UK Internet Access ranked as one of the slowest in Europe

Every quarter, Akamai publishes a State of the Internet report. The report looks at Internet speeds across the globe, ranking countries by their average access speed and % of traffic used for malicious purposes. The UK does not fare well on either list…

With an average connection speed of 3,483 KBPS we are a long way off the lightning speeds of Hong Kong with 7,637 KBPS and South Korea, in the top spot with 14,581 KBPS average connection speed. The Labour Government’s plans to make the UK the greatest place for Broadband in the Western world by 2005 seems to have fallen way short of its target.

Our speeds are not even the fastest in Europe with only Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain & Luxemberg offering slower average connection speeds. Moving to Sweden would offer you an average connection speed of 5,735 KBPS, the highest in Europe whilst a shorter trip to Ireland would give you an average connection speed 5,319 KBPS.

Further Government plans to offer levy funded faster broadband should help boost our average whist the trial of a 100MB broadband connection in Manchester could point to potential for a huge leap in our broadband access speeds.

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The UK also doesn’t fare well in the percentage of attack traffic [Spam, DOS etc.] originating in our country  with 1.6% of our traffic used for malicious purposes. Across Europe, only Italy and Germany have a higher percentage at 5.4% and 4.8% respectively.

So we have a long way to go before we can truly claim to be ‘Broadband Britain’ – until then we will have to hope the combination of local trials and Government incentives will help to grow our speeds.