Connectivity

Facebook Promptly Removes Mynamar Military Accounts

Posted on by Andy Miller

Facebook has reacted quickly and taken down many accounts of Myanmar’s military leaders after a damning UN report accused them of genocide and war crimes against the Muslim Rohingya population.

Removed

It has been reported that, following the release of the report, Facebook removed a total of 18 user accounts, and 52 pages associated with the Myanmar military. These are thought to include the page of its commander-in-chief.

All of the removed pages and accounts are thought to have had a total of almost 12 million followers.

The Situation, In Brief

The action by Facebook relates to the situation in Myanmar, formerly Burma, where approximately 25,000 Rohingya Muslims have been killed and an estimated 700,000 forced to flee to Bangladesh in over the past year. The blame for the alleged genocide has been placed firmly at the door of the Myanmar military, and the country’s leader and Nobel Prize winner, Ang San Suu Kyi, has been widely criticised for apparently failing to use her position as head of government, or her moral authority, to stop the persecution and violence in Rakhine state.

Facebook – Several Reasons

As well as the fact that the accounts relate to suspected war criminals, Facebook has several reasons to act quickly in taking down the accounts of military leaders and their associates, including the fact that:

– Facebook, by its own admission, had been too slow up until now in acting to remove posts aimed at stirring up and spreading hatred against the minority Muslim Rohingya population.

– Facebook is a very popular social network in Myanmar, and thus bad as well as good messages can be distributed widely and quickly using the platform.

– The Tatmadaw (the official name of the armed forces of Myanmar) has been using its official Facebook pages to discredit allegations of the crimes it has committed, and to stir-up further fears about the Rohingya. Also, the Tatmadaw are thought to have been using bogus independent news and opinion pages to covertly push their own messages.

– Facebook is very aware that it has been used as a means to influence political opinion and even election outcomes in some other countries i.e. alleged Russian use of Facebook in the US election. This has made Facebook anxious to stop this happening.

– The social network, along with other platforms, apps, and tech giants, has long been accused by many different governments of failing to act / failing to act quickly enough to remove hate speech and racist content.

– Facebook and other platforms have been threatened with regulation e.g. Ofcom in the UK, and Facebook is anxious to claw back much of the trust it lost in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, as well as getting some good publicity.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Most businesses like to operate in and associate themselves with stable countries, particularly where they feel the government is trustworthy, and where the military don’t have too much power. The cost in human suffering in events and circumstances in Myanmar have been terrible, and this has also caused the economy to suffer, as its growth has slowed, it’s currency has dropped against the dollar, and as other countries and potential trading partners have tried to distance themselves from the current regime.

For Facebook, this has been a much-needed opportunity to present its positive side and show that it can and will act quickly to police its own network where it feels it has credible and conclusive evidence to do so, and to be able to justify its actions. This has been something that Facebook appears to have been much more keen to do lately e.g. in deleting 30+ pages and accounts attempting to influence the US midterm elections, and in removing 650+ fake Facebook accounts and pages, and pages designed to influence politics in US and the UK, as well as in the Middle East and Latin America.

The power and responsibility of social network platforms is now beginning to become apparent. Businesses are now major advertisers on social networks too, and as such, they need to ensure that they can reach the right audience in enough numbers and that their advertising doesn’t suffer from negative associations or being displayed next to content or posts that promote hatred.

Superfast Broadband Boosts Business and Jobs

Posted on by Andy Miller

Among the findings of a recent government report about superfast broadband in the UK are claims that superfast broadband rollout so far has led to job creation and a £12.28 benefit for firms for every £1 invested by central and local authorities.

Measurable Benefits

The Evaluation of the Economic Impact and Public Value of the Superfast Broadband Programme report, by The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), covering 2012 to 2016, claims that the fact that superfast broadband has now reached almost five million homes and businesses (Openeach puts the figure at 10 million) has provided noticeable, measurable and business and economic benefits.

Fewer Jobseekers, More Jobs

For example, according to the report, superfast broadband has driven a reduction of almost 9,000 jobseekers allowance claims, and the creation of 49,000 local jobs.

