12 Feb 2009
The latest ranking of countries with the most widespread rollout of fibre-optic cabling to the home shows the UK without enough coverage to even make the league table.
The annual fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) conference in Copenhagen highlighted fears for the UK's global economic competitiveness after the statistics showed the UK still not among the group of economies where FTTH penetration has reached one per cent.
Further reading
The FTTH ranking is issued twice a year and tracks the level of market penetration in economies where households are connected directly to high-speed optical-fibre networks. FTTH is considered one of the most important means of delivering next-generation broadband networks to homes and businesses.
Countries are only registered if more than one per cent of households are connected through FTTH. Currently, 20 economies meet this threshold, up nearly a third from July 2008 and nearly a half since July 2007. But the UK has never registered on the list of countries meeting the requirement.
Asian countries lead the FTTH market, with South Korea topping the charts at 44 per cent connectivity. Japan has 13.2 million FTTH connected residences, with the US and China next. The nearest European countries are Scandinavian, with Sweden closely followed by Norway. The last of the 20 is Latvia.
Communications minister Lord Carter's interim Digital Britain report, published last month, encouraged the rollout of high-speed broadband in the UK, but gave no commitments on public-sector investment to support UK optical fibre network infrastructure. The final version of the report is due for publication in April.
I've noticed from my travels that many of these countries have 1Gbit/s and 100Mbit/s commonly available to residential customers for very reasonable prices.
The rollout of 60Mbit/s and 24Mbit/s is therefore still leaving this country in the backwaters of the broadband revolution.
Why is this network rollout in the major cities of the UK so much slower than the ones being rolled out in these other countries?
Posted by: Tinloon 23 Mar 2009
I am not surprised in this result. To be top of this league table the country would have to have a positive attitude to wealth creators, innovation, and nurturing the development of business. Our current government is only interested in providing a home for spongers and handouts and welcomes people from all over the world to come and get a hand out
Posted by: Mark Grindey 16 Feb 2009
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