We might be seriously lagging behind other countries in terms of speed but us Great Brits are pretty fond of our gigabits if this Ofcom survey is anything to go by. Compared with the USA, France, Germany, Spain and Italy the UK can boast the lowest prices for single line (i.e. not bundled with voice calls) and mobile broadband services. Prices for fixed-line voice calls are also the second lowest, after Italy.
Ed Richards, chief executive of Ofcom, said: “The report shows that UK consumers have benefited from competition in the form of lower prices. Innovation means that the UK is well placed in the take up and availability of digital services.”
Despite not enjoying the speeds of other European countries (let alone Japan and South Korea) us UK surfers are keen to make the most of what we’ve got. Perhaps as a result of the lower prices, take up of UK broadband lines soared over the five years to 2008. In August London was crowned the Official Capital of Twitter by no less an authority than its co-founder CEO Ev Williams.
Earlier this week it was announced that O2 is running trials of next-gen LTE mobile broadband at its Slough headquarters. The technology reportedly offers a top theoretical download speed of 150Mbps, similar to the high-end speeds we can eventually expect from Virgin Media’s upgraded fibre network.
Posted by Tom on December 18th 2009 in Broadband, Next Gen Broadband, O2 Broadband, Virgin Media
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