Ofcom says UK average fixed line broadband speed is 71.8Mbps

by Mark Tyson on 8 December 2020, 11:11

Tags: Ofcom, Sky, British Telecom (LON:BT.A), Virgin (NASDAQ:VMED), TalkTalk, Everything Everywhere

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Ofcom has shared its latest UK broadband survey dataset. The data is from May 2020 but only became public at the end of November. It is updated every six months, so we won't see the November 2020 dataset until next May…

If you head on over to this Ofcom page you can download the data set (.CSV format) or click on the charting links to the right of the page via the colourful icons. So, let us have a look at the state of affairs for UK home broadband performance, starting with download speeds.

Click to zoom all charts in this article

In the chart above you can see a steady almost linear increase in average download speeds in the UK. The most recent reading of this situation is an average speed of 71.8Mbps for downloads when considering all fixed connection types. The previously reported average was 64.0Mbps – so we have seen a 12 per cent uplift reported in 6 months.

Upload speeds are less well advertised by home broadband sellers but may be very important to you, depending upon the work/leisure activities you get up to at home. The average upload speeds enjoyed a significant gain in the UK in 2019, but the latest figures show little change, an approx 1.5 per cent improvement.

Another thing people care about, understandably, is broadband connection quality. Ofcom has a number of graphs available for you to compare packages from Sky, BT, EE, PlusNet and Talk Talk. In these graphs you will see that EE FTTC is one of the best choices to minimise disconnections, but on the other hand BT FTTP looks to be a clear winner when comparing latency and packet loss metrics.

As ISP Review notes, the Ofcom data is based off data gathered via custom modified routers from SamKnows, which are installed in a few thousand homes across the country. This methodology provides very accurate readings but the sample size isn't fantastic.



HEXUS Forums :: 21 Comments

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And what happens when it is broken down by region?
That's only the mean, though.
You might have 99 people with 2meg connections, but my 1Gb would push their ‘average’ to almost 12Mb… but they certainly ain't getting that!

This is why I hate statistics…
Ttaskmaster
That's only the mean, though.
You might have 99 people with 2meg connections, but my 1Gb would push their ‘average’ to almost 12Mb… but they certainly ain't getting that!

This is why I hate statistics…

Yeah these stats are garbage, and I failed my A-level stats module. Just as a thought experiment - If 1% of people can get 1gb and 98% can get 20mb and the final 1% get 2mb. So assuming my basic stats calcs are ok my example ends in average of (1000+(98x20)+2)/100 = 29.62Mb - How does 29.62Mb in that instance show anything when 99% are well below that! I'd be happy with any improvement in my small town but my hopes of getting anything but Openreach copper in the next 5 years are low.
If only that were true for the majority of people.
Dream on for me! Stuck on ADSL2+ with no fibre in sight!!