How do you boost Britain's broadband?

Last Modified: 12 Sep 2008
By: Benjamin Cohen

More4 News reports on why Britain's broadband is among the slowest in Europe. But don't think the government's going to pay to fix it.

Business should pay for the next generation of high-speed broadband and shouldn't expect any support from the taxpayer.

That's the conclusion of a broadband review looking at how to boost the speed of connections linking businesses and homes to the web.

Increasing speeds, so people can download films and music in seconds, means laying new fibre cables costing up to £29bn, as our Technology Correspondent, Benjamin Cohen, reports.

What internet are you on?

Are you using a new "fibre" or "Wimax" service and would like to speak to us about it? Email us at news@channel4.com

Checking your connection

There are many companies that offer online speed checks to test your connection speed. Here are three that we've used:

speedtest.net
zdnet.co.uk/speedtest
broadband-expert.co.uk/broadband/speedtest

They will typically give you an upload and a download connection speed result.

Note: 1,000 kb/s, Kilobits per second = 1 Mb/s, Megabit per second.