[LINK] UK to Get 2Mb/s Universal Broadband

Tom Worthington Tom.Worthington at tomw.net.au
Sun Feb 1 22:13:05 AEDT 2009


The UK Government released "Digital Britain: The Interim Report", 29 
January 2009: 
<http://www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/broadcasting/5631.aspx>. The 
report sets five objectives for the UK: Upgrading digital networks, 
better investment climate for UK digital industries, quality digital 
content, universal broadband access, and e-Government.

The headline objective is universal broadband at up to 2Mb/s. This is 
much slower than the 12 Mb/s the Australian Government promised to 
deliver using FTTN 
<http://www.alp.org.au/download/now/a_broadband_future_for_australia.pdf>.

However, the Australian Government is unlikely to be able to deliver 
on its promise and the UK figure seems more feasible, as does 
delivery by a mix of wireless and wired services. It is likely the 
Australian Government will have to water down its promise to 
something like the UK proposal within the next few weeks.

The contribution of ICT to a Low Carbon Economy is mentioned in the 
report, but not given the prominence it deserves. The emphasis on 
digital broadcast technologies, such as DAB seems a little old 
fashioned and misplaced (DAB being a very limited one way 
pre-Internet technology). The use of a graphic of what appears to be 
a USB flash drive seems at odds with the report's emphasis on digital 
telecommunications. The report makes an interesting contrast with the 
Australian Government's recent Digital Economy Future Directions 
Paper 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2009/01/future-directions-for-australian.html>.

The full UK report is provided in MS-Word as well as PDF. The 
individual sections of the report are also in PDF. A plain text 
version of the executive summary is in my blog at: 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2009/02/uk-to-get-2mbs-universal-broadband.html>.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                      http://www.tomw.net.au/
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Australian National University  




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