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It is a common in most western countries to have the affluent areas with the best connectivity and the less affluent/poor areas with poor internet connectivity. The situation can only change if/when governments in help out these people and improve the areas

How much did the FCC mapping exercise cost, Rory ?

Wikipedia says "The $350 million figure was reduced over time to about $100 million".

I'm not convinced about mapping, we know there's an opportunity to improve, we don't need a picture we need some entrepreneurial action.

Rory Cellan-Jones.

"Isn't it about time then, that we had a similar map in the UK.."

If an upmarket suburb in Microsoft's home town didn't have decent broadband that would be worth reporting.

Surely this info already exists? every now and then, i check my speed on speedtest.net or any other similar site (a quick google and you can find hundreds). Surely these could happily supply the data?
I bet if you asked Tre-arch, they could tell you everyone's speed who is playing Call of Duty today, and that would give you a good idea...

If anyone spends money on this, i will be quite miffed.

There are plenty of businesses that rely very heavily on the ability to transfer very large files to and fro online. How long before we see people actually moving to areas of high connectivity precisely because of that, leaving "undeveloped" areas a "wasteland" of people, jobs etc?

If government wants to regenerate certain areas of the UK, the very first step they should undertake is the provision of high-speed broadband.

The notspot site is quite good.

We need to break BTs monopoly on our our streets and let other companies invest in infrastructure.

I would like to see a map of everywhere in the UK that does not yet have mains gas. This is an analagous utility to broadband - expensive to lay the final mile, so missing out the remote, unpopulated or low-income areas.
I predict that if (like me) you do not have mains gas 50 years after its first rollout, you will be among the last to receive >1Meg broadband.

BT needs to have competion for laying out the fibre optic cable for broadband.They will only put it in places that will give them big returns for their shareholders.All other places i:e rural areas can grin and bear it with very slow or no broadband at all because BT does not give a damn.
Shareholders are god and do not expect the Cons to do anything, after all ,they do want to keep their private shares in BT as high as possible.
BT,for to long , have been the only company that have been allowed to lay telephone lines around the country.Come on Cons, lets see just how honest you really are and allow competion in this area,we might then see better connections for all around the country.

" BT,for to long , have been the only company that have been allowed to lay telephone lines around the country"

there is no such monopoly, others may have opted not to invest but there is nothing stopping others rolling out fibre, CATV, wireless or copper networks. It has been done in a few spots.

Crowd-sourced methods like www.broadband-notspot.org.uk are a good start. However, the incumbent telecoms operators could do a lot better...

One issue that seems to prevent accurate telecoms mapping is that the BT will not release information on it's asset locations, naming the BT green cabinet locations (approximately +10,000 UK wide) 'for commercial reasons'. These are key pieces of infrastructure on the roll out of Fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC).

The lack of existing asset infrastructure knowledge is actually preventing smaller telcoms companies produce reliable cost-models for knowing which areas to invest and answer the key question...how much is it going to cost/what can we charge to install fibre broadband infrastructure to area X?

BT needs to, as a matter of urgency, release asset locations and related meta-data. Spatial analysis and mapping / cost modelling would then become a much easier task.

Rory - apply some pressure on BT!

Sir Tim Burners-Lee successfully got the Ordnance Survey open their vaults...RAW DATA NOW!!!

Graphis, Backwoods_Bill, samfranklin.

perhaps, as a first step, the UK should emulate Finland in making access to broadband a legal entitlement? (/news/10461048%29

"BT needs to have competion for laying out the fibre optic cable for broadband" - they do.
All the competition sticks to towns and cities because it's profitable.
Look at Virgin Media - the fastest broadband, but only available to select regions.
The market works - but only where there's a big enough market, otherwise people need to help themselves rather than crying to the government.

"We need to break BTs monopoly on our our streets and let other companies invest in infrastructure."

Blimey, talk about being out of date. BT haven't had a monopoly for the last decade. Openreach own what used to be BT's external infrastructure and other companies have had the right to use what they see fit (at a ludicrously low cost) or run their own infrastructure for a few decades.

The fact that other companies don't want their own cables in the ground tells you how expensive it is to run and maintain them. You can't go on blaming BT for that.

Yes we need a map like this and also; one showing prices, another showing speed and a mash up with the speed cost mix.

Broadband suppliers are still "ripping off" customers. Only last week the biggest provider after pushing delivered me a £10 reduction per month. Small beer perhaps but in these days of higher costs all round action is needed to reduce every single penny of cost.

It would be useful to have an accurate map. Unfortunately, crowd-sourced data like that used for the notspot website is far too unreliable.

According to the site I live in a 'low speed' broadband area where I cannot get more than 2Mbps (in Central London). There are many other such low speed areas dotted around Central London. In my case I get just under 10Mbps from an ADSL2+ connection, and if I really wanted/needed more I could get 50Mbps from Virgin Media.

It may be that someone who lives nearby is getting sub-2Mbps, but that could for a number of reasons (poor internal wiring, fault on the line, poor ISP, etc), and does not tell you much about what maximum speed is actually available in that area.

If the biggest cost and hence the biggest hurdle to roll-out of FTTC is that of laying the fibre as opposed to buying it and installing the VDSL modem cabinets, then it's time we used the increasing British dole-force to do some digging.

We don't need maps, we need to empower - if people want 50Mbps+, then they'll dig for it.

I live in a 'cable area' but about 100metres from the cable run, so have no cable option. The cable company decided that it was too expensive to lay in the cable. Currently the cost of cable laying is very high and, it is supposed to be done by staff with the skill and knowledge to lay it correctly. Termination equipment is a small part of the price and can almost be ignored. Neither BT nor any other company can be blamed if they are not able to finance the laying of cable into sparse areas where the costs per customer could well run higher than £ 60,000 per connection. A simple walk round the area will show those areas with the highest penetration of 'second option companies' (now mainly Virgin Media), hint it is NOT the areas with big well spaced out houses with large gardens.

Sam Knows seems to give some good info for some areas.Actual measurements from the users ?