The UK’s digital regulator has announced that the average download speed of home broadband in the country has now reached an average of 69.4 Mbit/s as of March 2023. Year-over-year, this represents an increase of 17% and has been fuelled by people upgrading to higher-bandwidth services such as full-fibre connections.
With higher download speeds, internet users in the UK can download larger files quicker including content such as games, films, apps, and streaming high-resolution content. Ofcom said that the percentage of people receiving at least 30 Mbit/s had increased to 88% compared to 83% the year before.
Those with actual download speeds of less than 10 Mbit/s represented 3% of broadband customers, down from 4% the year before and less than 1% of lines were connected to broadband services that actually have advertised download speeds of less than 10 Mbit/s.
Another important metric to look at is the upload throughput as this is the speed at which you can upload or send files to other people or online platforms. Ofcom revealed that there was a large increase in upload speed, rising to 18.4 Mbit/s in March 2023 – up 7.8 Mbit/s year-over-year.
One of the big issues the UK has been tackling, especially under former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s levelling up campaign, was the issue of rural broadband and getting people in hard-to-reach areas connected. According to Ofcom, the average download speed in urban areas was 70.3 Mbit/s while in rural areas it was 56.0 Mbit/s. That’s a gap of 26%, an improvement over 2022 when the gap was a huge 58%.
Finally, Ofcom said that the network congestion issue had slightly improved over the last year. It said that during peak time from 8-10 p.m., broadband speeds were operating at 95% of their full speed compared to 94% in 2022. This is good news for anyone working 9-to-5 who goes online to relax during peak hours.
Source: Ofcom