UK broadband speeds fall further behind European neighbours

According to the figures, the average download speed in the UK is 110.99 Mbps, lagging Western Europe – which stands at 138.47 Mbps – by 27.48 Mbps. 12 months ago the gap was 25.06 Mbps. It's not a dramatic change – and the UK has noticeably improved on last year's 93.63 Mbps – but we're not exactly setting the world on fire either.

The analysis is based on 1.5 billion speed tests conducted across 220 countries and territories in the 12 months to the end of June. The figures were compiled by M-Lab, a cooperative data-gathering effort on the part of Google and the Code for Science and Society (CS&S).

"The UK has lost some ground this past year against other Western European nations, and has on average slower broadband than the European average," said Cable.co.uk's consumer telecoms analyst Dan Howdle. "Part of this has to do with relative speed of full fibre rollout across the UK. It continues apace, but we appear to be slower than some European rivals in this respect."

Overall the UK ranks 35th, down one place from last year, but still firmly in the top half of the table. Furthermore, while there's no escaping the reality that nine of the top 10 spots are held by countries and territories in Western Europe (see table), almost all of them are small and densely-populated, which has a huge bearing on the time and cost of FTTP deployment.

Having said that, the UK doesn't fare much better when compared to similarly-sized European economies. It sits ahead of Italy (72.45 Mbps) and Germany (87.77 Mbps), but lags Spain (148.63 Mbps) and France (176.97 Mbps). Meanwhile the Netherlands (188.49 Mbps) sits way out in front.

Of course, the relative health (or otherwise) of a broadband market cannot be measured by speed-tests alone.

Cable.co.uk notes that the speeds listed on its league table don't necessarily equate to the fastest-available service. Other factors like take-up rate and pricing have an affect on a country's ranking too.

"A slow descent in our European ranking here can also be a reflection of customers opting for slower speeds, or indeed superior marketing of full fibre deals on the part of our European neighbours," Howdle said.

Indeed, here in the UK, recent stats from Point Topic revealed that 64.7 percent of UK households had access to fibre broadband at the end of March, equal to 20.4 million premises. On top of that, 7 million of these had a choice of two or more FTTP networks.

In addition, earlier this month, Vodafone became the third UK ISP to launch a retail broadband tariff offering maximum speeds of more than 2 Gbps, joining Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) and Blackpool-based Yayzi.

All of which supports the argument that the UK's inability to climb Cable.co.uk's league table isn't about maximum available throughput and more about the maturity of online services.

The likely – and uncomfortable – truth is, there isn't a killer app driving mass-market uptake of these speeds at today's prices.