Ofcom flags broadband streaming concerns in UK
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| 25 October 2022
Research from UK communications regulator Ofcom has found that the widespread use of video streaming and other bandwidth-intensive services has meant people in the UK are demanding more of their broadband connections but accessibility to ultra-fast connectivity depends very much on location.
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The Communications Market Report 2022 was based on two main datasets: data collected by SamKnows from a panel of volunteers who connect a hardware monitoring unit to their broadband router and data provided to Ofcom by broadband providers.

The study noted that the increase in average home broadband connection speeds has continued and that by March 2022 the median average download speed of UK home broadband connections was 59.4 Mbps, a 9.0 Mbps (18%) increase on the previous year, as people upgraded to faster services. More than 90% of broadband homes take a superfast package. The proportion of home broadband connections that were superfast packages with an advertised download speed of 30 Mbps or higher was 91% in 2022, and 8% were ultrafast packages with advertised speeds of 300 Mbps or more.

Yet worryingly, Ofcom also discovered that during the 8-10pm peak-time period, there was a 58% difference between average urban (62.1 Mbps) and rural (39.4 Mbps) download speeds, up from 42% in 2021. While rural speeds increased, the rate of increase was lower than in urban areas where growth in the availability and take-up of faster cable and full-fibre services is higher.

The study also cited streaming video content as one of the most bandwidth-hungry activities that people use their home broadband connections and to understand how well various home broadband services handle the streaming of video content, Ofcom measured the streaming performance of broadband connections when accessing content from Netflix which it said was used by 60% of UK homes in 2022.

Looking at the proportion of Netflix video streams that were delivered in the most commonly available resolutions – ultra-high definition (UHD), high definition (HD) and standard definition (SD) – the survey revealed that about 70% of Netflix streams transmitted over standard ADSL2+ connections were reliably delivered at UHD resolution in March 2022, a marked improvement since 2021, when two-thirds of ADSL2+ streams were delivered in (lower) HD quality. The study stressed that higher ADSL2+ download speeds noted previously in this report are unlikely to account for all of this change, and that it was likely that improvements to Netflix’s video compression technology is also a contributing factor. In 2022, around 30% of ADSL2+ streams were delivered in HD, with a further 3% in SD). ADSL2+ may therefore be sufficient to meet the current broadband requirements of some smaller households.

Almost all superfast fibre and cable products in the UK , those with an advertised speed of 30 Mbps s or higher, were able to reliably deliver Netflix streams in UHD, both during a 24-hour period and at peak times.