UK homes wasting huge amounts of broadband: Study

A new research has found that over 500,000 homes in the UK are losing around 4Mbps of broadband speed as a result of poor in-home setups.

The study by analysts for broadband provider TalkTalk blames poor wiring, badly connected routers and broadband filters that need replacing for slow internet.

The total leakage of bandwidth capacity from UK homes was found to be over 100 million each year – enough to play BBC iPlayer continuously for 59 years, the study pointed out.

The speed lost through poor wiring was the most common problem diagnosed by the company's engineers, followed by the need to set up or reconfigure the internet router.

According to TalkTalk BrightSparks engineer Keith Myles, thousands of homes were wasting broadband width simply because of a poor in-home set up, The Telegraph newspaper said.

He said people needed to think about their broadband in the same way as other utilities such as water and electricity, adding it was a commodity that could be wasted if one was not careful.

The findings come even as the coalition pushed ahead with a national programme designed to provide remote areas with broadband despite criticism and delays hampering the project.

The scheme's progress had been slowed by pending European approval.

The revelation comes following news that BT had concluded a £8.06 million deal to roll out high-speed broadband in rural Berkshire. The move supported the coalition government's push for a national programme aimed at providing remote areas with high speed broadband.

The government announced last month that over 1.5 million properties in rural UK would see themselves connected to superfast broadband within 12 months. However, the scheme had been subject to criticism from high-ranking officials who believed that the government needed to speed up the superfast broadband rollout before it could improve it.

In a bid to address the problem, TalkTalk on Monday launched a new Online Service Centre aimed at supporting customers seeking help with their broadband issues.

The centre would allow customers to run live checks on their broadband, phone and TV services with in-built self-diagnosis tools that allowed users to troubleshoot and resolve connectivity issues themselves. The centre would also inform users when they were due for a free router, or if they needed an engineer to visit to their home.