The United States spent $300 million on a broadband map that doesn't come close to showing reality, and the UK looks to duplicate that "success." Last week the UK’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) published a new map showing broadband availability in the UK’s 36 largest towns and cities. It’s interesting for a peruse although the data isn’t exactly new, it comes from regulator Ofcom’s Communications Infrastructure Report 2011, released last July, a standard report on the country’s broadband progress that it is required to present to Government.

Misleading broadband stats

For example, a significant problem when measuring superfast broadband reach – that is, the actual number of household who can get connections above 24Mb delivered through either BT Openreach’s fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC/P) network or Virgin Media’s cable one – is that areas are not 100% enabled. So from these statistics you might think, for example, that in gold star 90% enabled Bristol nine in every ten households will be able to receive a fibre service.

However, that’s not quite right. The 90% means that nine in ten households are served by an exchange enabled for fibre. In every exchange area there’ll be at least 10% of households that can’t actually get the service for a variety of reasons: because their street cabinet hasn’t been completed, they’re too far away to benefit or it’s not possible to run a cable into their home, for example.

In some places it’ll be more like 40% who can’t get actually get the service, quite a dent in that 9/10 availability claim. This matters because 90% availability in all local authority areas is one of Hunt’s broadband promises. It’s a good one. But, here, it’s fudged. It’s also interesting to note that availability and take up are currently extremely mis-matched in the UK.

According to Ofcom, as of July 2011 there were about 500,000 live superfast BT and Virgin Media connections, fewer than 3% of all connections. This should have risen now to around 5% but it’s still a tiny proportion of the market.

It’s a long-standing problem and one that no amount of Government promises can solve. “Consumers are hardly breaking the doors down [for fibre connections],” Tim Johnson, chief broadband analyst at Point Topic told PC Pro in May last year. “The public is a bit 'once bitten, twice shy' about switching ISPs if they have had trouble in the past. People are in no hurry to move.”

Shocking cities: Hull and Aberdeen

Finally, let’s return to those two ‘shocking’ cities Hull and Aberdeen. Both correctly characterised but for long-standing reasons.

The Hull and East Riding of Yorkshire area has long been out of the reach of any of the UK’s major ISPs, controlled instead by one company, Kingston Communications. With no competition and limited opportunities to scale up it’s little wonder the market there has stagnated somewhat – though to give KC their due most of Hull should get fibre during this year.

Aberdeen is more of a mystery, long in the broadband doldrums its first BT fibre exchanges won’t go live until March this year.