Network benchmarking firm Opensignal has today published the results of a new study that explored the differences in broadband reliability between urban and rural areas across 18 countries. The study reveals that, among other things, the Nordics, the United Kingdom and Canada all score highly for connection reliability.
Opensignal typically leverages crowdsourced data collected via end-users on their benchmarking app and services. In this case they also harnessed their new Broadband Reliability Experience metric, which uses a 100-1000 point scale to measure broadband experience in a typical household where multiple devices are used simultaneously (i.e. how well a household’s internet copes with real-world scenarios, with multiple users).
For example, one of their metrics for this identified that 25Mbps “was the right downlink threshold to define a connection as reliable“, but they also looked at the entire user experience – from establishing a connection to successfully completing tasks like streaming video, browsing the web, and scrolling through social media. It then captures the end-to-end reliability experience by analysing the two most popular internet protocols – TCP (transmission control protocol) and UDP (user datagram protocol).
Overall, the study found that Sweden, Norway, United Kingdom, Canada, Japan and the United States all made it into the Higher Reliability (overall score above 650) category at the top of the table, while India, Colombia, Mexico, the Philippines, and Indonesia were all at the bottom with Lower Reliability (under 500).
The study also found that the Broadband Reliability Experience is, on average, 23% higher in urban areas than in rural areas across all markets analysed. There are a few reasons for this. But this isn’t too surprising, as urban areas typically benefit from a more competitive choice of often faster broadband ISPs and networks, while rural areas usually see less choice and are frequently among the last to benefit from network upgrades.
For example, Ofcom’s 2023 Connected Nations report noted that “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) coverage remains at 97% (29.1m premises) across the UK, but this falls to 88% in rural areas (up from 86% last year). Similarly, gigabit-capable broadband stood at 78%, but that fell to 45% in rural areas.
Interestingly the study found that countries with the highest Broadband Reliability Experience scores are also those with limited infrastructure sharing but targeted subsidies for private rural investment. This suggests that encouraging wider infrastructure sharing in the UK might not be the magic fix that some politicians hope – there are complex reasons for this (details).
Finally, Colombia was found to be the country with the “widest disparity” between rural and urban areas for the broadband reliability experience, with a difference of 176 points in absolute terms (about 38% lower rural Broadband Reliability Experience than urban). This is partially due to geographical barriers (e.g. diverse and rugged terrain), which make it difficult and expensive to lay new broadband, power, backhaul capacity and other vital infrastructure.