The Isle of Man has jumped up 23 spaces on the worldwide broadband speed league, above the United Kingdom.

Produced by cable.co.uk and gathered by M-Lab, the annual league ranks countries of the world by mean download speed (Mbps), with tests taken of a range of IP addresses.

Improving broadband speeds has been a commitment of the island’s telecoms providers and the government. The island had slipped further down the league table having been ranked 50 in 2017, it slipped to 63 last year.

The standout figure provided by the cable.co.uk, is that the island’s mean broadband speed has shot up from 11.04 Mbps to 44.16 Mbps in just one year.

Lyle Wraxall, chief executive of Digital Isle of Man, said: ’Keeping our island connected and providing a platform for the Isle of Man Government to deliver its digital services is an absolute priority as we rebuild after Covid-19.

’It also aids local businesses to grow and develop, which is why we quickly identified the need to accelerate the island’s National Broadband Plan through the Economic Recovery Group last month.’

measurement

However, cable.co.uk said that ’it should be noted that M-Lab has updated its measurement platform this year, with the net effect that absolute speeds are higher than they otherwise would have been’.

It added: ’As always, the relative positions in the global league table should be the focus, rather than the absolute numbers. You will find more details about the platform upgrade in the downloadable methodology document.’

Focussing on the league table, the island’s rise from 63 to 40, the UK has gone the opposite way, falling from 34 to 47. Guernsey has also had a drop in the league from 44 to 48.

However, the big winner in the British Isles is Jersey, with the Channel island ranked second in the world behind only Liechtenstein. Jersey’s mean download speed was 218.37 Mbpds.

Gary Lamb, chief executive of Manx Telecom, said: ’We are delighted to see the Isle of Man move up the league table for broadband speeds and this reflects the significant effort and investment Manx Telecom has made into the broadband network, particularly with the roll-out of fibre, over the past two years.

investment

’In light of the changes in demand for broadband services following the coronavirus pandemic, we are bringing forward further planned investment in the existing broadband network.

’At the same time we are working in partnership with the government to accelerate the roll-out of fibre in hard to reach rural areas, under the national broadband plan. This should have a further positive impact, both on the average speed our customers enjoy and on the island’s position in the global rankings.’

Sure Isle of Man chief executive Mike Phillips added: ’We supported customers during lockdown thanks to our resilient network, introduced connectivity measures for those working from home and during the recent outage gave our customers 1GB extra mobile data every day to keep them connected.

’We’re pleased to see that the Isle of Man has climbed 23 places in the broadband leaderboard and we’re proud to offer customers great value products to utilise this high-speed service.

’Keeping islanders connected has been our top priority in recent months and we’re going to continue with this commitment by providing innovative solutions and great customer service to Manx residents and businesses.’