Half of UK Internet Users See No Broadband Speed Improvement for 3 Years

Aug. 15, 2011 - PRLog -- A new ISPreview.co.uk survey of 815 broadband users in the United Kingdom (*) has revealed that almost half (48%) have internet connection speeds that are no better today than they were three years ago, yet 68% still expect their future use of the internet to rise.

The study also found that 38% were consuming 60GB (GigaBytes) or more of broadband data per month, with approximately 14% eating into around 40GB and a further 14% needing 20GB. Just 12% consumed 10GB and 10% didn't even know their level of usage, while a further 9% consumed 5GB. Finally 3% used close to 1GB of data per month, which suggests that they only made infrequent or basic use of the internet (web, email etc.).

"According to Ofcom, the average real-world fixed-line internet download speed in the UK during May 2011 was 6.8Mbps (Megabits per second), which was up from 6.2Mb in December 2010 and 5.2Mb in May 2010," remarked ISPreview.co.uk's Founder, Mark Jackson. "This, along with supporting studies, suggests that national broadband performance is continuing to rise but clearly many are either failing or unable to take advantage."

"It's likely that the reason why half of the UK has yet to benefit from faster speeds is because they live in an area where recent technological advances have yet to reach, such as isolated rural villages. Others may have simply chosen not to upgrade their existing service and thus don't take advantage of faster speeds, which means that they could be missing out on the lower prices, improved performance and bigger usage allowances being offered by many modern packages and bundles," concluded Jackson.

The UK government's newly established Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) office is now embarking on a national scheme to improve the country's broadband infrastructure. The aim of this is to ensure that 90% of people in each local authority area will be within reach of a superfast (25Mbps+) broadband ISP service by 2015.

As a result national broadband performance is expected to skyrocket over the next four years and many previously isolated areas will soon be able to benefit from significantly faster services.