Turning Japanese, Staying British
According to the Information Technology Innovation Foundation (ITIF), British broadband is among the slowest in Europe, with an average connection speed of just 2.6Mbps, placing it below countries including Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and Holland.
Finland topped the study, which takes into account 16 countries, with an average connection speed of 21.7Mbps - eight times higher than the UK average.
Globally, Japan leads the way, both in terms of speed and price.
[Image of 3.6Mbps 1円 courtesy of 22n on Flickr.]
According to the ITU, in its Internet Reports (admittedly last year, but I don’t think much has changed), Britain had the eleventh fastest (on average) broadband speed globally, behind most of the G8 and, surprisingly, behind Kazakhstan.
What is the BBC's role in helping to address this? What services and/or interventions (if any) should we make?
Does Freeview offer an example? The UK is now world leading in digital TV takeup and choice after the BBC’s revival of Digital Terrestrial TV after DTT failed twice as OnDigital and ITVDigital.
How can the BBC help deliver greater broadband penetration, speeds and takeup, helping to narrow the digital divide between the technologically savvy haves and the internet-deprived have-nots (not all of whom, by any means see themselves as "deprived")?
It's a subject I've raised before, but Mark's comment on one of my previous posts on the digital divide in the UK asked another question: whether there is another "digital divide" between the BBC's role as provider of content, and its role to drive universal access to all sorts of digital services.
I don't think so.
In fact, I think this duality of purpose goes to the heart of the BBC's mission: create great content for the enjoyment of the individual, and help drive universal usage for the betterment of society.
Indeed, it's enshrined in the Purposes as laid out by the Queen and Parliament in the BBC's Royal Charter (and regulated by the BBC Trust):
- sustaining citizenship and civil society
- promoting education and learning
- stimulating creativity and cultural excellence
- representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities
- bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK
- in promoting its other purposes, helping to deliver to the public the benefit of emerging communications technologies and services and, in addition, taking a leading role in the switchover to digital television.
Ashley Highfield is Director, BBC Future Media & Technology.
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~23~RS~)
Comments
So let's see; the BBC hugely boosted the take-up of Digital TV when the costly, proprietary, and DRM laden OnDigital folded, and the BBC lent its content and its clout to help create Freeview, a provider and platform agnostic service with no artificially imposed DRM to lock out competition.
And now you're wonder how you can repeat the trick online?
You can "drive universal access" simply by allowing it rather than deliberately trying to lock out people who cannot or will not run expensive Apple or MS systems. You don't have to do it all alone; let the rest of in and we can help.
The real problem with high-speed broadband is that we're currently limited by our copper-based infastructure. There's only so much data you can squeeze down slowly-degrading copper.
What we really need, to get faster broadband is fibre-to-the-home, which is something that is being worked on (sewer fibre), but the cost involved, even with that methodology is huge. Should BBC spend money subsidising fibre to home?
Or should it try to get BT to get their act in gear and roll out fibre to the home?
As I'm sure you are aware, the figures you quote from the ITIF derive from an OECD report written in 2005, and are pretty crude averages of the maximum speeds they found then. For example, the highest BT speed was 2Mbps - with the average raised by Telewest's 4Mbps fastest speed.
Things have moved forward since then and arguably the BBC's first role should be to use more up to date data.
You should see what it's like for online gaming. The game "pauses" sometimes, because of either bad connections or a client's PC struggling to process the graphics and the information being sent by every player about what action they're doing. This is known in the gaming community as "lag". If you're playing against a British person, the lag is nearly always caused by his or her slow connection.
I've read this BBC News article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7116596.stm
and the best connection method we could have is fibre to the homes. Since it's the fastest, it's going to benefit gaming and HD video streaming. It's hard enought watching BBC News 24 on the internet now, so immagine how difficult it will be when it's in HD!
