UK Broadband adoption at all-time high

Following on from a Nemertes Research report indicating that current bandwidth consumption could slow the Internet to a crawl by the year 2010 unless infrastructure is significantly expanded (to the tune of $137 billion USD), the BBC News Web site this week reports that broadband adoption in the UK has hit a new high. UK broadband adoption rates have hit an all-time high, with total rates shifting up 26 percent in the past 12 months. Credit: LibCoop.net

UK broadband adoption rates have hit an all-time high, with total rates shifting up 26 percent in the past 12 months. Credit: LibCoop.netAccording to related figures collected for the month of September by National Statistics (ONS), some 88.4 percent of British Internet users have now made the leap from outdated dial-up connections over to high-speed broadband services. Furthermore, from the point of view of user speed preference, the ONS statistics also reveal that 49.2 percent of those broadband connections are delivering a minimum performance of 2Mbps (megabits per second). While September’s broadband adoption of 88.4 percent reflects only a marginal rate of growth when measured against June’s 86.2 percent, the total UK adoption rate across the past 12 months has now risen by a substantial 26 percent.ONS offers that, over the course of the past four years, current UK-based broadband connection percentages have skyrocketed from a mere 17 percent (April of 2003), at which point in time some 81 percent of Net users still relied on the ‘click and wait’ process of dial-up for their online access. However, as the spread of broadband connectivity continues to shift across UK users, analysts believe that converting those staunchly remaining aligned with dial-up technology will become more difficult and could potentially stall broadband growth. Specifically, Tim Johnson, chief analyst at Point-Topic, has offered that although broadband providers have enjoyed considerable adoption growth over the past year, convincing the last remnants of dial-up to convert could lead to a significant slowing. "With almost 40% of British households on the wrong side of the digital divide, the social and economic progress of the UK will be stalled unless the great majority of these homes can be brought on to the internet," said Johnson.