What Is Superfast Broadband?

Superfast broadband refers to connections with broadband speeds of 24 megabits per second and above.

Where?

Superfast broadband is more available in some parts of the UK than others. For example, the highest rate of superfast broadband availability is in North East England (97.19%). Also offering high rates of superfast broadband availability are South East England (97.07%) and the West Midlands (96.56%).

Unfortunately, those who live and work in Northern Ireland are currently treated to the lowest rates of availability in the UK at 87.74%.

Boost

The growth in the levels of superfast broadband availability has been given a boost by factors such as Openreach, the firm that runs the vast majority of the UK’s telecoms infrastructure, reducing the wholesale price of broadband.

This is thought to have helped take-up for superfast and fibre broadband services by homes and businesses, and given competitors e.g. Sky and TalkTalk the opportunity to reduce the cost of using the network, provided that they can get enough sign-ups.

Back in March last year, Ofcom (the telecoms regulator) announced that BT has agreed to legally separate from Openreach, which owns and operates the UK’s broadband infrastructure. This move was intended to enable greater competition among broadband providers and greater investment in the network infrastructure.

Fibre

Fibre has offered greater broadband speeds and reliability, but at the moment, most connections have fibre-optic lines up to the local street cabinet, but then copper phone lines from the cabinet to the house.

The government says that its aim is to give all of the UK full-fibre broadband (fibre to and from the cabinet) – rather than rely on broadband delivered over copper networks, by 2033.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Broadband is now an essential service for business, and businesses would obviously welcome any improvement in broadband speeds in the UK as it would undoubtedly help UK companies to become more competitive, and would boost the economy.
Unfortunately, while those who are able to benefit from superfast and (full) fibre broadband are clearly reaping the benefits, this is not the case in many areas of the UK. For example, in April this year, a survey by consumer watchdog ‘Which?’ has revealed that more than half of UK customers across 12 providers, are having problems with their broadband service or price.

Although this latest government announcement paints a positive picture of superfast broadband in the UK, the UK is now only at 35th place in the global average broadband speed league tables. This is because it has been too late in embracing a full-fibre solution – FTTP (fibre to the premises). Many critics have pointed to UK infrastructure provider Openreach shying away from FTTP because of the perceived costs and level of difficulty of large-scale rollouts.

For the time being then, UK businesses have to rely on the slower FTTC (fibre to the cabinet), and this has put UK businesses at a competitive disadvantage with businesses in many other European countries.

Major improvements to broadband speeds for UK businesses in most areas are still a long way off as the UK may only actually have 7% full fibre coverage by 2020, with full coverage unlikely for another 15+ years.

Google Location Tracking, Even When Switched Off?

Posted on by Andy Miller

An Associated Press report has accused Google of recording the locations of its users via their mobile devices, even when they have requested not to be tracked by turning their “Location History” off.

Discovered

The apparent tracking without permission was discovered as part of research, when a Princeton privacy researcher noticed in his account that Google has tracked his many different locations along a route after he had been travelling for several days, despite his Location History being turned off.

Also, research has revealed that, even when Location History is paused / switched off, some Google apps store time-stamped location data without specifically asking your permission. For example, Google stores data about where you are when you simply open the Maps app, automatic daily weather updates on Android can discover roughly where you are, and some searches apparently unrelated to your location can also pinpoint your exact latitude and longitude, and save it to your Google account.

Could Affect Billions

It is thought that this could affect around two billion Android and Apple devices which use Google for maps or search.

What Is “Location History” and Why Have It Anyway?

According to Google, Location History is one of several ways to improve the experience of users, and works for features such as Google Maps e.g. if you agree to let Google Maps record your location over time, it will display that history for you in a “timeline” that maps out your daily movements.

Google says that Location History helps you to find the places you’ve been and the routes you’ve travelled. Google states that, when you choose to enable Location History, it records your location data and places in your Google Account, even when you’re not using Google Maps.

