New figures show that the UK has the highest take-up and coverage of superfast broadband of the EU’s five biggest economies.
Ofcom’s European Broadband Scorecard shows that the UK leads France, Germany, Italy and Spain on most measures of coverage, take-up, usage and choice for both mobile and fixed broadband, and performs well on price.
The report found that the availability of superfast broadband in the UK has increased from around 60 per cent at the end of 2011 to 73 percent now. This has taken us from third to first for coverage among the so-called EU5 group of countries.
Take-up of superfast broadband, which is capable of providing speeds of at least 30Mbit/s, had reached nine in every 100 people in the UK at the start of last year, well ahead of the next best performing country, Spain, where it had reached just six in 100.
The most recent comparable data for the EU5 countries also showed that the UK has the highest broadband take-up of all types, with 83 per cent of households being able to access it.
Britons were also the people who did most shopping online, with 77 per cent having made an internet purchase in the past year. The UK also enjoys the highest weekly usage of the internet of the five, at 87 per cent, and the lowest proportion of people who have never used the internet, with only eight per cent saying this is true for them.
Ed Richards, Ofcom Chief Executive, said: This is excellent progress for the UK, but there is more to be done. We want to see even wider availability of superfast broadband across the UK, so as many people as possible can enjoy faster speeds to access the internet.
There is also more progress to be made to ensure consumers receive consistently high quality of service, including faster line repairs and installations for broadband and telephony.
Ofcom has also analysed a range of broadband product baskets, by examining average and lowest prices available for different packages. The UK comes either first or second within the EU5 on all measures of average price, and either second or third on measures of the lowest available price.
This is excellent news for telecoms companies such as Boxx Communications, who exist to provide top quality and competitively-priced broadband packages to businesses.
Today’s European Broadband Scorecard is Ofcom’s second report for Government on the coverage, take-up, usage, price and choice of fixed and mobile broadband services in the UK, relative to other European countries.
The Government has previously stated its ambition that the UK should have both the best superfast broadband network in Europe and the fastest broadband of any major European country by 2015.