I travel a lot, and always take my laptop and its true, the UK is slow by comparison to most other countries BUT as 99% (or very close) of the cables between the exchanges and homes in the UK is owned by BT, who are forced to let loads of others operators use it, what incentive is there for one company to come forward and Fibre up our homes, when they are forced to let everyone one else use it. It would cost a massive amount to dig up and put in fibres, especialy in the countryside, so where is the incentive. I think you will find most of the countries with good connection speeds have a monopoly telecoms service. In France where my brother lives the internet is fast and much cheaper than the UK, because it properly regulated, not like that daft lot at OFCOM. The cake is only so big, carve it up and everyone suffers.
How does the UK rate for broadband coverage? I believe that BT have been concentrating on providing broadband to as many people as possible first rather than going for the highest speeds.
I'm fortunate that I can get 8Mbps where I live but my parents are limited to 512kbps. Improved infrastructure is going to be necessary somewhere down the line.
Obviously ours would be the worst, the
press have to make up doom and gloom
news for us. Maybe we have more ssubscribers which slows it down.
But oh no, that would put a partial
good spin on this made up news, and
that would not do.We have to have doom
and gloom.
surely the bbc cannot supply a faster broadband, that is down to bt, as most peoples broadband service (nomatter what isp) is brought to the home via bt's line ?.
Again on cost for fibre optics, are we or are we not one of the richest countries ?, but never mind, we the british have the stiff upper lip and will accept most things, because we are told by our leaders that this is the way !!.
So lets stop moaning and get on with being the underdogs of europe.
Given the unreliability of data on broadband speeds, it would have been good to see the BBC seek a second source for its information.
Leaving aside that issue for a moment, the other factor to take into account is how many people have access to broadband at all. It's not much good knowing that a city dweller can get great throughput if your average speed is 0Mb/s.
EU report issued on 19th March 2008 says that,
"Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden are world leaders in broadband deployment with penetration rates over 30% at the end of 2007, says the European Commission’s 13th Progress Report on the Single Telecoms Market issued on 19 March. These EU countries, together with the United Kingdom, Belgium, Luxembourg and France, all had broadband penetration rates higher than the US (22.1%) in July 2007"
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/newsroom/cf/itemdetail.cfm?item_id=3963
Sorry to let facts get in the way of a good story
You lucky people! 2MB! Even 4MB!
Try living in a country with 512KB as it's maximum, and costs £40 a month....and that can end up being shared with 30 or 40 other people.
Accessing YouTube or any streaming video or sound programmes are nigh on impossible, unless you use the system after midnight when most are in bed!
I've always been one who's found that the speed of Internet is almost always adequate for what I use it for.
But then, I don't use some of the more straining portions of the net, such as HD video streaming or the more recent online games, so I suppose that I have little to say on that issue...
However, hearing that even Khazakstan is above us in the ranks? Come on! let's get ourselves moving! I will not be beaten by Borat!
I aqm an x BT employee and I can tell you that's it not a surprise that the UK's broadband service is amongst the slowest in Europe, the surprise is in the fact it works at all. Previous comments I have read on this site hit the nail on the head. Its all down to investment. You must remember that a few years ago BT ran up a huge debt bidding for mobile licences. This led to the 'family jewles' being sold off, work being outsource offshore, and no cash necessary to make the necessary purchase for fibre optic technology.So what we are left with is a cobbled together broadband service, which cannot be guaranteed, and please don't live too far from the exchange, have a tree on your road or a surname begining with S as you wont be able to get a decent service.
I have long been the laughing stock of my european colleagues - most of whom first received faster broadband speeds in their homes than we currently enjoy, 5 years ago!
From experiences with broadband suppliers over the past 18 months I have come to the conclusion that we in Britain suffer from appallingly low service from telecommunications companies in general. They have no incentive o improve and indeed seem to have license to charge us when they fail - reverse incentive in fact. We seem not to have any way to fight back. Consumer Support organisations have no teeth. Unless something somehow forces these companies to meet a minimum standard, I expect this trend will continue.
