Internet access: Mobile Broadband Britain

The government has unveiled plans to link up the country with superfast broadband internet, using a digital tax to pay for it. Do the proposals go far enough?

THE PROPOSALS

Britain to have guaranteed broadband speeds The government last week set out a strategy to improve the country’s broadband internet services, as well as other digital communications, in a report entitled Digital Britain. “Only a digital Britain can unlock the imagination and creativity that will secure for us and our children the highly skilled jobs of the future,” Gordon Brown said. For broadband he is pinning his hopes on a two-pronged approach. The first target is to ensure that by 2012 everyone will have access to an internet service of 2Mbps (megabits per second), using the existing telephone and wireless network. The second, longer-tem goal is to create a much faster “next generation” of internet access delivered by new wireless and fixed-line networks using fibre optics.

WHERE ARE WE NOW?

Target speed of 2Mbps is already common The bulk of British broadband users receive a DSL service – a “digital subscriber line” delivered down copper telephone wires. The further you are from the service provider’s local hub, the slower the broadband connection. If you are one mile away or less, you may get about 8Mbps; but if you are three miles away or more you may get only 1Mbps. At 8Mbps, you can download a webpage or five-minute song instantly, and streamed videos are as good quality as television. At 1Mbps the song would take about 40 seconds to download and videos are poor quality. Size and quality of wiring can also have an effect. At present more than 10% of households cannot get pay as you go mobile broadband at 2Mbps.

‘DIGITAL POLL TAX’

Government proposes £6 a year levy for fibre optics To upgrade the system, the government is going to stump up £200m and hope that private partners, local organisations and consumers chip in whatever else is needed. To create a new superfast fibre-optic network, the government suggests exacting a levy of 50p a month on every copper telephone line. In other words, householders with a fixed-line telephone will be taxed £6 a year, which will be used to subsidise private investment in the necessary infrastructure. Cable networks offering mobile broadband speeds of up to 50Mbps are already being introduced in some urban areas by private companies, but the government believes that public funding will be necessary to spur similar investment in rural areas.

REMAINING ISSUES

Others invest more and minister in charge quits The best mobile broadband levy is calculated to raise £1 billion over seven years, but that is far less than the estimated cost of creating a national fibre-optic network. One that ran fibre optics into every UK home would cost as much as £28 billion, according to the Broadband Stakeholder Group. The US is already investing about £40 per household to expand its ordinary broadband. New Zealand is spending £390 per household, alongside private investment, to run fibre optics into 75% of homes. And Australia plans a £21 billion project to supply 90% of homes. Lord Carter, the communications minister, hardly inspired confidence in his proposals when it leaked out that he plans to quit government next month.