By Steve Ranger, 18 April 2006 15:10
NEWS
Glasgow has the fastest broadband of all UK cities, according to measurements by Dutch analyst iPing Research.
It measured broadband speeds from the end user perspective with its Nuria measurement tool.
According to iPing, Glasgow has the best broadband connections, offering 2,395Kbps to users while London, previously home of the fastest access, could only offer 1,943Kbps.
Edinburgh came third with 1,918Kbps and Liverpool was fourth at 1,571Kbps.
The research found that Bristol and Leeds have both more then doubled their available bandwidth per user, rising from ninth and tenth position in the last quarter of 2005 to fifth and sixth in the first quarter of 2006.
The other four cities in the top 10 were Birmingham, Bradford, Manchester and Sheffield.
iPing Research CEO René Post said in a statement: "Although speed of broadband connections is on the rise in Europe, some cities are clearly benefiting more from this development than others. On the whole we see that subscribers in smaller cities benefit more from the new technology than the larger conglomerations."
Separately, watchdog Ofcom said it is to investigate the effectiveness of processes which enable consumers to sign up to, and switch between, broadband providers.
As the broadband market matures, suppliers will increasingly seek to attract customers from their competitors and Ofcom wants to make sure that consumers have reliable processes for switching suppliers.
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1. Simon
Be interesting to see what OfCom 'finds', and what they propose to do about it.
"watchdog Ofcom said it is to investigate the effectiveness of processes which enable consumers to sign up to, and switch between, broadband providers"
Information I am getting from colleagues at work who handle ADSL for clients is that it's going to get harder, very much harder, to switch suppliers. At present, the majority of ADSL lines are running on BTs equipment through wholesale arrangements - so switching to another BT Wholesale privider is relatively simple.
Right now though, there is a mad dash to move to unbundled lines using third party ADSL providers. This means that switching providers if the new provider isn't using the same underlying service provider requires a re-patching job at the exchange - not a big job in itself.
BUT, and it's a big BUT, as I understand the situation, it's not possible to order ADSL on a line that has an incompatible service on it. SO to switch providers you have to cancel your old ADSL service, wait for it to be de-activated, and only then can you order the new service with a lead time of a few weeks. The flaw (from the consumers point of view) is rather obvious - you cannot switch providers without having several weeks with no service at all.
Apart from the technical and financial aspects, I wonder if this is part of the motivation for ISPs rushing to move their customers to alternative services on unbundled lines ?