There seemed to be a real kerfuffle on the news this morning caused by Cisco-sponsored research which showed that the UK was 25th out of 66 countries in a broadband quality league table, lower that is than Bulgaria and Latvia. The amazing thing is that anyone was really surprised by our relatively lowly position.

As anyone who has been to South Korea and Japan - the two countries that top the table - can tell you they are simply light years ahead of us in terms of broadband penetration, speeds and quality. Indeed the South Korean government recently promised universal speeds of up to 1Gigabit per second by 2012 while we struggle to meet the global average speed of 4.75 Megabits per second (Ofcom's April research revealed that our average broadband download speed stands at 4.1Mbps.)

Now I haven't been to Bulgaria and Latvia so I can't vouch for their broadband (though one wag commented on the Daily Mail site of course that the roads were much better in Bulgaria than the UK). But again it doesn't really surprise me.

So what's the problem? Why does the UK lag behind seemingly less developed countries when it comes to high speed delivery of internet services. The reason is largely because of lack of fibre-optic cable which is the only way of delivering the high speeds necessary for superfast broadband (currently we rely mostly on old copper telephone wire via ADSL networks). This is because for years there were dozens of tin-pot little cable companies with no money who spent more time squabbling with each other than actually digging up the roads to lay high speed cable. Even today there are large parts of densely populated neighbourhoods in London which still don't have fibre-optic cable.

The good news though is that could be about to change, albeit slowly, with Virgin now the only cable company on the block. It is rolling out a 50Mbps service while 24Mbps ADSL2+ services via BT and others are becoming more widespread. However, it seems there is still some way to go before we reach the average download speed of 11.25Mbps that's needed to handle future applications such as High Definition Video.

Until then Britain will have to be content with the survey's label of 'Meeting Needs for Today', the broadband equivalent of 'must try harder'.

Top 10 - Broadband league table
South Korea
Japan
Hong Kong
Sweden
Switzerland
Netherlands
Singapore
Luxembourg
Denmark
Norway

Femtocells. Get used to that word because you'll be hearing it a lot more in the future. Vodafone's release of their signal boosting hub this week is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what femtocells is capable of.

US company Airvana and Sanjeev Verma, vice president of femtocell business, have just given me a demo of their HubBub femtocells and its 'party alert' application.

Basically, the HubBub sits in the house and, as well as solving any coverage issues by providing a stronger network using an existing broadband connection, it can monitor activity in the house.

The report we've all been waiting for is finally out but, now that the dust has settled, what's actually changed and what does it mean for you? Have a read of the Tech Digest breakdown.

Broadband

What we're expecting

Universal Internet program whereby at least 98% of the UK would be covered by broadband fast enough to stream live TV services, i.e more than 2mb/s - possibly funded by the part of the licence fee set aside to assist the nation with digital switchover which won't be needed by the time the analogue signal has been switched off in 2012.

The freed up funds could be given to BT to help with the huge costs of supplying fixed line broadband to remote locations. It's also possible that the remaining and most difficult to reach communities could receive broadband via satellite although this would mean subsidising subscriptions to services such as Sky.

Mobile broadband is also expected to be widened to much of the nation. Currently only a small proportion has 3G service from the big five mobile operators with large parts of Scotland and Wales ignored.

It's hoped that the part of the electromagentic spectrum currently dedicated to the analogue TV service will be sold off to Vodafone, O2 et al and used as encouragement for them to expand their infrastructure and increase their speeds.

You may remember last week, we published a post regarding BT's apparent throttling of its user's broadband connections. Well, the telecom giant has hit back, going public with its condemnation of online video services like the BBC's iPlayer and YouTube.

Basically this is how the row has unfolded: The BBC releases a story accusing BT of slowing down broadband connections at peak times - to less than 1Mbps between 5pm and midnight - when users should be getting up to 8Mbps. BT responds by sending an email to BBC Radio 4 programme You and Yours stating that content providers "can't expect to continue to get a free ride". They also go public with this stance.

The Beeb have responded today, via their blog, saying that BT's move was a "forthright call for cash" and that the row could end with net neutrality becoming obsolete.

What this means is that ISPs, who currently make no differentiation between types of internet traffic, could begin to charge content providers for their output, particularly bandwidth hoggers like the iPlayer.

The row illustrates how much the net has evolved over the last few years. With the mass introduction of high-bandwidth streaming service like the iPlayer, Spotify, YouTube and the like, the pressure on ISPs to provide a fast and consistent service to their users has increased dramatically.

Lord Carter's Digital Britain review is due next week and should call for broadband at high speeds and low prices. It might just be that content providers are going to have to come to a compromise with the ISPs to make that happen.

Whatever the outcome, the end users should not be the ones who are penalised. If an ISP advertises up to 8Mbps broadband with unlimited data allowance then that is exactly what they should provide. They shouldn't promote a service if they are going to struggle to provide it.

(via The FT)

3 has today announced a one-month contract mobile broadband offering. The package offers 5GB of data allowance a month for £15.

They claim that it's "Britain's most flexible and affordable contract" and we're not going to argue with them. I've had a little look around and it is bloomin' good value compared to the other players in the market.

For the same price and contract terms, Vodafone will only give you 1GB and Orange and O2 will only allow 3GB.

If you're using 3 mobile broadband on pay-as-you-go at the moment, you'll simply need to pop a new, free sim card into your dongle. New customers will need to buy a new dongle - they sell the Huawei MF627, E156g and E1550 for £19.99.

The plan is called "Broadband 5GB 1 Month" - I hope they didn't pay the marketing geniuses too much too come up with that one - and it's available online here.

Mobile broadband is becoming ever more popular and this is certainly a good deal if you want to go down that path. Consider if you really need to though, many 3G phones will allow you to share your 3G connection with your laptop using apps like JoikuSpot. And the iPhone will now allow tethering - even if this might not be a cheap option at present.

Ever nipped to Tesco for some crisps and a pot of houmous and thought, "blinking flip, it's a darn pity Tesco doesn't do broadband."

No me neither. Call me a curmudgeon but I like to get my hardware and broadband from a shop that doesn't also sell equestrian equipment, not that I've got anything against horses, they're fine, just fine, I mean, you can't trust them, but you know, no ones asking you to - sorry I'm tangent-ing. Tesco is selling broadband, laptop and phones - that's what I meant to say.

You can build you own deal from mobile broadband dongles and netbooks to contract phones with free TVs. It's certainly worth a look if you're looking for a new contract phone or mobile broadband service.

Their laptop range isn't exactly up-to-date, but they're by no means antiquated. Head on over there and tell us what you think, the person who can construct the most appealing deal wins. What do you win? The satisfaction of knowing you're the kind of person who can spend 20 minutes of your life looking at broadband deals and make a competition out of it. And that's a very special quality to have. Very special.

The average broadband connection in the UK provides over 4Mbps for the first time according to broadband.co.uk. No particular mention of upload rates but then I guess we're all a bunch of web leechers, right?

The figure are up from 3.2Mbps on last year's study with Virgin Media still the fastest, closely followed by O2. Naturally, quality of service is not included in this accolade but, of course, the real issue is that with the likes of iPlayer, the popularisation of video streaming and now HD in the equation, we're using even more bandwidth than ever. Ergo, we're not actually getting a faster browsing experience.

Having a quick look, I'm getting speeds of an average of 5Mbps plus here at Shiny Towers. What are you getting where you are? Send in your average speeds to @techdigest with an @reply and we'll see who's the winner. In the mean time, I'm off to Korea for some proper internet access. Not North.

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