A new survey by comparison website Top 10 Broadband has placed Bournemouth at number one in its list of the fastest broadband towns and cities in the UK. The seaside town in Dorset was reported to have an average download speed of 8.06Mbps – almost double Ofcom’s July 2009 national UK average of 4.1Mbps.
Steve Powell, product manager for connectivity services at Viatel, stated: “While it is great to see some positive news about broadband speeds, there is still some way to go before the rest of the UK has such fast connections. The high speeds recorded in Bournemouth only serve to highlight the disparity in broadband performance currently exhibited in the UK, the lowest of which still come in well under the Government’s 2Mbps goal.”
Unfortunately as we begin to transition to Next Generation Access (NGA) technologies the UK looks set to continue in the slow lane. Powell continued:
“The UK is currently ranked outside of the European Fibre-To-The-Home (FTTH) Council’s top ten fibre nations and looks set to stay there. This is due in part to efforts being made to wring the last drop of performance from first generation access technologies – DSL services. While these traditional solutions can currently deliver relatively fast connection speeds to users close to the serving exchange, FTTP (Fibre to the premises) can help the rest of us that are not so fortunate.
Plus, with more and more applications being run over the internet, it is vitally important we begin to step up the move to these new services as legacy networks won’t cope with these increases. FTTP can also provide significant economic and social benefits, and with the UK still waiting to exit the recession, superfast broadband could provide local enterprise with the means to succeed in challenging times.”