Broadband is not cheap in UK, says OECD report.

The recent report published by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reveals the speed and price of broadband offered by internet providers in its member countries greatly vary, however broadband take up has increased to 60 percent of total net users in those countries.

Speed-wise, Japan, belonging to Asia Pacific region offers the fastest broadband (100 Mbps) in the world, compared to the average 10 Mbps speed as per OECD standard.

Japan also offers the lowest tariff with respect to one megabit per second speed. While it is just 0.11p in Japan (in UK, you pay £1.81 for every one megabit per second),Turkey has most expensive providers and the tariff is around £40 for 1 Mb broadband. US offers slightly cheaper broadband service than UK in terms of 1 mbps but more than half of connections in US are Cable-based.

With Japan, other three nations Korea, Sweden and Finland too offer high speed broadband (100 Mbps) as all these countries use fibre optic networks which draw much slower investment from ISPs in Europe and UK. What is unique about broadband available in Japan is that users get as much upload speed as the download speed due to the use of optic fibre.

The report also says broadband prices in their member countries (30) fell by nearly twenty percent during the year while the speeds were upgraded smartly, up by 30 percent. In UK, ADSL+2 which promises double the speed of broadband over the telephone line, unable to achieve the maximum theoretical speed of 24 Mbps in most of the places. Cable broadband in UK boasts of higher speeds up to 20 Mbps or more, but still both these broadband technologies fell much short of 100 Mbps broadband that is offered in countries like Sweden orJapan.

Presently, very few ISPs like Be offer ADSL 2+ broadband in UK, while BT Broadband Supplier plans to launch its ADSL 2+ in 2008.