UK Falling Behind in Fast Broadband Provision

In his first speech as Competitiveness minister (sounds like a good job doesn’t it?) Stephen Timms has said that the UK needs to look at our current levels of broadband provision and make plans for the future to ensure that we don’t get left behind by other countries who are investing heavily in their telecommunications infrastructure to provide super fast broadband.

Timms previous post was as the e-commerce minister and he was key in pushing the UK’s broadband provision, indeed if you think of the speeds we were used to 5 years ago when dial up was still prevalent he certainly did a good job there! In a speech to the Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG), he highlighted the issues facing the UK  when he said “other countries are starting to invest in new, fibre based infrastructure, delivering considerably higher bandwidth than is available in the UK today”.

Timms stated that the key to the UK staying competitive as a country globally was improving the telecommunications infrastructure and to that end he announced a summit to be held later in 2007 to discuss a way forward and any public sector interventions that would be needed. It was also declared that it was important for investment to be encouraged to ensure funds were in place to carry out much needed improvements in our current communication systems.

Currently Be offer the fastest broadband through ADSL(or phone lines) at speeds of up to 24 meg but the actual speeds achievable depend on a number of factors including how far you are away from the phone exchange due to attenuation (weakening) of the signal the further you are from the source. Any future plans to improve the broadband infrastructure would probably look towards following the Asian market where Fibre Optic cables are used to deliver broadband at breathtaking speeds! Indeed the fastest speeds available in the UK is through cable broadband with Virgin Media who are currently trialling 50 Meg download speeds with plans to roll it out throughout the country over the next year or so.