Government to get UK Broadband up to Speed

By Julia Kukiewicz Staff Writer Monday, 12 December 2007

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A ‘Broadband Summit’ of Ministers and industry leaders is to meet to discuss ways of bringing UK broadband connections up to speed amid fears that the UK’s current broadband speeds could ultimately have a negative effect on the economy.

Stephen Timms, Minister for Competitiveness, said that that UK’s relatively slow broadband connections mean less money being made online.

UK needs fast broadband

Without ultra-fast broadband UK consumers will miss out on new innovations in areas such as gaming, high-quality video and even online shopping.

Ultimately, ministers fear, it could have a negative effect on the economy.

Broadband users in the UK are currently surfing at average speeds of around four megabits a second.

That’s way behind the ultra-fast networks being rolled out in countries such as Germany and France which will deliver speeds of as much as 100 Mbps.

This is because at the moment the UK’s old copper-wired infrastructure – DSL - is just not up to transmitting the new faster broadband speeds. For ISPs to start offering faster broadband connections they need to get rid of the copper and replace it with a fibre-based infrastructure.

Fast broadband is not cheap broadband

But with over 120 million kilometres of cable in the UK that won’t come cheap. Some commentators think that it could cost over £15 billion.

So – who’ll pay the bill?

With ISPs scrambling to get the best deals to consumers it seems unlikely that they will be willing to make the long-term investment needed to update the UK’s systems.

Investment for fast broadband

BT has promised to invest £10 billion to speed up the existing network and plans to have 24 Mbps broadband all over the country by 2011.

However, this is way behind Virgin Media who plan to start offering 50 Mbps broadband by 2008 by adding new technology to hubs and bundling together spare channels.

Ultimately, the government will need to invest to keep slow broadband from hindering the UK economy.

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