As has been much reported, The Digital Britain Report produced by Lord Carter has set out the relatively modest objective of ensuring that all homes in the UK have access to at least 2 Mb/sec broadband by 2012 – the so-called “universal broadband access” commitment. This is to be achieved via a combination of further unbundling of the DSL broadband network; investment in fibre-optic broadband roll –out and mobile broadband.
However, the research published by the BBC today shows that there are currently 3 million homes in the UK (out of a total of about 25 million), who are currently unable to receive broadband speeds of 2 Mb/sec.
The BBC research highlights “Notspot” areas where there is slow connection or no broadband availability at all. The research shows that these notspots are not limited to rural areas but are spread across the whole country. This is because that the great majority of broadband customers access broadband via the DSL broadband network. And with DSL broadband, broadband customers need to be within 4 km of their local telephone exchange in order to get speeds of 2Mb/sec or more.
The situation is rather different in economies that have invested in fibre-optic broadband networks as the backbone of their national broadband infrastructure – our’s provided by Virgin Media covers just 50% of UK households. Japan for example, which has widespread FTTH (fibre to the home) broadband – has average broadband speeds of circa 90 Mb/sec – a far cry from the UK objective of 2 mb/sec.
And the Australian government has recently committed A$43bn to bring fibre to the home (FTTH) ultra-fast broadband to 90% of homes. The remaining 10% will be catered for by wireless mobile broadband and satellite broadband.