In search of excellence

Well, I’ve waded through all 38 pages of Ofcom’s statistical commentary on the European Broadband Scorecard and I’m still looking for ‘the best broadband network in Europe’.  Oh, we all knew this was a silly target for the UK that the DCMS set back in 2010, and it wasn’t helped by Jeremy Hunt’s announcement last year that Britain also aspired to having the fastest broadband network in Europe.  How can you possibly define ‘best’?  Come to that, how do you define ‘fastest’?   (Download?  Upload? Combined?).  And, even if you know what you’re looking for, where on Earth do you find comparable data for every EU Member State?  

The good news is that Ofcom has opted, rather ruthlessly, to consider only five aspects of broadband performance – coverage, take-up, speed, price and choice.  Even more ruthlessly, it reckons that ‘Europe’ should be interpreted to mean just the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy (for the primary analysis). Sadly, even this stripped-down version of the DCMS objective throws up a long list of statistical concerns.  So we’re told that: “the direct comparison of individual metrics does not take account of the dynamics and relative challenges of developing broadband networks in different countries”.  Ofcom’s description of the ‘Scorecard therefore consists of an eminently reasonable, but rather dull, explanation of the chosen basis for each parameter.  (Unfortunately, a basis for international speed comparisons remains elusive…). 

As I’ve suggested, the tragedy is that there’s no reward for all that statistical wrestling.  Never once, after all the qualifications, caveats and disclaimers does Ofcom let its hair down enough to hazard an overall judgement of the UK’s broadband performance.  (For my money, ‘best’ is still some way off).