What’s The Problem?

The problem is that Google also states that “You can turn off Location History at any time. With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored.”

Also, researchers have discovered that two things (rather than one) need to be opted-out in order to prevent tracking. Users need to disable both “Location History” and “Web & App Activity” in order to opt-out. Some commentators feel that this has not been made clear by Google.

The Issues

The issues with this are that:

– In the UK, for example, this may constitute a lack of transparency, openness and fairness under GDPR about what users are being told is happening to their data and what is actually happening.

– Users appear to have chosen to opt-out of something / not give their consent to something that relates to their privacy and the security of their personal data, and yet have not been opted-out completely by the company (possible issues of GDPR compliance).

– Some commentators have described it as ‘sneaky’ and it could certainly be an issue that affects the trust of users.

– Location data of this kind has been used by police (in the US) to track suspects, and could also potentially be used by other players e.g. cyber criminals if they had access to the user’s account. This could put users at risk.

– Location data can also be used to target people with location-based advertising. This may be something that users would like to avoid.

What Can You Do To Avoid Being Tracked In This Way?

The Associated Press has produced a guide which details what actions you can take to avoid being tracked by Google, even if your Location History on your mobile device is paused / turned off: The guide can be found here: https://www.apnews.com/b031ee35d4534f548e43b7575f4ab494/How-to-find-and-delete-where-Google-knows-you’ve-been

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

This story should be a reminder, particularly since the introduction of GDPR, that people value their privacy and security, and that businesses now have a strong legal responsibility to take this seriously. Transparency, fairness, and openness are vital when telling your customers what you’re doing /what you plan to do with their data. The issue of consent i.e. your customers choosing to withdraw consent and your business complying fully with those requests should be now be treated very seriously, and there must be consistency with what your company says it is going to do and what actually happens.

Sadly, it appears that all too often, large organisations / companies don’t appear to be handling our data in a way that we would like or have requested. For example, Facebook’s sharing of the personal data of 87 million users with Cambridge Analytica caused widespread outrage, and recently the ‘Deceived By Design’ report by the Norwegian government-funded Consumer Council has accused tech giants Microsoft, Facebook and Google of being unethical by leading users into selecting settings that do not benefit their privacy.

It may be that we have to wait a little longer and see a few more big tech companies being properly held to account before things start to really change for the better for users.

Forced Unbundling of Google Apps From Android

Posted on by Andy Miller

The European Commission anti-competition ruling against Google that will force it to change its OS by unbundling the Google Play store and native apps could help other phone makers, but could also make the new ‘P’ version of Android’s OS less interesting.

90 Days To Change

The EC ruling, which also imposed an eye-watering $5 billion fine this month, essentially means that Google only has a 90 day period in which to unbundle popular parts of its Android OS so that it no longer receives what the EC sees as an unfair advantage over competitors.

Manufacturers Forced To Bundle

For example, up until now, purchasers of Android phones from any manufacturer have had Google Play store to install its apps by default on their new phone. This is because Google has only enabled phone makers to access the Play store (which is needed for downloading popular apps) if they agreed to use a version of Android that preloads 11 bundled Google apps onto their smartphones.

No Choice

Also, even though phone manufacturers have been able to use Android Open Source Project Android software, this doesn’t have the Google APIs that are needed to link major apps to the Play store. Phone manufacturers have, therefore, been left with no choice but to agree to bundle Google’s native Android apps if they want their customers to have a good experience with their phones.

Real Opportunities For Competitors Now?

It is tempting to think that the ruling will now create many real opportunities for other, smaller phone manufacturers as they can customise the open source architecture and bypass native Google apps.

Some commentators have, however, pointed out that Google’s huge investment over the last decade in pre-loading Android with its most popular apps, and thereby making an Android phone work straight out of the box, is of value to consumers. The likelihood is, therefore, that customers would actually prefer to have the bundled Google apps anyway because they are used the convenience that they offer. This means that the EC’s judgement may have been several years late anyway, manufacturers will continue to need to offer Google services to be competitive and address consumer demand, and the ruling may not be offering any real extra opportunities for competing phone manufacturers in the near future.

