Broadband Britain’s Broadband Not Spots

notspots What is a hot spot not? A recent study by leading independent broadband research website SamKnows reveals that millions of UK consumers are living in broadband ‘not spots’ – areas where download speeds don’t even come close to 2Mbps.

What’s surprising about the report is that many of these not spots can be found in built up suburban areas as well as in remote rural regions. “We had assumed that these not spots were in remote parts of the countryside. That may be where the most vocal campaigners are but there is a high incidence of them in commuter belts,” says SamKnows co-founder Alex Salter.

The general rule of thumb with broadband (specifically ADSL, the type delivered over phone lines) is that the further away you are from a telephone exchange, the slower the speed gets. Naturally its fair to assume that if you live in a built up area, then you’re almost guaranteed a semi-decent level of service – this recent survey however has proven that this isn’t always the case.

What the survey reveals is that any residence more than 4 kilometers from an exchange sees the speed dropping below 2Mbps.

This is the case in Basingstoke in Hampshire; a built up commuter belt with direct rail access to London, but one where 50 per cent of the population cannot get speeds greater than 2Mbps because their homes are some 6km away from the nearest exchange.

The map above, courtesy of Broadband Notspot (check the link below), shows clusters of not spots all grouped together – you can easily see how even in more developed areas, punters are still struggling with speeds you’d expect to get out in the sticks.

The Government has promised to provide all homes in the UK with speeds of at least 2Mbps by 2012. The long awaited final part of Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report, which will outline plans on how to plug the gaps in these not spots, is due next month. It is expected that a mixture of high speed fibre and wireless broadband connections will be deployed, depending on the geography of each location.

[Source: SamKnows, Think Broadband]

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