Guest Blog - Stephen Frater - Superfast Broadband comes To The UK?


The UK doesn't do particularly well in global league tables, that's pretty much any global league table you can dream up, but one close to the heart of the digital community where we're especially rubbish is the provision of broadband.

Our creaking telephone network, based on the humble copper wire, simply can't take the strain of Information Superhighway (ah, the glorious 90s and their fancy terms) and laying down fibre to get everyone up to speed, well, that's mighty expensive don't you know.

The former Government championed a target of 2Mbps download speeds "for all" by 2012 and while that would be a leap forward for people living in the middle of nowhere trying to download the next Hollywood blockbuster on their 56Kbps modems - might as well wait for the DVD to come out, it'll probably take about the same time - 2Mbps as a standard will simply see another generation of internet users left behind as Web TV and the like see demand for higher and higher speeds become the norm.

Enter Jeremy Hunt, the Coalition Government's Culture Secretary, to scrap the old (and not yet reached) target, replacing it with a shiny new one for a UK looking to be competitive in the digital age. Very simply, the UK will have the "best superfast broadband network in Europe" - and not only will we have it, we'll have it in just 5 years! Fantastic!

What does this mean?

According to Speedtest.net - the UK is currently 33rd in the World for download speed (and 65th for upload speed, but we won't bother about that when using bit torrent eh?), averaging 9.59Mbps across our entire network. Considerably better than the 2Mbps target of course, but with 9m adults in the UK having never even used the internet, there's a lot of people missing out completely here and, according to Ofcom, fewer than 1% of UK homes have connection speeds of 24Mbps or more.

South Korea is leading the way at 35.81Mbps, but that's ok we don't have to beat them. In Europe however, there's going to be a lot of competition for this prized accolade - Lithuania, Latvia, Sweden, Romania, Moldova, Andorra and the Netherlands all rank in the Globaltop 10 and average speeds in excess of 20Mbps.

How is this going to happen?

Taking £830m from the BBC license fee the government is going to pave the way by placing fibre hubs within reach of remote areas, leaving it to private companies to hook up homes to the hub. This is pretty much how it works now, though, within urban areas. There's a big fat data pipe going into your local telephone exchange, with the speed of your home connection dependent (incredibly) on your distance from that exchange.

If the tech's staying the same then, how superfast will this superfast be?

In true political style, the answer to this question is shrouded in mystery.

"In order to determine what constitutes 'the best' network in Europe, we will adopt a scorecard which will focus on four headline indicators: speed, coverage, price and choice."

"These will be made up of a number of composite measures rather than a single factor such as headline download speed."

2Mbps for all then is it?

Stephen Frater, Managing Director of Clear Digital - Digital Consultancy and specialist Digital Project Management agency in Manchester.

@sfrater


Comments...

  • Spot On Stephen, we have heard it all before from the previous Government. Fact is the backbone of the UK telecoms network won't handle it. For those of us in semi-rural locations we have been waiting a long time for anything like 2Mbps. When the service is dependant on not only how far we are from the exchange but also the 'quality' of the copper wire. I have this on good authority from a freind on the inside at BT. The new plans are just as wacky as the old plans. I suggest forming our own local community groups and sorting it ourselves - have I heard that before somewhere? Nigel Dean - Nonlinea Digital Design and Marketing (out in semi-rural Bolton)
    14/12/2010 10:37:16 by nd_nonlinea

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