UK Jumps to 35th out of 220 Countries for Broadband Speed in 2022

Research firm M-Lab and Cable.co.uk have today published their annual 2022 global broadband ISP speeds report, which reveals that the United Kingdom delivered an average (mean) download speed of 72.06Mbps (up from 51.48Mbps last year), ranking us 35th fastest in the world (up from 43rd in 2021 and 47th in 2020).

The research stems from information gathered via 1.1 billion speed tests, which were carried out across the world via 220 countries (down from 224 last year). The average global broadband download speed was recorded as 34.79Mbps (Megabits per second), which is up from 29.79Mbps last year.

Overall, the top five fastest “countries” in the world this year were found to be Macau (262.74Mbps), Jersey (256.59Mbps), Iceland (216.56Mbps), Liechtenstein (166.22Mbps) and Gibraltar (159.9Mbps). All but one of those are within Western Europe and are either very small or island nations, where Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) networks are usually prevalent and often easier to deploy.

On the flip side, the five countries in the world with the slowest network speeds were Turkmenistan (0.77Mbps), the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste (0.94Mbps), Yemen (0.97Mbps), Guinea-Bissau (0.98Mbps) and Afghanistan (0.98Mbps).

The good news is that the UK’s global country ranking has improved significantly in the last year, but at 72.06Mbps we’re still behind 18 other states in Western Europe. The strong improvement in performance is likely down to the rapidly growing take-up and coverage of full fibre networks, as well as the completion of Virgin Media’s (VMO2) DOCSIS 3.1 upgrade that made gigabit speeds possible on their Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) lines.

Caveats of the Data

As we’ve said before, speed testing based reports like this should be taken with a pinch of salt because they can easily be misinterpreted. For example, nobody should be equating such studies to directly reflect the availability of faster connections, as the two are far from being in sync.

On top of that, people are more likely to measure their speed if there is something wrong or if they aren’t getting the speed they need, which can produce a negative bias. The fact that the study completely overlooks other key metrics, such as upload speeds and latency, is another annoyance.

Just for some context on actual network availability in the UK, Ofcom reported in May 2022 (here) that fixed “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) networks are available to over 96% of UK premises and 66% can access a “gigabit” (1Gbps+) capable network – falling to 33% if you only include FTTP networks. But many people have yet to upgrade (i.e. they cannot afford, are aware of, or even feel the need to upgrade).

Such testing can also be impacted by other factors, such as poor home wiring, user choice of package (e.g. 1Gbps could be available, but people may pick a slower and cheaper tier), local network congestion (i.e. conducting a test while others or background tasks are using the network) and slow home WiFi etc. Likewise, it’s unclear whether this study has also lumped mobile data (4G, 5G etc.) speeds or business connections in with fixed line services to homes.

Nevertheless, if we assume that such caveats will apply to all countries, then the data is still useful as a rough gauge of market change over time and take-up across the world. The UK Government’s new £5bn Project Gigabit programme, which aims to extend gigabit coverage to at least 85% of UK premises by the end of 2025 and then 99%+ by 2030, will also help to improve matters, eventually.

220 Countries Ranked by Average (Mean) Download Speed