15th Apr 2014 11:38
LONDON (Alliance News) - UK Telecoms regulator Ofcom said Tuesday that one in four houses in the UK have a 'superfast' fixed broadband connection, according to its latest figures.
'Superfast' connections are that that have speeds of 30 megabits per second or more.
The proportion of these connections has risen from 5% in November 2011 to 25% in November 2013, said Ofcom.
The average connection speed rose to 18.8 megabits per second, up from 12.0 megabits per second in the previous year, and more than five times the 3.6 megabits per second average of 2008.
The company with the fastest download speeds was Virgin Media Inc with its 'up to' 120 megabits per second service, which achieved 114.9 megabits per second on average over a 24 hour period.
At the bottom of the packages included was BT PLC's ADSL2+ package, which had an average speed of 8.8 megabits per second to 11.1 megabits per second over 24 hours.
The report examined packages from the seven largest internet service providers by subscriber numbers, and included 735 million separate tests.
Although the average connection speed is rising, Ofcom's data highlighted a disparity in speeds across the country. Although the average urban download speed was 31.9 megabits per second, the average suburban download speed was 21.8 megabits per second.
In rural areas average speeds were 11.3 megabits per second. However, Ofcom cautioned that the size of samples from rural areas were not large enough to be statistically significant. Rural areas often have slow broadband speeds as services are more limited, and households are often further from the telephone exchange.
Ofcom noted that issues with slower speeds are not limited to rural areas, but can effect urban areas also. It will be publishing research into this issue during the year.
UK Government Communications Minister Ed Vaizey said the report confirms that the "transformation" of UK broadband is under way.
The government has been investing in improving broadband coverage in the UK, and recently announced an extra investment of GBP250 million to extend coverage of 'superfast' broadband to 95% of premises by 2017, taking its total investment to GBP790 million.
Earlier on Tuesday major providers British Sky Broadcasting Group PLC and TalkTalk Telecom Group PLC announced that they had partnered with CityFibre Infrastructure Holdings PLC in a joint venture to establish new broadband services in the city of York.
The companies plan to build a fibre-to-the-premise network which it said will deliver speeds of one gigabyte per second to premises, building on CityFibre's existing infrastructure in the city.
The joint venture will also bring this service to two further cities, it said. The establishment of the new network will allow the companies to practice building a network that is independent from, and rivals, BT's existing Openreach infrastructure.
By Hana Stewart-Smith; [email protected]; @HanaSSAllNews
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