If the BBC were able to somehow provide a competitive service it would certainly be well worth the license fee. But they too probably are only interested in providing a minimum of product for maximum price.
Here in Guernsey the speed and cost issue is even more of a problem than the UK "mainland".
I live close to the exchange (as everyone does!) and max out at 1 Mbit on a good day - at peak times this it is a lot worse. All this for £21.99 per month! The local supplier, Cable and Wireless, have banged on about increasing to speed to 2Mbit - wow!
I've tried to download a 600mb BBC iPlayer file - its an overnight job! So no video on demand for us then! Its quicker to drive to HMV and buy the DVD...or possibly ording on Amazon!
Also, no digital terrestrial TV or Radio until 2013.
All say Ahhhhh.
There is no logic to the poor broadband speeds, my next door neighbour gets 1.2 mbps while I get a max of 512 kbps. Another friend of mine who lives 2 streets away gets 6 mbps. Both BT and my isp say that it is the quality of the line and the distance from the exchange that is the problem, but people who live further away get faster speeds than me. Perhaps some of the fortunes that we pay in council tax could help to subsidise fibre optics. We should not have to put up with a poor service, but who is going to do something about it?
> after DTT failed twice as OnDigital and ITVDigital
If you're going to make such an unnecessary comparison we should also mention how BBC 3 failed "twice".
Broadband 'speed' is not the only issue. The actual usable monthly download limit is also important. It matters very little to me if I can get 24 Mbps, if I can still only download 20Gb a month over it. If we are talking television, the difference between it taking fifteen minutes to download EastEnders and five is not important. But if you can only download (or - sorry - stream, since this is bbc.co.uk/blogs and we have to be politically correct for the rights holders) half the programmes you want to watch because you hit a monthly cap, that's the limiting factor, not the speed. Everything else that I might do - checking e-mail, browsing the web, SSHing into my servers, a few online games - are quite fine on 2Mb.
We need to demand from our ISPs that they provide not only high-speed connections but high-quality connections, which includes the ability to use them without download limits.
There is a massive requirement for market education and surely the BBC is best placed to facilitate this. The vast majority of users buying the broadband service have no idea what’s involved in supplying it – they just want a reliable internet connection that delivers what they need when they need it, the fact it can vary in performance and potentially in cost is often quite a nasty surprise.
The fact that there are two quite different parts to broadband – appears at first to be of no interest to the end user.
(1) Access – normally telephone lines from the exchange
(2) Backhaul from the exchange to the internet, usually provided via the BT network then into the ISP’s network
However you need to understand this and the fact that there are very different factors affecting them.
(1) Telephone lines are not normally shared and the speeds achieved are determined by physical limitations of the copper, the distance from the exchange and even how many users are activated in a specific area – as this increases cross talk when degrades performance. Nearly all the copper lines in the country are leased by Open Reach (BT) on a fair an equitable basis to ISP’s – the cost doesn’t change how much the line is used and the performance is pretty constant. The only way of improving the speed is to install new equipment at the exchange like ADSL2+ or replace the copper with fibre optics – a very expensive prospect that may happen for the majority (but still not everyone) in 10+ years time. There are some other prospects for improving performance by bonding lines together.
(2) The backhaul connects the exchange to the ISP’s data center and then onto the Internet. BT wholesale sells what they call a central pipe to ISP’s which connects all the exchanges in the country to an ISP. Alternatively ISPs can do it themselves (LLU) – but then they pick off selected exchanges and organize their own routing of traffic onto the Internet. Either way the cost of setting up the backhaul network is high and BT is regulated to ensure they do not undercut the LLU’s. As this part of the service is contended (shared) the more people use it the more performance drops – so that is why speed performance varies over time. As overall traffic levels increase due to new applications like iPlayer ISPs need to add more capacity and this costs more per user – which is why ISPs are concerned as many of them have sold services on the basis that you can use it as much as you want for a flat fee, this is just no longer practical for a business trying to make a profit, so they will have to change.