G7 Countries Beat UK in Global Broadband Speed Test Again
upstart writes:
G7 countries beat UK in global broadband speed test again:
For the second year in a row, the UK is second worst in the G7 league of industrial nations for broadband speed, only faster than Italy, according to a report published today.
Beating the UK's 72.06Mbps mean download speed globally was Japan in ninth place overall (with an average of 122.33Mbps); France (10th with 120.01Mbps); the United States (in 11th place with 119.01Mbps); Canada (17th, with 106.80Mbps) and Germany, which was 33rd in the rankings (with an average of 72.95Mbps).
As for Italy, which languishes in 56th place with an average download speed of 46.77Mbps, according to Eurostat's 2022 Digital Economy and Society Index, more than half of the country's population still lacks basic digital skills and an FTTH Council Europe study in September 2021 said Italy's full-fiber household penetration would hit 10 percent by the end of last year. However, Rome is attempting to remedy this, and in 2021 set out an Italian Strategy for Ultra Broadband called Plan Italy 1 Giga, with an allocation of 3.8 billion and the aim of providing 1Gbps in download and 200Mbps upload speeds, covering 8.5 million households by 2026. In June this year, the country's 6 billion telecoms incumbent, Telecom Italia, signed an MoU to spin off its fiber network assets and merge them with state-backed rival Open Fiber, seemingly with the aim of creating a single fiber network operator in Italy. Shareholders, bondholders, and regulators have yet to approve the deal.
At 72.06Mbps, the UK average puts it in 19th place out of 28 states in Western Europe, or tenth slowest. Average speeds in the UK are roughly 73 percent of the Western European average (99.00Mbps) - which is an improvement on last year's results.
Commenting on the worldwide rankings, Dan Howdle, consumer telecoms analyst at Cable.co.uk, said: "The fastest average speeds in the world are no longer accelerating away from the rest of the field, since FTTP/pure fibre saturation is hitting its current limits in many of the fastest locations."
Howdle added: "In all cases, those countries ranking highest are those with a strong focus on pure fiber (FTTP) networks, with those countries dawdling too much on FTTC and ADSL solutions slipping further down year on year."
I live in France but in a rural area. These speeds might be good for major cities but there is little chance of fibre being available to anyone around here for at least another 2 years.
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