Ofcom reports our managed broadband speeds ahead of competition
Ofcom reports our managed broadband speeds ahead of competition
Ofcom’s latest report into the performance of broadband has just been released and we want to celebrate some of the ways that TalkTalk is leading the industry. This report highlights the huge surge in broadband usage we have seen across the UK since the COVID-19 lockdown, home working and school closures have driven an unsurprising increase in people streaming and using online educational services. TalkTalk’s mission to provide ‘Fibre for All’ is in full swing, and Ofcom’s results emphasise just how vital our ongoing investment has been, to ensure we provide the best available services for our customers.
Read below how our broadband performance has improved over the years…
Progress in increasing Average speeds
Ofcom’s data shows that throughout 2019 our next-gen Full-Fibre network has remained dependable and is leading the UK for average FTTC download speeds in both the 40 and 80 Mbit/s product categories. Plus, our upload throughput is second, out of all FTTC providers in both groups, to Zen and EE, respectively.
Measured over a 24-hour period and during peak-times (8-10pm), both TalkTalk’s FTTC40 and FTTC80 download throughput were over 1 Mbit/s faster than other providers.
Especially when last year’s results are considered, our network performance has improved significantly (YoY) across the board, while others appear to have dropped in performance across all four categories, or slightly improved in only one or two metrics.
Loading time
Especially now that so many teams are working from home, ensuring staff can work productively, and not limited or delayed by their connection, is vital. Our average webpage load-times are industry-leading in both product categories. We couldn’t be prouder of the work our Technology Services team has done in continuing to grow our public and private peering relationships, exploiting technologies such as caching and tuning our distributed DNS infrastructure in the TalkTalk network to enhance our network’s performance.
Video performance
Another key indicator to highlight within the report is video performance, this is especially important in the current COVID-19 situation. We see children and adults using collaboration tools for work and school, such as Microsoft Teams or Zoom, as well as entertain themselves during lockdown turning to video on-demand services such as iPlayer, Netflix and YouTube as family-friendly media sources. Ofcom’s results show that we are providing the shortest start-up delays across all three video platforms, in both the 40 and 80 Mbit/s products, ensuring our customers have the best-quality media immediately available.
What’s more, our ability to reliably deliver ultra-high-definition video streams to our customers was second out of seven ISPs. As HD and UHD services become more popular and devices to watch high-resolution content continue to become more accessible to consumers, we expect UHD content delivery to become a significant indicator of network performance, especially in the home.
COVID-19 resiliency
While most of the report focused on 2019 performance, the report did also look at the effect of COVID-19 in the weeks immediately before and after the national lockdown was implemented. The key conclusions included:
- Download speeds fell by an average of 2% across major providers in the latter half of March as the UK entered lockdown
- Upload speeds fell by an average of 1% across major providers in the latter half of March
- Most major broadband providers saw an average increase in network latency of 2% during March
Our network functioned in-line with the average dips that providers experienced to upload, download and latency times and, when comparing performance from the first seven days of March to the last seven, we consistently ranked highly across the board, unlike other providers who may have scored well in one metric but poorly in others.
In summary, we’re extremely pleased of these results, both for 2019 and March of 2020. Our staff, as always, have shown incredible team-spirit and a true passion for customer service. Now, more than ever, UK homes and businesses are relying on broadband connections as enablers for our digital lifestyles and work, and we see this dependence increasing for the foreseeable future.
We are continually investing in our network for both our business and consumer customers and are well prepared to ensure they continue to receive reliable connectivity. Our teams are constantly measuring our performance to discover areas that we can develop, and we can’t wait to share more information on how we are evolving our services, in the coming months.
