News - UK’s average broadband download speed is 12Mbps

[TheAnimus]

Post Code lottery that sucks i wish i had the average speed of 12Mbps but unfortunately i live in one of the mentioned rural areas. The average speed i get is between 8-6mbps, on a good day i can get over 10mbps. People in rural areas should not have to get a loan to get decent broadband speed it should in fact be coming out of the Tax that we pay smh.

Well it's not a post code lottery, for the most part you can tell before moving in to a property what it's prospects are. The main issue is things can change. Water company nocked 10mbits+ off the speed of my line one day, wasn't until I changed to FTTC it got fixed.

In your case you talk of paying tax, sod off. The broadband for rural areas is already subsidised and like all of these subsidies, it perverts things. Rather than convert an exchange which has tens of thousands of users, they are prioritising certain areas (such as parts of Cornwall) were they will be connecting only a few hundred. My parents in Cornwall get great speeds and performance from a cheap package because the exchange is so un-contested. It sickens me.

Most rural areas in fact are a net drain on the kitty, especially for infrastructure. People generally earn less through income taxation, a lot less, then get subsidies for local infrastructure projects. Meanwhile there are parts of the capital which keep having their dates pushed back by BT due to re-allocation of resources to hook up one or two people vs the thousands of customers. We pay for that out of tax, we pay for the income for BT to do that from tax.

[abaxas]

Ermm... I think you'll find that rural areas tend to have all the water and food. Rather more important to life than a broadband connection

[3dcandy]

Ermm... I think you'll find that rural areas tend to have all the water and food. Rather more important to life than a broadband connection

Not to some

[viper626]

I`m rural, getting 46mb a sec on sky fibre ...

Well pleased

[ajax2061]

iam semi rural seed in sig

[abaxas]

Plah... townies the lots of ya!

[crossy]

Ermm... I think you'll find that rural areas tend to have all the water and food. Rather more important to life than a broadband connection

True to a great extent - but don't forget that one of the drivers for the current government to offer those subsidies was that they wanted greater broadband coverage. And in turn, the reason they wanted that was that they want more government services delivered electronically - heck, there was someone on the radio this weekend spouting off on how electronic tax filing means they need less tax offices.

Popped into the local Virgin Media shop at the weekend to buy a SIM for a relative, and while I was there I decided to upgrade my package (for a small fee) so in a couple of days time I'll be on 100Mb/s broadband - it's going to be interesting to see what peak speeds I can get out of that. Based on my current (60M) line I figure that'll be something around 60-70Mb download.

[wayn3h]

60 down and 15 up.. i'm not complaining

[wayn3h]

to be fair I live in Cornwall where we had massive EU funding for FTTC. I know people out in the sticks who get phenomenal speeds.

[Lord Midas]

Lucky to get 1mb. HOWEVER!! Openreach have started digging up the pavement and added a fibre cab next to my regular pcp. Happy speedy days are soon approaching. woo

[MrBozack]

I live next door to a phone exchange. My ISP has LLU operator presence. On a good night I can squeeze 20mb/s from the copper wire. Pretty nice for rural UK. ....but my Powerline connectors cut the ethernet down to 12mb/s!

Are you using "AV" spec PLE's or just normal ones? Just fired up the stats page for my Devolo's and they're claiming between 85 and 160Mb/s (although that's duplex speeds - so 40ish and 80Mb/s real speed). Plus I've been able to download Origin games at around 4-5MB/s and from Steam at 6-7MB/s this week, (one more reason that Steam is better than Origin)

If you're using AV spec PLE's - which have that 200Mb/s duplex rating - you might want to check if there's new firmware for the plugs or maybe look at changing placements. I switched the PLE supplying my "computer room" (two servers) closer to the mains socket and got nearly 50% better peak throughput, although I also did a firmware upgrade at the same time.

I'm using 200mb/s Comtrend 9020's, and there's no firmware updates (I believe). I have 2 EP's on the upstairs circuit and the important one on an EP downstairs. The AP is located at the front door/master socket. All of the downstairs sockets are impossibly slow. I think it has something to do with the refrigerator or the mass of 9 volt adapters charging things. Thanks for the suggestions though. It's my "little niggle" at the moment. I think I might just wire it, or update the plugs to 500mb/s versions.

[Randhart]

Well I live in the countryside and have to do with a line that hits 1mbs when the sun and the moon are aligned and only on the 5th friday of a month... so rarlely at best...

[Raz316]

I get around 8mb/s down and 512kb/s up with Sky, and I am fine with that because it's always 8, whatever hour of whatever day, 8. My parents have virgin media cable broadband and I always found it to be a case of "OH WOW 30mb/s that's incre... no wait, it's 4 now."

[probedb]

I live in a city centre and get 7Mbps. BT also has no plans to introduce fibre either :/