Latvia in the top 5, UK 25th - what’s new?

Posted by Julian Herbert Thursday, October 1st, 2009

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The BBC picked up on the publication of the annual broadband ranking report from Cisco and the Said Business School. It ranked the UK 25th out of 66 nations, relative to average download and upload speed and availability.

I haven’t seen the report, but the interesting thing is that it ranks according to readiness for the future, rather than adequacy for the present. So, nations like Latvia and Bulgaria where FTTx has high market share, rank higher than the UK.It masks the fact that twice as many UK homes have broadband as Bulgaria. It’s about 50% more than Latvia.

Here is the essence of the tension in the UK market: a regulator tasked with ensuring that BT does not abuse its market power; BT whose DSL network, thanks in part to government intervention in the early 2000s is in reach of a higher proportion of households than nearly all other European nations; a government keen to be seen as a promoter of the information economy.

Korea Telecom, NTT and the plethora of tiny FTTx players in Central and Eastern Europe have not had to operate in an environment which has directly or indirectly discouraged the roll out of fibre access networks.

Until the tension is resolved and the UK pulls in a singular direction, it will always rank lower than Latvia.