Ofcom, the UK's independent telecoms regulator has recently released ‘State of the Nation’ report which found that for the majority of internet users in the UK, line speed is a minor issue affecting the quality of their broadband connection for speeds greater than 10Mbps. Ofcom used new evidence from British data analytics start-up, Actual Experience, through its BbFix project, and stated, “line speeds provide only a partial picture of broadband quality of experience. [Other factors] in the wider parts of the end-to-end broadband chain are becoming more significant.”. The report also stated that the average line speed in the UK is 24Mbps.
The Ofcom report prominently features evidence from Actual Experience, which finds “a clear correlation between access speed and consumers experience for up to around 8-10Mbps. Beyond this, there is only a marginal benefit to increased speed until ‘superfast’ connections of 40Mbps and above are reached. At these high speeds there is a small improvement in consistency, although the best experiences seen are not any better than at lower speeds.”
The findings are significant as its means that for everyone with more than 10Mbps, download speed is not the main constraint to a seamless online experience.
Actual Experience, an off-shoot of Queen Mary University of London, have developed data analytics software to gauge the quality of internet connections as experienced by British users nationwide and identify which factors are detracting from a good online experience. The company said that data from its BbFix project, with dozens of new participants joining each week across the UK, will help inform the public debate over where to invest scarce financial resources, and then document the quality improvements thereby achieved.
Dave Page, CEO of Actual Experience
Ofcom’s findings are highly welcome. A big myth has been debunked. For too long speed has been used as a proxy for broadband quality. We’re told that if you have 40Mbps you will have a great connection and at 2Mbps you will have a dismal connection. Well, I think it is becoming more and more obvious this simply is not the case. As stated in Ofcom’s report, for all of those on 10Mbps and above, there are a plethora of other factors affecting broadband quality, which are not been treated and remain unresolved. From problems in the home set-up to complications in the data centres of the content providers, the space for things to go wrong is extensive. It is amazing to me that nothing is being done to monitor the full chain between users at one end and the content providers at the other to see where problems are occurring. I am delighted that Ofcom has announced it will work with us to start making a real measure of broadband quality. But making our online experience better is not just a job for Ofcom. We can all can get involved by joining in the BbFix project. So far, we’ve crowd-sourced data from over 1,000 users to provide data on where the problem spots are in Britain and what can be done to fix them.
