Date:27/07/11

UK cities fail to make global 100 for fastest broadband connections

No UK city managed to crack the top 100 for fastest average broadband connections after the average speed rose a paltry 0.3Mbit/s to 4.6Mbit/s during the first quarter of 2011, according to a report by web content firm Akamai. Bradford unexpectedly snuck in at 99th place in the 2010 fourth-quarter report, but no UK city made the cut in the 2011 first-quarter State of the Internet report, underlining that the country has a long way to go to become a world leader for broadband. Bromley was the top UK town for broadband, placed 141st with an average of 6.2MBit/s, while Uddingston came second in 149th on 6.1Mbit/s and Luton third in 153rd with 6.1Mbit/s.
Japan, however, dominated the list, accounting for a staggering 39 of the top 50 cities, including the top three, with Tokai in first place with an average speed of 13.2Mbit/s. South Korea was the only other nation in the top 20. Another worrying fact for the UK is that 89 per cent of its traffic on Akamai's network is above 2Mbit/s. While this means that most enjoy speeds faster than the government's baseline requirement, some 11 per cent are below this limit, suggesting that more needs to be done to close the digital divide to reach the goal by 2015.
Despite these issues, the UK did manage to rise four places on the average broadband connection charts, up from 27th to 23rd, although this is still behind nations including Slovakia, Portugal and Iceland. David Belson, Akamai's director of market intelligence, explained to V3 that the broadband market continues to mature overall. "There's a definite trend away from narrowband connections to broadband that we would expect to see. There's no major fluctuations but it's certainly progressing in the right direction," he said.
"The UK has good adoption rates for broadband, rising 11 per cent year over year, so that is definitely a good metric for the nation."Tim Johnson, chief analyst at Point Topic, agreed that, while UK headline speeds are below other nations', other metrics gave a more positive impression."More emphasis should be put on overall take-up and use of broadband. On these measures the UK is seen to have a high take-up for a country of its size," he told V3."We hear a lot about the high speeds available in Japan but our latest figures show actual broadband take-up in the country is well behind that in the UK at 27 lines per 100 population against 33 in the UK."One other area of interest in the report is the appearance of Myanmar in the number one slot for the origin of attack traffic, accounting for 13 per cent on the Akamai network. Belson said that it is unclear why Myanmar had jumped into the number one spot, but that it could be because of a botnet unleashed in the country or its being used as a proxy from more traditional locations such as Russia. The UK accounted for just 0.7 per cent of attack traffic, placing it 27th worldwide. The government has promised that the UK will have the best broadband network in Europe by 2015, but it clearly has some way to go to meet these targets based on the figures from Akamai.

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