UK access speeds improve, prices drop

While many Americans will have a rude awakening on their next AT&T bill, our cousins across the pond continue to get more for less. This and more is reported in a new study:

The price of standalone broadband in the UK has dropped 36 per cent since 2004, while average speeds have increased 16 times in the same period, according to a survey of services by price comparison specialists uSwitch. The UK now has 15 million households spending an average of $33 per month — or $6 billion per year, in total — for an 8 Mbps connection.

This price drop reflects a highly competitive retail market, and it’s likely to spur providers to offer more features as a way to increase loyalty and gain extra revenue.

There is much speculation about how this will occur. One particularly good summary is given by the UK blog Telco 2.0 (a project of UK consultancy firm STL Partners), which talks of a move toward using location and presence to enable everyday business processes (e.g. parcel delivery, health care services), ad insertion, or e-commerce services like credit checks. (from GigaOm)

Very telling is what users want most is speed, not “value add”. It’s no different in the US, yet we tolerate incumbent providers dumping their “bundles” on us because we have no other choice. Maybe we should try to entice Richard Branson to buy Time Warner or Comcast? His Virgin Media has certainly shaken up the incumbent providers in the UK.