UK drops down the world rankings in new broadband league table

The survey of 72 countries analysed by the Oxford Said Business School and the University of Oviedo from 40 million Speedtest.net tests ranked the UK joint 18th in broadband performance in 2010, one place down on 2009, and three behind its 2008 rank.  Download speeds show reasonable improvement, rising to an average of 6.4Mbit/s, and latency is now also a respectable 51ms, but upload improvements appear to have barely shifted at all, rising from 368kbit/s in 2008 to 2010's 596kbit/s. Although upload speeds are less important to subscribers today, tomorrow's applications such as consumer telepresence require, by Cisco's own admission, at least 3.5Mbits/s upload throughput to work correctly. At the current rate of improvement, it could be years before this is viable on current trends.

• Third annual study from Saïd Business School, Oxford University, looks at broadband quality in 72 countries and 239 cities
• 14 countries (1 in 5) already prepared for the Internet "applications of tomorrow", compared to only 1 country in 2008
• 38 countries, 53% of the total, have conquered the digital quality divide, with less evident differences between the broadband quality inside and outside their main cities, an improvement of 58% in just one year
• Study reaffirms positive link between broadband leadership and innovation economies
• Many emerging economies are 'leapfrogging' by focusing on bringing the best broadband to their cities, acknowledging their impact on the economy
• 38 cities already have the broadband quality required for the applications of tomorrow, ready to support smart and connected communities
• Mobile broadband quality has improved significantly, with 10% of mobile broadband users already enjoying similar quality experiences compared to those with fixed-line broadband
• Broadband consumption patterns are diverging, from a basic household requiring over 2 Mbps and consuming about 20 GB per month, to a smart and connected home commanding over 20 Mbps and a consumption of 500 GB per month

There is an interactive section to the Cisco report pages that enables you to look in more detail at the data for each country surveyed.

As someone who uploads work in progress and finished products the lack of upload speed is a constant niggle now.