UK in 34th place in broadband league table
Analysis of around 1.3 billion broadband speed tests worldwide has revealed that the UK sits in 34th place, with an average speed of 93.63Mbps.
The research was designed and compiled by Cable.co.uk, and the data gathered by M-Lab. Measurement Lab is led by teams based at Code for Science & Society, Google Inc and supported by partners around the world.
The UK manages to trump 186 other countries, yet falls behind 33 others, and behind 16 Western European countries. This puts the UK in the slowest half in the Western Europe region when it comes to average broadband speed, despite the large improvement in average speed since the cable.co.uk’s last report 12 months ago.
As seen in the league table, downloading an HD movie of 5GB in size would take 2m 35s at the average speed experienced in table-topper Jersey, while it would take 6h 38m in last-placed Afghanistan.
Thirty of the top 50 fastest-performing countries are located in Europe (Eastern, Western and Baltics), with six in Asia (Ex. Near East), six in the Caribbean region, three in South America, three in Northern America, one in the Near East and one in Oceania.
By contrast, 32 of the 50 slowest-performing countries are located in Sub-Saharan or Northern Africa, five are in Asia (Ex. Near East), four are in the Near East, three are in the CIS (Former USSR) region, five are in Oceania, and one is in the Caribbean region.
Nearly 50 countries failed to achieve average speeds of 10Mbps or greater, the speed deemed by UK telecoms watchdog Ofcom to be the minimum required to cope with the needs of a typical family or small business. This is down from 67 countries in 2022, and 94 countries in 2021, indicating significant speed improvements are ongoing in many parts of the world.
Commenting on the worldwide rankings, Dan Howdle, consumer telecoms analyst at Cable.co.uk, says:
“The UK continues to keep apace with average speeds around the world, failing to gain ground on other countries in the global league table, while at the same time maintaining roughly the same position.
“Speeds have increased globally by 30.044% since the same period in 2021/2022, while UK speeds have increased by 29.933% across the same period.
“Meanwhile, Europe continues to dominate the global league table, extending its lead over much of the world as FTTP full fibre continues to make an increasingly large dent in consumer uptake.”
Adds Alex Tofts, broadband expert at Broadband Genie:
“Our broadband may be improving, but while we are ahead of Germany and Italy we are still lagging behind other G7 countries, including France, the US and Canada.
“At first glance, the data shows that the pace in which we are rolling out fast – and importantly reliable – broadband is slower than our neighbours.
“However, it also shows that the take up of ultrafast and gigabit broadband has been lukewarm, and our data confirms that superfast deals offering slower speeds tend to be more popular.
“Many of the Western European nations that appear to have faster speeds than the UK, also have cheaper broadband according to research we published last month.
“Affordability is clearly an issue, with many Brits looking to prioritise other household utilities rather than paying for broadband packages that can cost up to £100 a month.”
