UK to top European broadband league, says research
- Added:
- Feb 27, 2004
This is thanks to a well-developed digital cable network and the roll-out of ADSL broadband access in the UK, the company said in its latest report.
Screen Digest believes that by the end of 2008, 12.7 million or half of UK homes will have broadband connections. Of those, 4.1 million will be hooked up to broadband services via cable. The rest (8.5 million) will have DSL broadband connections.
Screen Digest's, Arash Amel, said, "The emergence of alternative network offerings in the UK has increased competition in the market and will drive broadband growth more quickly than in other European markets."
The UK will biggest broadband nation in Europe with 12.7m lines, just ahead of Germany at 12.6m, with France in third place with 10.8m.
The research will come as good news to the UK government, which has set a target of making the UK the G7's most competitive market for broadband by 2005, especially since only a few years ago it lagged near the bottom of an international league table of broadband countries according to an OECD (Organistaion for Econmic Co-operation and Development) report.
However, while the UK has certainly come a long way over the past several years, many major ISPs and industry groups believe that more needs to be done to improve competition in the wholesale market, which is still dominated by incumbent telco BT.
A recent report on the UK broadband market, published by theadmitted that the pace of local loop unbundling in the UK "remained very slow", citing figures suggesting that only 7,100 lines had been unbundled at the end of August 2003, compared with more than 5,000 each month in France.
Another study from the Government's own broadband adviser body, the, said last month that it was important for new targets to be set for 'Broadband Britain' - not only in terms of the number and speed of connections, but also the development of ever-more sophisticated applications to exploit the potential of the high-speed internet.
25 Feburary 2004:
6 January 2004:
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