Downwardly mobile

I was foolish enough in my last post to take comfort from the UK’s lofty position in Ofcom’s latest ‘European Broadband Scorecard’. Sadly, however, Ofcom’s apparent national confidence has been widely criticised, not least because of the sampling techniques used to derive the regulator’s data.  As a statistical dunce, I won’t attempt to enter that particular debate: I feel much more at home with the straightforward critique of Ofcom’s analysis put forward in a recent blog by mobiThinking 

In common with many others, the blog criticises Ofcom for limiting its main comparisons to the 5 major European economies, rather than the totality of Europe.  Results for the latter, contained in an annex to the Ofcom report, show the UK in a much less flattering light.  But as the name of the website suggests, mobithinking’s primary interest is in the data for mobile broadband.  In particular, it addresses two key questions: what is the rural coverage for mobile broadband (since this probably offers a more important assessment of useful internet access), and what type of mobile access is available (3G or 4G).  Again, using these criteria, the UK ‘score’ is very much second division – indeed, the UK’s relative diffusion of 4G looks woeful. 

It’s not difficult to criticise a statistical report of this kind, and Ofcom has an almost impossible task in trying to assess whether the UK can aspire to “the best broadband network in Europe”.  Nonetheless, in just the four years or so since Jeremy Hunt made that pledge, the shift in importance from fixed to mobile broadband internet has been inescapable and, to that extent at least, the criticism of Ofcom’s complacency seems entirely justified.