Hyperfast broadband provider County Broadband has reacted to news that the UK has fallen 13 places in global speed rankings and is now among the slowest in Europe by pledging to step up action to build new full-fibre networks in rural north-east Essex.
New research by Cable.co.uk shows Britain has slipped to 47th place, down from 34th last year, suggesting it would typically take twice as long to download a film in the UK than the average for western Europe.
Liechtenstein tops the table with average download speeds of 229.98 Mbps with the US in 20th on 71.30 Mbps and South Sudan bottom with 0.58 Mbps.
Britain’s average speeds of 37.82 Mbps is due to only 12% of the country having access to full-fibre infrastructure – meaning 88% of residents and businesses rely on Victorian ‘superfast’ copper-based infrastructure.
Prime minister Boris Johnson is relying on local providers like County Broadband, funded by a multi-million pound private investment to build new Hyperfast networks, to achieve his flagship target of 100% gigabit-speed (1000 Mbps) connectivity by 2025.
Lloyd Felton, chief executive of County Broadband, which is building new full-fibre networks in the Colchester, Braintree and Chelmsford areas, said: “We’re disappointed but not surprised to see once again another report showing that the UK is languishing near the bottom of a global broadband league.
“The Covid-19 lockdown exposed just how poor and unfit the UK’s current copper-based digital infrastructure is – from Zoom meeting drop-outs to Netflix binge bufferings. We urgently need to catch up with the rest of the world by building new Hyperfast networks.
“We were thrilled to connect the first set of thousands of residents and businesses to our growing network during lockdown in
, with engineers being granted key worker status.
“We are continuing to hold virtual public meetings and progress our rollout plans in rural north-east Essex to turbo-charge broadband for thousands more in desperate need.”
It comes after a new survey* by County Broadband found nine in 10 residents relied on broadband to work from home while 68% spent more than four hours a day online.
The Cable.co.uk report said: “Last year, we predicted that with the UK only just beginning to roll out FTTP (fibre to the premises), and with a number of other European countries already a long way ahead of the UK in this regard, it would likely slip down the table… and that is exactly what has happened.”
County Broadband aims to provide Hyperfast full-fibre connection access to around 20,000 premises across the East of England by Christmas 2020. Visit www.countybroadband.co.uk to see if the service is available in your area.