The New Android P

The new Android 9.0 P / ‘Pie’ OS is beginning its rollout, firstly for Pixel devices and Essential Phone, and for Android One users later in the year, with all third-party handsets that participated in the Android P beta (Sony Xperia XZ2, Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S, Nokia 7 Plus, Oppo R15 Pro, Vivo X21 and OnePlus 6), receiving the update in the autumn.

The new OS has AI built-in, and there’s a strong focus on a smarter, simpler experience that is tailored to individual user patterns and offers adaptive features e.g. Adaptive Battery and Adaptive Brightness. In order to comply with the EC’s ruling, however, there is speculation that the new official Android OS will simply be released without the Google default apps, but consumers will simply seek them out and install them anyway.
Bad For Consumers?

Some critics of the EC ruling have also pointed out the possibility of some bad unintended consequences for consumers such as greater app inconsistency, and increases in hardware costs.

Google Games Woes

It appears that Google will also be missing out on a slice of the games world profits through Google Play. It has been reported that Epic Games, the makers of the popular multiplayer game Fortnite, will be bypassing Google Play and offer the game directly to hitherto overlooked Android, because it’s unhappy with the 30% slice of the profits Google would take through Google Play. Instead, Fortnite for Android will be made available directly on the Epic website, thereby cutting out the Google middle-man.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

The idea of a fair playing field is obviously attractive to businesses, particularly smaller businesses that may also be later into a market. Clearly, the EC ruling shows that things do appear to have been stacked in Google’s favour in the Android market for some time, but many would argue that the ruling has come too late, and that consumers may now not actually benefit from the decision. It is, however important that powerful tech giants have to answer to some authority greater than their own in the interests of choice and fair competition.

Google has appealed, and it remains to be seen how the EC decision and what changes Google makes will affect the Android OS and the dynamics of the marketplace.

First Blockchain ‘Cryptocurrency’ Smartphone

Posted on by Andy Miller

Taiwanese electronics company Huawei Technologies Ltd. (HTC), and Swiss-based Sirin Labs are both introducing blockchain smartphones.

HTC

HTC’s Exodus blockchain smartphone, which it is believed will be priced at around $1,000, and is reported to have “tens of thousands” of reservations globally. The smartphone, from the world’s third largest phone manufacturer, will be released this year, will come with a built-in (offline) wallet for storing cryptocurrencies, and will act as a computer node in a blockchain network.

What Is Blockchain?

Blockchain is an incorruptible peer-to-peer network (a kind of ledger) that allows multiple parties to transfer value in a secure and transparent way. Blockchain’s Co-Founder Nic Carey describes Blockchain as being like “a big spreadsheet in the cloud that anyone can use, but no one can erase or modify”. Blockchain is the technology at the heart of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, is open-source, and free.

Why A Blockchain Phone?

Giving a phone a blockchain element means that it has access to blockchain applications such as a crypto wallet, secure exchange access, encrypted communications and a P2P resource sharing ecosystems for payment and apps. It can also be used for cryptocurrency mining.

The built-in wallet for the HTC phone for example, will enable it to store bitcoin, Ethereum and other digital tokens.

Sirin Labs – The Finney Phone

The other blockchain smartphone, which is likely to be launched after HTC’s, is the ‘Finney’, named after the late bitcoin pioneer Hal Finney.

This smartphone, which also has a $1,000 price tag, has been described as an “ultra-secure blockchain smartphone”, and has been specifically designed to get around what Sirin Labs believe to be 2 main obstacles to mass market acceptance – security and user experience.

Sirin Labs even launched an initial coin offering / ICO (crowd funding from early backers of tokens for a new cryptocurrency) to fund the Finney. This resulted in over $157 million being raised.

The Big Advantage – The OS

Sirin claims that its big advantage with the Finney is not so much the phone, but more the Operating System (OS) that it claims, thanks to partnerships it is making, will soon be included in phones by other top OEM phone developers.

