Ofcom infrastructure report reveals fast broadband winners and losers

Patterns of mobile and fixed broadband use still vary significantly across the UK, according to regulator Ofcom's first communications infrastructure report.

The report suggests that demand in the UK for fast, easy-to-access internet is significant, with fixed broadband traffic having increased sevenfold over the past five years and subscriptions to 3G services having reached 33 million.

However, Ofcom points to a number of challenges facing specific regions in the UK.

For instance, the availability of superfast broadband in Scotland (41 per cent of the population) and Wales (31 per cent) is significantly lower than the UK average of 58 per cent.

Northern Ireland, on the other hand, thanks to private investment from BT and Virgin Media, has the highest availability of superfast broadband at 97 per cent.

However, more of its population receive internet speeds of less than 2Mbit/s than any other, at 23 per cent. The UK average is 14 per cent.

"While superfast availability is high, Northern Ireland currently has some of the highest percentages of households seeing speeds of less than 2Mbit/s," reads the report.

"We expect this situation to change over the coming months as more consumers choose to upgrade to the newly available superfast services."

On average, fixed broadband customers are using 17GB of data per month, but the figure ranges from 10GB to 40GB between operators.

Ofcom does indicate that if demand continues to increase at current rates, ISPs will "need to make further investment in their networks".

The government pledged a further £530m last November to ensure that 90 per cent of households in each local authority could access super-fast broadband.

This money is being administered by Broadband Delivery UK and is available to BT and its competitors, who will bid for the funds to accelerate broadband rollout in rural areas.

"The ongoing investment in superfast broadband services by Virgin Media and BT will not only increase average speeds, but should reduce the proportion of customers getting less than 2Mbit/s," Ofcom predicts in the report.

"We intend to collect data next summer to quantify the extent to which take-up of service on these new networks is leading to higher average speeds and coverage of 2Mbit/s broadband."