Broadband access comes under fire

The quality of broadband Internet access in some European countries, including the UK, Italy and Spain, is inadequate for running current web applications, a study has shown. In a worldwide survey by Oxford University and Cisco, the high-speed Internet access of some developed economies of western Europe, as well as Canada and Australia, was outperformed by Russia and several emerging economies of eastern Europe. The survey looked at the speed of access as well as network delays and loss of data for broadband users in May across 42 countries, ignoring the penetration of broadband. Of the so-called Brics [Brazil, Russia, India and China] countries only Russia performed well, with China and India ranked at the bottom of the survey.