Security

In terms of how secure the phones are, the main question will be how both companies will keep sensitive cryptocurrency data secure. For example, unless a phone is in flight mode, there’s always a connection of some kind, and that offers a lot more attack surfaces than something like a USB stick that’s only occasionally connected.

Niche Product For Rich Enthusiasts?

Some critics have said that a blockchain smartphone is too much of a niche product that may just appeal to enthusiasts and speculators rather than a mass market, and that most people may struggle to understand what blockchain is and how / why they should use cryptocurrencies.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

For HTC, many see this as being a way for the company to find a way back into the smartphone market, where it’s been struggling in recent times, but this time with a differentiated product that is a market first, ahead of competitors.

For Sirin Labs, it could also be a way to get into a new section of the market ahead of the competition, but many are sceptical as to whether the Finney will get the mass market acceptance that Sirin Labs hopes.

Most business people in the UK, for example, may be unlikely to see why they would need a blockchain phone with a crypto-currency wallet as part of their daily working life. If they’re going to spend £1,000+, they may be more likely to opt for new models of more familiar phones with more standard features e.g. iPhone or Samsung Galaxy.

Microsoft Launches Free Version of Collaborative Chat App ‘Teams’

Posted on by Andy Miller

Microsoft has announced the launch of a free version of its collaborative chat app ‘Teams’ which doesn’t require an Office 365 subscription.

What Is Teams?

Introduced back in November 2016, ‘Teams’ (as the name suggests) is a platform designed to help collaborative working, and combines features such as workplace chat, meetings, notes, and attachments. Described by Microsoft as a “complete chat and online meetings solution”, it normally integrates with the company’s Office 365 subscription office productivity suite, and Teams is widely considered to be Microsoft’s answer to ‘Slack’.

Slack is a popular, multi-channel collaborative working hub that offers chat channels with companies and businesses you regularly work with, direct voice or video calls and screen-sharing, integrated drag-and-drop file sharing, and an App Directory with over 1,500 apps that can be integrated into Slack.

Teams is now believed to be used by around 200,000 organizations.

Free Version

The free version of Teams, which does not require an Office 365 account, offers the same basic features as regular Teams to anyone who wants to try it out. The hope is, of course, that this will increase user numbers, and tempt users away from Slack. Microsoft is also extending 365 cloud suite with the free version of Teams to try and bridge Microsoft 365 with Office 365.

Space and Features

The free version of Teams offers 10GB of team storage plus an additional 2GB for each user, with up to 300 people supported. Also, users have unlimited messages and search, there is guest access, as well as audio and video calls and screen sharing.

Within the Teams app, users can collaborate with colleagues on Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents.

What’s Missing?

Even though the free version offers quite a lot of storage space, the full version would offer users a massive 1TB. Also, unlike the full version, the free version doesn’t come with Yammer, Planner, SharePoint and OneDrive, plus the free version lacks some of the security features of the full version. This could make it less attractive to enterprises that are also looking to maximise compliance.

Warning To Help With Team Etiquette

One interesting aspect of Microsoft’s approach to the collaborative working platform is to build-on features that warn a user when they are doing something that goes against good practice and etiquette within teams. One key example of this is, with MyAnalytics, which works as an intelligent collaboration assistant in Outlook, is where users are warned / alerted if they are sending emails to co-workers outside their normal working hours.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

One good way to increase user numbers quickly, gain some ground in a battle with competitors, and to entice people to try and perhaps switch to a new service is to offer a good, usable, value-adding version of that service for free. That’s exactly what Microsoft is doing with its version of Teams.

Although larger enterprises may already be a long way down the road with their chosen collaborative working platform, and might be a bit put off by the idea of using a free version of a platform that is not quite on a par with the full version in terms of security features, a free version of Teams may be very attractive to SMEs looking to move into collaborative working with a low risk, trusted, scalable solution.

NHS … Still Reliant On Fax Machines

Posted on by Andy Miller

A Poll by the Royal College of Surgeons using freedom of information requests has revealed that 8,946 fax machines are still in use in NHS Trusts in England.

