© Pexels/Ketut Subiyanto
While in France we are talking about the Very High Speed plan which aims to bring fiber into all homes, and above all to generalize very high speed connections, other similar initiatives are deployed almost everywhere in the countries of the European Union. And for good reason: the European Commission has long set two major objectives in terms of internet connectivity for its members: connecting the entire region to “broadband” (>100 Mb/s) by 2025.
And offer speeds greater than 1000 Mb/s from 2030. Of course, we see it for example in France, there are delays, and everything does not go exactly as planned. However, Ookla (the publisher of the speed test site Speedtest.net) has thrown another stone into the mix: between the speeds announced by ISPs and reality, there is often a big gap. Even if it should be noted that the situation varies completely depending on the country.
This graph of internet speeds shows a clear gap between official announcements and reality
© Ookla
In turquoise, we see the proportion of households officially covered by broadband, and in orange, the proportion of households actually enjoying such speeds. Interestingly enough, Finland is the country where the official figures correspond best to reality. Denmark and Ireland are rather close between official figures and flow measurements. There are also a few countries including France where the measurements exceed the official figures.
This is the case for Germany and the Netherlands, but we also told you about France, which is rather in the leading group when we ignore the official figures. On the other hand, there are also many cases where we can speak of a large gap. In Italy, for example, Ookla measures a proportion of only 33.92% of Internet users reaching 100 Mb/s while the official figures put it at 59.60%, which therefore seems somewhat 'theoretical'. ;.
Elsewhere, the gap between the official figures and the measurements is a little less surprising, even if it remains somewhat exaggerated according to the Ookla study. This is the case for Spain, which announces 81.48% of households covered against a “reality”; 60.35%, Sweden (85.28% versus 59.09%), Romania (81.29% versus 57.64%), Portugal (77.08% versus 56.28%), Hungary (69.80% versus 55.24%), Poland (65.19% versus 52.03%) and Slovenia (51.60% versus 40.03%).
The quality of the WiFi connection is another area to act on
The study notes that France is the country in which customers are closest to the gigabit horizon, even if here again we can speak of a large gap between the official figures (39.94%) and reality according to Ookla (1.42%). Be careful, however: the study mentions very little about the subject of the subscriber's WiFi connection, even though it is undoubtedly an important explanatory factor for these differences.
In fact, very few subscribers connect to the internet via a cable directly connected to their box, the only way to optimally benefit from maximum speeds. Instead, tests are often carried out from machines connected via WiFi (and most often old revisions that are not very fast), which can limit throughput.
Ookla simply notes: “Our survey showed that in markets where DSL or coaxial connections are being replaced by more advanced cable and fiber optics, WiFi performance can lag behind that of Ethernet connectivity”. And to emphasize that WiFi speeds are between 30% and 40% those of Ethernet, which indicates the need to accelerate the adoption of more advanced WiFi technologies and #8217;optimize the network environment in homes.
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