economic turmoil of the past year," Cisco senior director Fernando Gil de Bernabé said in a statement. "We can actually see how countries that have made significant investments in fibre and next-generation cable technologies, including Korea and the United States, are seeing real progress in broadband quality."
Talkback
The study proves that our copper network continues to deliver the broadband quality needed by businesses and consumers today. But while many countries in the study have failed in delivering broadband access to the majority of the population, the UK’s copper network is delivering good quality broadband to almost everyone that needs it. While affordable fibre is out of reach to many small businesses today, the report proves that ADSL, SDSL and bonded SDSL services still deliver a cost-effective solution to meet the needs of small businesses in the short to medium-term.
Chris Stening, Managing Director Easynet Connect
Very interesting study, must have been quite an undertaking/project for Saïd business school I'm quite surprised the uk is so low down. And South Korea is at number one, it beggars belief. Would love to see the raw data/research paper, it must be an interesting read.