World’s Largest Purchaser of Fax Machines

The poll was carried out after a report last year by DeepMind Health revealed that the NHS was the world’s largest purchaser of fax machines.

The new RCS poll revealed that the NHS Trust with the most fax machines still in use is Newcastle upon Tyne NHS with 603. Barts Health NHS Trust still uses 369 fax machines.

Labour Party Says There Are More

In June this year, the Labour Party reported that it believed that there were at least 11,620 fax machines still in use across the NHS in England, costing £137,000 a year to maintain.

Fax Machines

What is considered to be the first commercial version of a modern fax machine (short for facsimile) was introduced (and patented) by Xerox Corporation in 1964. Fax machines, however, reached the peak of their popularity in the late 1980s.

NHS Also Largest User of Pagers

A report by telecoms consultancy CommonTime from last year showed that the NHS is the largest user of pagers, with 130,000 of them still in use in the NHS, mainly in acute hospitals. Pagers reached their peak of popularity back in 1994 (61 million in use), and it is believed that there are now only 1 million users worldwide. The NHS, however, spends £6.6m on them each year.

The reason for their continued popularity in the NHS is thought to be their simplicity, their use of radio frequencies rather than their reliance on Internet connections, their resilience, the fact that there’s an audit trail, they’re easy to carry, and they have a long battery life.

The CommonTime report suggests that the NHS could save up to £2,718,009 per year / over £10m across four years by simply replacing pagers with smartphone-based applications.

Hopes For Greater Move To Digital

These reports and polls appear to show that the NHS is lagging behind in the digital revolution and clinging to obsolete technology where its internal communications are concerned.

The last Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, had wanted a paperless NHS by this year, and the new Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, is known to be a supporter of technology and digitisation.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Those in the NHS have pointed out that years of austerity, cuts, lack of funds, and the need to pare back spending on facilities and technology in order to keep the service going are the reasons why the NHS still uses outdated communications technology like fax machines.

The natural substitute and successor to fax machines appears to be apps like SnapChat and WhatsApp. In fact, during the WannaCry cyber attack that brought down NHS computer systems, many NHS staff used WhatsApp to communicate, with an estimated 500 patients a day being diagnosed from X-ray images sent on the app.

Clearly, there is a need for an affordable, reliable, fast and easy to use day-to-day communications platform for NHS Trust staff to use that could help them to save the Trusts money, save themselves time, and add value to the provision of services. Continuing to rely on fax machines will probably only lead to stealth IT anyway. Apps appear to be the natural way forward, provided they offer the right level of security for patient data, but the NHS also has an internal email system called NHSmail that is not being used widely enough.

Misleading Broadband Adverts

Posted on by Andy Miller

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has been criticised for a lack of regulation of the use of the term “fibre” in broadband adverts, which has meant that some consumers may have been misled.

Findings of Research

The findings of the research, commissioned by network provider CityFibre, appear to show that customers may be confused about the fibre aspect of the broadband service they have.

For example, of the 3,400 broadband customers surveyed, 65% believed that they had already upgraded to a fibre connection and theywere no longer on slower copper cables, even though copper is still the most common connection type in the UK.

Also, 24% of the broadband customers surveyed believed they purchased services that used fibre cables running straight to their front door (FTTP). The reality, however, is that only 3% of the UK population have FTTP connections.

The problem with this, apart from the fact that the UK is still lagging behind in fibre broadband provision, is that almost half of those customers surveyed believed that services advertised as ‘fibre’ delivered internet in this way as standard.

Broadband Providers & ASA To Blame

The report by CityFibre lays the blame for years of apparently misleading advertising information about what “fibre” actually means at the door of broadband providers for how they have used the word in their adverts, and the ASA for appearing to not regulate how the word has been used.

