Are broadband speeds on the rise?

14 Replies Christopher Roberts

Many providers will be increasing their broadband speeds from 100Mbps to 120Mbps at the start of 2012, with an estimated completion date in mid-2013. The increase will be really good for customers in the UK, who are looking for faster internet speeds for both personal and business use. Faster speeds could boost the economy, as well as change the way households and businesses use the internet.

Giving access to a super-fast internet is all part of building a newer and improved economy in the UK. The government alone has set goals to expand broadband speeds within the next three years. By the end of 2015, investors predict fibre optic broadband will be available to two-thirds of the UK. Many providers are doing their part to support the economy, understanding that the internet is such an essential part of the everyday lives of their consumers. People are using the web to assist them in every aspect of their lives these days, so having a fast and reliable internet connection is important now more than ever.

Investors will be bringing even faster speeds to the UK. It is thought that around 300Mbps speeds will become available in limited locations within the next few years. Currently, many providers are trying to keep up with these investors by doubling their speeds, allowing customers to upgrade from 10 Mbps to 20Mbps. Those who subscribe to their highest speeds of 30Mbps will be upgraded to 60Mbps. Some providers aim to roll out the changes free of charge, so customers may be pleasantly surprised by the change in their broadband speed! Users will be able to benefit from streaming television, movies and music twice as fast as before.

An example of some optical fibre internet cablesThe increase is good news for the UK, which currently ranks somewhere between 10th and 40th globally in terms of average broadband speeds – depending upon where you get your figures. Once upgrades are complete, the average UK broadband speed could increase to around 16.46Mbps, a massive download speed increase!

Consumers will be gaining this speed boost at the most opportune time, since the highly popular Netflix, this week launched its service in the UK. Such services require high bandwidth speeds and will undoubtedly attract large numbers of costumers, all of whom will need super-fast internet to watch their favourite movies and television shows.

Categories: Internet Technology
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Written by Christopher Roberts
Founder and editor of Technology Bloggers, Christopher is passionate about sustainable technology and environmental initiatives. He wants to popularise critical thinking, promote responsible innovation, and excite you about the world around us.

14 thoughts on “Are broadband speeds on the rise?”

  1. zamahsari@best phone reviews

    Good news for English with the plan of boosting internet speed up to 120Mbps. Yes, it is absolutely right if internet right now is a part of our lives. I am sure it shares very important role for economic development. However, I expect that other countries also follow the policy soon, including developing countries.

    Reply
    • Christopher (admin team)

      I think everyone would benefit from faster global internet speeds 🙂

      The only issue is I guess, the UK can increase its speeds, but if pages are being loaded from a country with slower connections, the speed increases in the UK won’t feel much faster :-/

      Thanks for the comment Zamahsari, welcome to the blog 🙂
      Christopher – Admin Team

      Reply
  2. Nishadha@Diagramming Blog

    You guys at UK are really lucky that the government is involved in developing broadband speeds and has made it a part of the development plan. I’m from Sri Lanka and the broadband speeds suck here. Also all the major providers are fighting a marketing battle to grab the customer with little care for existing customers. A really poor was to go forward.

    Reply
    • Christopher (admin team)

      Sorry to here that Nishadha 🙁

      Competition can bring low price, quality, innovation etc. but it can also cube the cause of lots of money to be wasted on expensive adversing campaigns :-/

      What sort of speeds are you getting?

      Thanks for the comment, welcome to the community 🙂
      Christopher – Admin Team

      Reply
        • Christopher (admin team)

          That’s not too bad. Don’t get me wrong, I think the UK average is probably somewhere between 5 and 10 mbps, however in the major cities, 50 can often be easy to get – if you pay for it!

          At least it is not dial up: 56k – now that would be slow.

          Another quick question, does the blog load okay for you? I have done my best to make it load as fast as possible, does it feel fast compared to other sites, the same, or really slow?

          Reply
  3. Beth@Get Him Back

    Hi Christopher

    Increased broadband speeds are good news for everyone, every day internet users, companies selling on-line and the economy in general. I can remember that even 10 years ago I was on a 56kb dial up connection and my mum used to go mad because she couldn’t use the phone at the same time, speeds of upto 300Mbps would have seemed like science fiction back then.

    Reply
    • Christopher (admin team)

      This is true Beth, I know what you mean about the advancements of speeds – back in the days of dial up, the thought of fiber optic speeds was fantacy! The thing people forget is that yes, speeds are getting faster, but the web is getting bigger too. We are not just looking at simple HTML anymore, we are downloading songs, watching movies and looking at other heavy bandwith contnet. Webpages are also bigger in terms of bytes now too. Back in the late 90’s, webpages would be a few kilobites big, (if that) now we could be talking hundreds, or even megabytes!

      Thanks for taking the time to comment, welcome to the blog 🙂
      Christopher – Admin Team

      Reply
  4. David@Product Engineering

    This is great news. Even here in the US the government is going to step-up the broadband connectivity from 3G to 4G which will change the whole architecture of wireless technology from Wi-Fi to Wi-Max.
    It is believed that 4G will increase download speeds uptile 128 MBps

    Reply
  5. David@theOnlyCog

    Sadly, there are still some significant gaps in the UK. The headline figures may be impressive but my broadband is stuck at 512Kb. In order to comply with Scottish legislation to provide everyone access to the internet, BT were permitted to install inferior hardware in more remote locations. As a result I am on something called Rural Broadband – there are only 109 connections so BT are in no rush to apply an upgrade of the kit 🙁 Still, at least I can get BB.

    On the wider note, the nice figures of a 100Mb connection are great but we also need some serious upstream increase too. As anyone who uploads photos videos can testify, it is all very well having a lovely 50mb download speed but still only being offered around 1Mb upload is useless. Cloud computing needs more upstream in order to work well.

    Maybe one day….

    Reply
  6. Neil@Small business website design

    120mbps seems really fast. I would be happy to get the 100mbps. It is always interesting to see the difference between what is advertised and what you actually get. I’m currently supposed to get 17mbps however due to a number of factors outside of my control I end up with around 8.

    Reply

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