Ofcom infrastructure report reveals fast broadband winners and losers

Northern Ireland tops fast broadband league, while Wales gets wooden spoon

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."

Ofcom infrastructure report reveals fast broadband winners and losers

Northern Ireland tops fast broadband league, while Wales gets wooden spoon

Ofcom's research suggests that 27 per cent of UK adults are now using smartphones, with over half purchasing their device in the past year. This has led to "significant" volumes of mobile data, where each 3G connection uses on average 240MB per month.

In the UK, 73.1 per cent of premises currently receive 3G coverage from all five operators, with only 1.2 per cent not receiving any signal at all.

This seems to represent a mature market, but a fairly signficant 25.7 per cent of premises do not receive a 3G signal from at least one of the operators.

"Consumers are generally only concerned about the coverage of their chosen network operator, and gain little comfort from knowing that a signal from another operator is available when they find themselves in a ‘local' mobile not-spot," Ofcom said.

With regard to geographic coverage, only 12 per cent of the UK receives 3G signal from all four operators, while 29.9 per cent receives no signal at all.

Scotland (60.6 per cent) and Northern Ireland (51.7 per cent) have the largest areas that don't receive a 3G signal.

The disparity between rural and urban 3G coverage isn't necessarily the fault of the mobile operators, Ofcom suggests.

"While geographic coverage in rural areas is typically lower than in urban areas, our analysis of the number of base stations which the operators have built in each local authority area indicates that infrastructure investment in rural areas is often greater on a per head of population basis," reads the report.

"The areas of very low population density have, on average, a higher number of sites per head than more densely populated areas," it adds.

"The data highlights the challenges of providing mobile coverage in rural areas... and deployment of mobile networks in sparsely populated areas may not always be commercially viable."

The lower level of coverage, despite the higher investment in base stations, is largely due to the nature of 3G spectrum, which is above 1GHz.

Spectrum above this range does not propagate as far as lower frequencies, which means more base stations are required to cover larger geographic areas.

To view Ofcom's interactive maps depicting broadband coverage in the UK, click here.