Stop Using The Word Unless…

CityFibre has called upon broadband providers to stop using the word ‘fibre’ unless it is describing a full-fibre connection, and has stated that it plans to take the “backward looking” ASA to court to dispute the ASA’s conclusion that ‘fibre’ is not a misleading term in advertising.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Many critics would say that years of misleading advertising of broadband speeds, as well as spurious use of the word ‘fibre’ without explaining what it really means, have left many domestic and business customers totally confused about what they are paying for. This has undermined trust in the industry.

The sad prevailing fact for UK businesses is that, according to a recent survey, the UK is now at 35th place in the global average broadband speed league tables. This is because it has been too late in embracing a full-fibre solution – FTTP (fibre to the premises). Many critics have pointed to UK infrastructure provider Openreach shying away from FTTP because of the perceived costs and level of difficulty of large-scale rollouts.

All this means that UK businesses still have to rely on the slower FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) alternative, which uses copper wires to carry broadband from street cabinets to their premises. This has put UK businesses at a competitive disadvantage with businesses in many other European countries.

Regardless of advertising claims, and despite government plans and announcements, it looks as though the UK may only actually have 7% full fibre coverage by 2020, with full coverage unlikely for another 15 years.

UK Slips To 35th Place In Global Broadband Speed Table

Posted on by Andy Miller

A recent comparison of 163 million broadband speed tests across 200 countries shows that the UK has slipped from 31st to 35th place in the global average broadband speed league tables.

Lagging In Europe

This latest result means that, even though average speeds in the UK have risen in the past year and, at 18.5Mbps, are above the global average, the UK is now lagging behind 25 other European countries.

Although the UK’s ranking is now actually above 165 other countries, it is still in the bottom third of EU member states.

Top Speeds

Globally, Singapore tops the average broadband speed table with 60 Mbps. In Europe, the Scandinavian countries are top of the league with Sweden at 46Mbps, Denmark at 43.9Mbps, and Norway at 40.1Mbps.

To give some idea of the gulf between broadband speeds at the top and bottom of the table, the lowest average broadband speeds can be found in Yemen (0.3Mbps), East Timor (0.49Mbps), and Turkmenistan (0.56Mbps).

Why The UK Fall In The Rankings?

It is widely believed that the UK is starting to drop further behind many of its European neighbours in average broadband speeds because it has been too late in embracing a full-fibre solution – FTTP (fibre to the premises). Many critics have pointed to UK infrastructure provider Openreach shying away from FTTP because of the perceived costs and level of difficulty of large-scale rollouts.

At present, many UK homes and businesses, therefore, have to rely on the slower FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) alternative, which uses copper wires to carry broadband from street cabinets to homes.

Openreach

Back in November 2016, partly because of its slowness to move to super-fast broadband but mainly because of a perceived monopoly, BT-owned Openreach was ordered by Ofcom to become a legally separate entity.

Hope

As well as Openreach’s competitors such as Hyperoptic moving forward with plans to offer FTTP to 2 million urban premises by 2022, the UK government has also recently updated its plans to bring FTTC to the UK. For example, the UK government’s National Infrastructure Commission (Nic) is now pushing for FTTC to be deployed around the UK by 2033, and hopefully, to be available to 15 million homes by 2025.

At the end of last year, the UK government announced that six regions of the UK would host trials of full fibre broadband for businesses, schools and hospitals as part of a £200m scheme by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS). The regions are Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire, West Sussex, Coventry and Warwickshire, Bristol and Bath & North East Somerset, West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

This latest drop down the table of average broadband speeds is bad news, but not a surprise for UK businesses. Broadband is now an essential service for business, and businesses know from their own experience that broadband services in the UK can sometimes be slow, patchy, and often expensive. A recent survey by watchdog ‘Which?’, for example, revealed that more than half of UK customers across 12 providers, are having problems with their broadband service or price.

At the moment, better broadband services, particularly for businesses in rural locations, still seem a very long way off as the reality is that the UK ranks only 35th in the world for average broadband speeds, and we may only actually have 7% full fibre coverage by 2020, with full coverage unlikely for another 15 years. This could affect the competitiveness of UK companies compared to their European neighbours and other global competitors for a long time to come.