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18 Jan 2006
The UK's broadband 'digital divide', defined as the gap between the fast internet haves and have-nots, is deeper than was thought and may be getting even deeper, newly published research has revealed.
According to a study from Point Topic, all the top 10 local authority areas with the highest broadband density are in London and the home counties.
The 10 with the lowest density are in the rural areas of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, along with West Somerset which includes the wide open spaces of Exmoor.
Household density is highest in prosperous suburban areas, but business use drives the total up in areas like Westminster and Tower Hamlets. This explains the top 10 range from 25 broadband lines per 100 people in Wandsworth, South London, to 20 in South Buckinghamshire.
Low density areas include Dumfries and Galloway, with 6.3 lines per 100 down to Eilean Siar in the Western Isles with 4.9. The figures exclude one of the UK's smallest local authorities, the City of London, which has a very high density because of business use.
Based on detailed mapping of broadband density right down to the postcode level, the figures show density in terms of the number of broadband lines per 100 population as at mid-2005.
They include DSL lines provided over BT's network and cable modem connections supplied by cable TV networks.
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Not sure what this study is saying
Is this study saying that there is an broadband availability gap or an uptake gap?
Posted by: Tom Wahnsiedler 19 Jan 2006
ISP's cutting bandwidth, just as BB content beomes available to UK users
What seems to have been overlooked with BB user percentages in the UK now between 50%-60% of the population & more BB specific content being made available. UK ISP's are increasingly resorting to rather aggressive traffic shaping, bandwidth limitations to such a degree that some domestic consumers are returning to dial-up connections. Another point is that despite LLU roll-outs, Maxdsl, etc. I was recently told by a BT engineer visiting a neighbour that if a maximum speed of 1Mb was attainable on normal ADSL in an area, that was all that would be attainable on LLU, Maxdsl or whatever. A rep at my ISP disputed the above. No prizes for guessing who I believe. Not the ISP. As for all the recent hype about the UK moving up the league of BB connected counties. The difference is that other countries are already far in advance technically & do not apparently strangle connection speeds. Telewest Blueyonder have recently 'upgraded' their network in this area to Blueyonder BB, but because of their impending merger with the ghastly NTLWorld I am steering clear of them for the present. They are also very overpriced for what appears to be a very variable connection. Depending apparently on what area one is in. So hopefully home users will start voting with their 'metaphoric' feet, when the much hyped, alleged benefits of broadband do not materialise.
Posted by: Alan Brown 19 Jan 2006