The UK's broadband infrastructure has been voted a mere 25th best in the world, prompting fears that we are falling behind when it comes to the world wide web.
Research carried out by Cisco (the list included 66 countries) has found that South Korea is by far the most advanced country when it comes to broadband, with Japan and Hong Kong taking second and third place.
The UK has hit a lowly 25th with countries like Latvia, Lithuania and Bulgaria ahead in terms of broadband quality.
Good enough
It's not all doom and gloom, however, with Joanne Hughes, Cisco's communication manager, telling the BBC: "It can be a bit misleading to look at the rankings. The important thing is whether the broadband quality of a country is good enough for today's needs and the UK falls well within this category."
Despite this optimism, the UK just scraped 31st place when Cisco tested broadband speeds only (via speedtest.net). The final ranking of 25th came about when broadband penetration was added to the mix.
Worryingly, South Korea hopes to have broadband speeds of 1Gbps by 2012. Compare this with Digital Britain's plan for UK speeds to hit a minimum of 2Mbps and it seems that the on average the UK is lagging way behind its Far Eastern counterparts.
Via BBC
Your comments (3) Click to add a new comment
pete_l
October 2nd
3. Probably the stupidest story of the month (OK, it's only the 2nd, but there can't be many stories this dumb coming up).
Internet (and the telecoms infrastructure as a whole) is FAR better than that in most countries. It's definitely top-drawer so far as other european countries go and much better than that in the 'States (where you can't even get a mobile signal in lots of places and over a quarter of mobile calls get dropped).
Internet speeds in the UK are better than those I've experienced, personally, in other countries. Plus the connections stay up for longer. Mobile internet is faster and more reliable too.
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shadeblack
October 2nd
2. this really peeves me off.
I hate the fact that i can only get 2.2mbps.
I have to leave my computer on all night just to download large files. it's really rediculous.
BT had plans to upgrade most common lines by now, and have failed to do anything about it.
*sigh*
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castaway666
October 1st
1. 1Gbps.. and we know they prob have more chance of that happening than our 2Mbps by 2010.
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