England might be on the cusp of an historic World Cup final appearance, but in terms of global broadband speeds, we wouldn’t even make it through the qualifiers.
The United Kingdom is now ranked 35th in the world – and 26th in Europe – in terms of average broadband speeds, with Brits notching up just 18.57Mpbs.
In the latest update from the Worldwide Broadband Speed League, the UK has dropped four places and now sits below Madagascar. Britain also trails nations like Bulgaria, Romania, Latvia, Andorra, Hungary, Estonia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic and Slovenia.
Singapore tops the charts at 60.39Mbps averages, while the three Scandinavian nations of Sweden, Denmark and Norway come next. Interestingly, the US is down in 20th place.
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The tests from Cable incorporated 160m broadband speed tests in 200 nations around the world in order to come up with the data.
The UK’s fall comes down to the inability BT Openreach to live up to its promise to roll out fibre-to-the-cabinet broadband in due time. The company is now focusing on fibre-to-the-premises broadband and has promised to hire 3,000 new engineers to bring the super fast tech to 3 million UK homes.
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Cable analyst Dan Howdle said it was “somewhat sad to see the UK not faring better.”
He added: “A number of other countries have leapfrogged us since last year, including France and Madagascar. Compared to many other countries both in and out of Europe, the UK has simply come too late to a full fibre solution. Despite plans to roll out FTTP [fibre to-the-premises] to UK homes across the next decade or so, the UK is likely to fall further behind while we wait.”
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
