Superfast or slow lane - how fast is Britain's broadband?

The debate over Britain's broadband future gets more heated by the day.

The man pouring fuel on the flames today is Vodafone's Vittorio Colao, who claims that Britain is being left in the dust by countries like Spain and Italy when it comes to superfast broadband.

On the Today programme and in an interview with my colleague Kamal Ahmed he suggested that people in Southern Europe were getting much faster speeds than those available here. "In the UK you talk about 10 megabits per second speeds," he said, "when Vodafone in countries like Spain, Portugal and Italy actually sells 100, 200 even 300 megabits per second."

So are those countries really getting average speeds 10, 20 even 30 times faster than the UK? That does not sound right. Now, research in this area is notoriously spotty, but one report I have unearthed from the data firm Akamai says average speeds in Italy have risen this year - all the way to 6.1 Mbps.

The same report says the UK's average speed is 11.6Mbps - Ofcom's research puts it at 22.6Mbps. We can argue over methodology but it seems clear that the UK does not lag behind Italy.

A call to Mr Colao's spin-doctor brings the explanation that the 10Mbps his boss is referring to is the UK's new "universal service obligation" figure which I wrote about yesterday. Vodafone believes that is totally inadequate and reflects BT's stubborn refusal to give up on copper and invest properly in the fibre-to-the-home network it thinks is the technology Britain needs.

Vittorio Colao says Britain is being left behind when it comes to superfast broadband

More particularly, the mobile phone operator is angry that BT does not give it full access to run its own fibre along the poles and ducts of its network - access it says it gets in other countries like Italy and Spain. So with that, you could offer 100Mbps to every remote farm, I suggest to the man from Vodafone. I don't get a full commitment but he says they would be able to do far more than at present.

There is certainly an argument to be had about the way fast broadband is being rolled out in the UK. I've been hearing more gruesome stories about slow speeds in the last 24 hours, and not just from the countryside. One man who lives in a housing development right opposite London's Canary Wharf says he struggles to get more than 1Mbps. A quick look at BT's postcode broadband checker confirms his story. It promises a "guaranteed minimum" of 2.5Mbps but with the proviso that this figure could be out by as much as 2Mbps.

BT confirms there is a problem with this particular 1980s-built housing development which is a good distance from the nearest exchange, but does not appear to have any thoughts on how these central London residents might be brought into the 21st Century.

So Vodafone and other critics may have a point about the way BT's Openreach is wiring up Britain but the overall picture is that fast broadband availability and price in the UK compares reasonably well with most of our European rivals, if not with the likes of Japan and South Korea.

One thing is clear though - misrepresenting the figures does not serve the cause of those who would like to see a change of direction.