The UK, while far behind European broadband superpowers such as Netherlands and Sweden, is finally gaining momentum for its 25 Mbps (or higher) “superfast” broadband, thanks to new offerings from Virgin and BT. About 10 percent of the UK’s 21.3 million broadband connections qualify as superfast.
Time Warner Cable, which has been the earliest and an agressive proponent of usage-based broadband tiered pricing is offering a $5 price break for its light Internet users in more Texas cities, including Austin and Dallas. Its Texas rivals such as AT&T too are tiered-usage champions.
Arris and Kabel Deutschland, Germany’s largest cable service provider, have managed to field test cable equipment that delivers fiber-like speeds of 4.7 gigabits per second. While those speeds aren’t for the real world, it shows that cable can hold its ground with fiber.
Comcast, the largest broadband provider in the US is getting bigger and bigger. During the first quarter of 2012, the company added 439,000 net new high-speed Internet customers to bring the final tally to 18.58 million and had broadband revenues of $2.32 billion.
The eighteen largest cable and telephone companies that account for 93 percent of the broadband market added 3 million net subscribers during 2011, according to data from Leichtman Research Group, a Durham, NH-based market research group. More revealing: AT&T’s dismal broadband performance.
Netherlands, a country that wants to have 1 Gbps connections everywhere now has 269,000 fiber-based broadband subscribers. Netherlands has a total of 6.29 million broadband subscribers including 2.66 million who use cable broadband and it is one of the fastest broadband nations in the world.
Virgin Media, a UK-based cable company, said that it has started delivering a 1.5 Gbps broadband connection on trial basis in a section of London known as Silicon Roundabout. The company describes it as the world’s fastest broadband connection.
Broadband continues to spread worldwide and the high-speed internet movement is going wireless, according to data collected by Akamai for its latest State of the Internet report. Here are glimpses of the report, including fastest cities in the world as well as some U.S. stats.
Virgin Media, a U.K.-based cable company, has introduced a 100 Mbps broadband connection at reasonable prices. It might not be as cheap as broadband in Japan, but at least it’s better than what we’ve got in the U.S.
The growing popularity of video — online and on-demand — is making carriers rethink their network plans. Many broadband providers are currently experimenting with new 10G technologies so as to offer much more bandwidth to your home than even current fiber-to-the-home networks offer.
