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Everest Base Camp has better internet than English villages

Steve Woods International IT News, Local IT News, National IT News Comments Off on Everest Base Camp has better internet than English villages

News emerged last week that Everest Base Camp in Nepal has better internet connection speeds than some villages in Somerset and Gloucestershire.

Research by Cable.co.uk revealed that Brent Knoll in Somerset has a download speed of a mere 1.3 Mbps.

Brent Knoll Vicarage in Somerset
Worse internet than Everest – Brent Knoll Vicarage, Somerset. Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Picture credit: Tim

This is easily beaten by Everest Base Camp’s satellite internet link which has an average connection speed of 2 Mbps, according to The Independent.

Tea House at Everest Base Camp
The Tea House at Everest Base Camp. Average internet speed: 2 Mbps. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

However, Brent Knoll’s internet speed can be regarded as blistering if one happens to have the misfortune to live in Miserden in Gloucestershire where the slowest download speed recorded by a resident using Cable.co.uk’s speed checker was 0.12 Mbps.

Miserden Gloucs
St Andrew’s Church in Miserden, slowest broadband in the UK. Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Photo credit: Derek Harper

Besides these 2 “notspots” Ashwell in Hertfordshire, Ulverston and Gilsland in Cumbria were the other towns and villages to make up the five slowest in the UK.

By contrast Rickmansworth, in Hertfordshire, was the place with the fastest average speed at 77.17 Mbps – more than three times the UK average of 22.8 Mbps.

Cable.co.uk’s revelations have attracted criticism from BT, which contends that 4 out of 5 local customers now have access to so-called ‘superfast’ broadband. A BT spokesperson said:

This report doesn’t give an entirely accurate picture, as fibre broadband is widely available to the slowest areas identified. Fibre is available to 81% of those connected to the Brent Knoll exchange – a far cry from the ‘digital black holes’ described.

This report is either based on out-of-date information or on the speeds people choose to buy rather than the maximum speeds available to them.

For an accurate view, we’d encourage people to look at respected, independent reports by the likes of Ofcom, the EU, the International Telecommunication Union and ThinkBroadband.

However, Cable.co.uk stood by its report, with its Dan Howdle responding as follows:

Digital inequality is a huge problem in the UK, both for those who suffer at the bottom end and for the UK economy as a whole.

While the number of UK households on the right side of the ‘digital divide’ is increasing thanks to the continuing roll-out of superfast broadband, those left stranded are finding themselves further and further behind – to the detriment of both themselves and their local economies.