Broadband commitments by 2015
Back in 2009, the government's Digital Britain Report stated that there will be broadband in every home by 2012. Now that 2012 nears its end, how close are we to reaching that target?
My criticisms at the time of the 2009 report was that the small print said that "broadband" meant the minimal 2MB connectivity would be available, and that "every home" actually meant "every home that is willing to pay for it". In other words, it said little more than the ISPs were already claiming and was hardly a government initiative. It also wasn't a challenging target. We already had broadband in more than half of UK homes by mid-2007, whilst Northern Ireland had met the 100% availability criteria since 2005.
According to Ofcom's latest figures, there are 18.7 million fixed residential broadband lines in the UK, and a further 5 million mobile broadband users. Given that residential broadband can give access to several family members, Ofcom's figures indicate that a total of 89% of UK adults have some form of broadband connection. This compares well with ITU's estimate for the UK of 83% from a year earlier.
Various sources claim that basic ADSL is "almost universally available" in the UK, or that it is available to 99% of households, but there are still divides as far as performance goes, with the slowest speeds being found in Wales, the north of England and northern Scotland.
The government's current position is that it plans to deploy faster broadband connections to 90% of homes and businesses by 2015 and has set aside £530m in government subsidies for faster broadband connections to rural areas. The fund is administered by the Department for Media, Culture and Sport (DMCS), although so far only BT has won any bids for Broadband Delivery UK funding.
The Country Land and Business Association has criticised the BDUK funding procedure for being too bureaucratic, The CLA president, Harry Cottrell, claims between 15% and 20% of people living in rural areas remained unable to receive anywhere near the government's broadband benchmark of at least a 2Mb downstream connection.
25th October 2012
This article comes from the SKILLZONE email newsletter, published monthly since January 2008, and covering topics related to technology and the internet. All articles and artwork in the SKILLZONE newsletter are orignal content.